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Reviews the process of ISO 9000 registration for the construction industry, with insight from the author’s rich experience in helping construction firms to register for this international standard. Addresses the questions: the first‐meeting, the courting process, the relationship and a life‐time together. Concludes that the paper challenges the fundamentals of the need for ISO 9000 for the UK construction industry.

This study aims to investigate how artificial intelligence (AI)-powered smart home devices affect young consumers' requirements for convenience, support, security and monitoring, as well as their ability to advance environmental sustainability. This study also examines the variables that impact users' motivation to use AI-powered smart home devices, such as perceived value, ease of use, social presence, identity, technology security and the moderating impact of trust.

The responses from residents of Sarawak, Malaysia, were collected through online questionnaires. This study aimed to examine the perceptions of millennials and zillennials towards their trust and adoption of AI-powered devices. This study used a quantitative approach, and the relationships among the study constructs were analysed using partial least squares - structural equation modelling.

The present study found that perceived usefulness, ease of use and social presence were the main motivators among actual and potential users of smart home devices, especially in determining their intentions to use and actual usage. Additionally, there was a moderating effect of trust on the relationship between perceived ease of use, social presence, social identity and intention to use AI-powered devices in smart homes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies to examine the factors influencing smart technology adoption. This study provided meaningful insights on the development of strategies for the key stakeholders to enhance the adoption and usage of AI-powered smart home devices in Sarawak, one of the promising Borneo states. Additionally, this study contributed to the growing body of knowledge on the associations between technology acceptance model dimensions, intention and actual usage of smart technology, with the moderating impact of trust.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of how portrayals of older employees in mass media messages can help combating stereotypical beliefs on their employability.

The authors conducted a systematic review of empirical studies on mass media portrayals of older employees in order to show what these reveal about the ways in which their employment status, occupation, job type, or work setting is portrayed. The approach builds upon theory on media portrayals, media effects, and stereotypes of older workers’ employability.

This study shows that older employees in media portrayals, when present at all, are relatively often shown in higher-level professional roles, herewith overall, depicting an image that is positive, yet differs from stereotypical beliefs on their employability that are prevalent in working organizations.

Further empirical work is needed to more safely conclude on the prevalence of age-related portrayals of work and employment in mass media. In addition, longitudinal research is called for in order to better understand the possible causes for the way in which older employees are portrayed, as well as effects of age-related stereotyping in mass media and corporate communication outlets over time.

This research sparks ideas about how new portrayals of older employees in mass media and corporate communication outlets can contribute to novel approaches to managing an aging and multi-generational workforce.

This study shows how working organizations can make use of the positive and powerful media portrayals of older employees, in order to activate normal and non-ageist behaviors toward them, and herewith, to increase their life-long employability.

This study highlights the role of media portrayals of older employees in combating stereotypes about their employability.

The question of responsibility is not new to labour law. The earliest developments in labour law and social law sprang from a “legal revolution” to borrow the words of Georges Scelle, considering the concept of responsibility that prevailed in common law. Civil responsibility which was originally based on fault could now be based on the risk inherent to a socially useful activity so as to ensure that the responsibility for damages that might result from it be equitably shared. This development took place under the generalization of the industrial production mode, first within the frame work of laws respecting compensation for industrial accidents.

WE all scan the advertisements for librarians in The Times Literary Supplement and other journals every week, and we might be forgiven for inferring from them that there is a dearth of those who, by a curious inversion, are asked for as “A.L.A's or F.L.A's.” In contradiction, it would appear that about 1,500 youngsters are trying to enter the profession by way of the Entrance Examination every year. Youngsters beginning life, especially girls, do usually prefer or are constrained by their parents, the cost of living, and the scarcity of lodgings, to start in their home towns and still to live at home.. Higher in the scale the whole position is tangled in various ways. Many of the entrants fall by the way; commercial pay exceeds municipal and other library pay; more find the work uncongenial, as library work certainly is except to those who are book‐lovers, have a strong social sense, and, in the best cases, a flair for publicity and business administration. Others marry and leave, although some stay on with the ring on the third finger of their left hand. Thus, when maturity is reached, only a relatively few, even amongst the mature, have become chartered librarians and, fewer still, Fellows—as is natural seeing that the fellowship is a much more severe test nowadays and only much love and industry can achieve it. This position is even worse in some other branches of the municipal service; our salaries do not draw the best of the young folk permanently and many a Treasurer's office, to take one branch only, is complaining of want of good recruits. Those of our good ones who do remain do so because of the work and not the pay. Authority has always known this, from the day when Gladstone opined that working in the British Museum was so delightful that it was incredible that the workers wanted any pay at all. Chief librarians today have been most unfairly neglected by the salary negotiating bodies who have dealt generously with several other kinds of chief officers in the local services.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

The purpose of this paper is to compare light fastness assessments by exposure of fabric dyes with various dyes in daylight and an artificial xenon arc lamp.

Cotton fabric dyed with 66 reactive, vat, azoic and direct dyes dyed in different depths were exposed to daylight and Xenon arc lamp for assessment of light fastness by standard methods. The light fastness rating and fading hours by the two methods were analysed and compared statistically.

The correlation between the corresponding light fastness rating (LFR) measured in Xenotest and daylight is quite high (0.93). The logarithmic correlation coefficients between fading hour (FH) and LFR in Xenotest and daylight are 0.95 and 0.88, respectively. For Xenotest, the assessed LFRs are same as those predicted from geometric progression up to LFR of 5.5, and thereafter, the former is higher. On the other hand, in the case of daylight, the assessed LFR is lower. Assessments for three successive seasons showed high repeatability in case of Xenotest and moderate repeatability in case of daylight. Assessments for three successive seasons showed high repeatability in case of Xenotest and moderate repeatability in case of daylight.

The exposure conditions in daylight cannot be controlled or standardised, whereas the exposure in Xenon arc lamp in the accelerated fading instrument can be strictly controlled. These differences in exposure control may affect the repeatability of experimental findings.

Inconsistent ratings may be because of little deterioration of samples during storage, as well as seasonal variation of daylight.

There are no direct social implications.

The researches on the comparison of the two light fastness assessment methods have not been reported in any recent publication to the best our knowledge.

Developing macro queries in software systems is a complex task for many users. Geographical information systems (GIS) are large software systems that require much effort to develop expertise in. A functional programming design approach has a number of distinct strengths that can be represented in a graphical query language interface to aid users in macro query development. A visual functional query language (VFQL) for Geographical Information Systems is presented and its strengths and weaknesses discussed. The system is based on a visual functional programming design approach. This offers a consistent, non‐procedural, strongly typed environment where users can develop their own higher order functions. The approach integrates functional programming, visual programming and knowledge and rules. VFQL’s effectiveness is evaluated compared with a text based command language for GIS macro query development. The results of an experiment indicate that users could develop solutions to simpler tasks more quickly and with fewer errors than a comparative text based command language. On more complex tasks there was no significant difference. From this we deduce that VFQL demonstrates certain design features to help the development of macros or small programs for users but that the complexity of the problem in difficult tasks is likely to be the most important determinant of the error rate and time to complete the task.

New internet technologies are not always readily accepted by target users – especially by small companies. More effective identification of target market characteristics and requirements associated with the adoption and ongoing usage of internet‐based service systems (NCSSs) is therefore needed. Drawing on adoption theory, this research aims to assess pre‐launch survey, legacy and longitudinal data to evaluate factors that encourage small companies to use NCSSs.

The roll out and ongoing usage of a new NCSS are tracked within a single channel of dental offices over a 185‐week period. Logistic and multiple regression analyses are utilized to examine the influences of system attributes, attributes of the target user group, supplier promotional activity and system completeness on ongoing usage.

Pre‐launch survey data is an ineffective predictor of ongoing small company NCSS usage. The best predictors are indicators of organizational readiness and organizational resources drawn from the supplier firm's legacy database. Synergistic coordination of promotional activities and new system features generate the largest number of ongoing users.

Findings are not generalizable to the population of small service provider firms because the sample consisted purely of regional dental offices.

Pre‐launch promotional efforts should concentrate on capturing specific attributes from supplier firm legacy databases that more accurately predict ongoing customer usage.

As far as can be determined, this study is the first reported longitudinal examination of NCSS usage across an entire customer base. The examination of pre‐launch and legacy data as predictors of ongoing usage and the assessment of ongoing usage rather than intention to adopt or try out a technological innovation extends the adoption literature and responds to calls for research that improves current understanding of the determinants of e‐business acceptance and usage across organizations.