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The article provides an overview of some of the problems that beset small primary schools within the UK. Some of the solutions are suggested but within the context of Local Management of Schools and the National Curriculum difficulties may become more apparent. The report was first written for internal use by local education authority officers/advisers and names of individual LEAs have therefore been omitted.

In his travels early in the new year, the Minister of Labour, Mr Godber, announced two interesting developments — first a new arrangement for training unemployed boys on Tees‐side. In the next 12 months about 100 will enter six‐month courses of introduction to industrial methods and techniques.

This paper describes the role of the media in a free society and their impact on civic life. Intellectual rigour in journalism is required to assist media to develop and understand itself.

THE interval between the Library Association Conference and the printing of THE LIBRARY WORLD is too brief for more than a series of impressions of it. Comment is probably preferable in our pages to mere record. The Association is publishing in the next few weeks all the papers that were read and, as we hope, the substance at least of the unwritten contributions. In this second particular reports in recent years have been lacking. A report that merely states that “Mr. Smith seconded the vote of thanks” is so much waste of paper and interests no one but Mr. Smith. If Mr. Smith, however, said anything we should know what it was he said. What we may say is that the Conference was worthy of the centenary we were celebrating. The attendance, over two thousand, was the largest on record, and there has not been so large a gathering of overseas librarians and educationists since the jubilee meeting of the Library Association at Edinburgh in 1927. So much was this so that the meeting took upon it a certain international aspect, as at least one of the non‐librarian speakers told its members, adding that it was apparently a library league of nations of the friendliest character. It followed that an unusual, but quite agreeable, part of each general session was devoted to speeches of congratulation and good‐will from the foreign delegates. All, with the possible exception of the United States, dwelt upon the debt of their countries in library matters to the English Public Libraries Acts and their consequences. Even Dr. Evans, in a very pleasant speech, showed that he had reached some tentative conclusions about English librarianship.

Sir Watson Cheyne, M.P., recently introduced a deputation to Mr. Balfour to urge upon the Government a proposal for the granting of awards or pensions to persons making medical or other scientific discoveries of general benefit to humanity. The method suggested is the annual voting of £20,000, to be distributed in pensions, some of £1,000 a year, others of £500. In commenting upon the matter the Daily Telegraph observes that the public is more concerned with the adoption of the principle than of any cut‐and‐dried scheme, but it may be pointed out how essentially moderate this proposal is, considering the priceless value of the services which it is desired to reward, and how our credit as a nation stands in this respect. It has been pointed out by foreign writers at least as often as by our own that Great Britain stands above all other countries in respect of the number of original and world‐important ideas and discoveries contributed to science, and that reputation is well maintained to this hour. But what material form does the nation's gratitude, and its pride in the possession of such citizens, take? The answer is that they are not rewarded to the extent of one penny of public money, and we believe that ours is the one leading country in the world of which this can be said. Let us note the case of Sir Ronald Ross, for example, whose work in connection with the cause and prevention of malaria is a landmark in the progress of medical science, and has already been the means of saving tens of thousands of lives. If we considered only the direct benefit done to his own countrymen, and left out of account the honour that he has reflected upon the British name, Sir Ronald's work might still be regarded as equally worthy of recognition with that of a distinguished soldier let us say. But it has brought him nothing, so far as his own country is concerned, in recompense for the years of devoted and often dangerous labour which his discovery represents. Sir Ronald Ross has himself remarked that a doctor who gave to the world the long‐sought cure for cancer would get nothing for his pains from his own people; yet of those people alone, we have seen it stated on high medical authority, 35,000 die of cancer every year upon the average. For any material reward, such a British discoverer would have to look outside his own country. He might receive a small prize from the French Academy; he might receive—as Sir Ronald Ross, we are proud to remember, has received—a large prize from the Nobel trustees, in Sweden. That is not a very gratifying reflection; and even if it were consistent with our self‐respect that such services should be rewarded at other than British expense, the fact would remain that not one in fifty of our pioneers of science could receive such recognition. The matter is thrown into an especially strong light just now, when large sums of public money are being awarded—and most justly and properly awarded—to officers and others who have assisted Britain's military effort by inventions found serviceable by the Army and Navy. A great innovation in healing science will preserve to the world incalculably more lives than the most deadly device of war could destroy; but only the latter service is thought worthy of recompense. Yet consider the circumstances in which by far the greater part of British research, leading to ultimate discovery, is carried on. Much of the most valuable work in medicine, for example, has been done by men who, at the expense of health and strength, were carrying on medical practice at the same time, and not always making ends meet without difficulty. Even the researcher who draws a salary from public or private funds has no more than a pittance in most cases. Some of the greatest names in the history of British science are associated with melancholy stories of poverty and struggle, continued over many years. For such triumphs are not achieved without the devotion of a great part of a man's life. Koch's discovery of the tubercule bacillus was the fruit of eleven years of patient seeking. The wonderful drug salvarsan was only given to the world after years of monotonous labour. Any scale of reward which Parliament could reasonably be expected to sanction would have been earned a dozen times over by sheer hard work and perseverance alone in every case which was held to deserve such recognition. Mr. Balfour, we can be quite sure, would be personally well‐disposed towards the appeal that has been made. As Lord President of the Council, he has the national organisation of research which Great Britain at last possesses—such as it is—under his Ministerial care. The Medical Research Committee expends an annual sum of £60,000 of public money, which represents, we should say, infinitely the cheapest national investment on record. The sum which it is now proposed to lay out stands upon a similar footing. A great stimulus would unquestionably be given to research of every kind, if a reasonable prospect of such recognition were opened to the scientific worker; and a man possessing the definite talent for such service would, once adequately pensioned, be able to carry on without distraction the task of extending still further the boundaries of knowledge. That science should continue to be starved because men can be found to undertake unrewarded labour for their fellow‐creatures is not only a reproach to us as a nation, but bad from the point of view of tangible results; and we trust that the case submitted by Sir Watson Cheyne and his colleagues will be admitted and acted upon without delay.

Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford: the names of these universities instantly conjure up images of the highest attainments of higher education. Of course, great universities also operate great university presses. So any reference book with the name of Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard in the title possesses immediate credibility and saleability. But it was not always so. Prior to the latter half of the nineteenth century the Oxford and the Cambridge University Presses were known to the public primarily as publishers of the Bible. Oxford broke into reference publishing, and along with it widespread public recognition, by means of its famous dictionaries, of which the pinnacle was the massive Oxford English Dictionary. The Cambridge University Press [hereafter referred to as CUP] took a different approach to publishing scholarly reference works by producing authoritative and encyclopedic histories. According to S.C. Roberts, a long‐time secretary to the Syndics of the CUP, “apart from the Bible, the first book that made the Press well known to the general public was the Cambridge Modern History.”

This paper aims to examine the relationship of perceived supervisor empowerment behaviors and feelings of personal empowerment with important work and well-being outcomes in a sample of Egyptian women managers and professionals.

Data were collected from 155 managerial and professional women using anonymously completed questionnaires. Respondents were relatively young; had university educations; had the short job and organizational tenures; held various levels of management jobs; and worked in a range of functions. All measures used here had been used and validated previously by other researchers.

Work outcomes included job satisfaction, career satisfaction, work engagement, work-family and family-work conflict, emotional exhaustion/burnout, life satisfaction and intent to quit. Both perceived levels of supervisory/leader empowerment behaviors and self-reported feelings of empowerment had significant relationships with the majority of work and well-being outcomes.

Data were collected using self-report questionnaires with the small risk of response set and common method biases. Second, all data were collected at one point in time making it challenging to address issues of causality. Third, all respondents came from the two largest cities in Egypt, Cairo and Alexandria; thus, the extent to which our findings would generalize to managerial and professional women and men is indeterminate. Fourth, it was not possible to determine the representativeness of our sample as well.

Practical implications of these findings along with future research directions are offered. Practical applications include training supervisors on empowerment behaviors, and training all employees on the benefits of personal empowerment and efficacy and ways to increase them.

A number of ways to increase levels of empowerment of both front-line employees and managers have been identified. These include increasing employee participation in decision-making, delegating authority and control to these employees, creating more challenging work roles through job redesign, leaders sharing more information and leaders providing more coaching and mentoring to their staff. At the micro level, increasing levels of employee self-efficacy through training and more effective use of their work experiences will increase personal empowerment and improve work outcomes.

Relatively little research has been undertaken on women in management and human resource management in Egypt.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to better understand which personality traits and personal values impact transformational leadership qualities in self-directed entrepreneurial teams as perceived by team members.

A cohort consisting of six self-directed entrepreneurial teams was selected. A multi-rater system was applied to assess the perceived transformational leadership qualities. A model was developed, using three dimensions of transformational leadership as dependent variables: inspiring others, stimulating interaction among group members and communicating a strong vision.

The ability to inspire others was predicted by friendliness, measuring a positive labeling of social phenomena. In addition, two positive moderation effects emerged as being related to inspirational capacities: assertiveness and despondency, and assertiveness and emotional empathy interacted. The second moderation effect also impacted the capacity to stimulate group interaction. The personality traits “modesty” and the personal value “human relations” were negatively related to the perceived capacity to communicate a strong vision. Furthermore, a significant but moderate effect of team membership on the capacity to inspire others respectively stimulate interaction seems to exist.

The research results offer valuable opportunities to enhance or to develop those informal, transformational leadership qualities positively influencing entrepreneurial effectiveness.

As entrepreneurship in small, self-directed teams is a popular phenomenon, research results add to the understanding of group interaction related to informal leadership.

Shared or informal transformational leadership in the context of self-directed, entrepreneurial teams is a relatively new phenomenon. Integrating a multi-rater assessment of leadership with personality combines interesting perspectives.