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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the relationship between total quality management (TQM) and innovation and the way each impacts on the performance of agricultural research and development (R&D) organisations.

A gap score survey instrument based on the balanced scorecard approach, 25 most commonly reported TQM practices and two types of innovation were considered for data collection. Structural equation modelling was used for the analysis of the relationships between the surveyed constructs.

A positive relationship between TQM, innovation and performance was observed. A hypothesised model depicting the complex relationships between the investigated constructs was developed.

The model, which also predicts total effects of various organisational practices on performance, provides an opening for developing a TQM-innovation-performance framework for agricultural R&D organisations.

The survey instrument presents a novel approach for assessment of R&D policies and practices through determination of gap scores.

The purpose of this paper is to explore a case study in Washington State, USA where traditional stories (“oral tradition”) are being used in a contemporary context. Traditional knowledge is a system of experiential knowledge acquired through the continual observation of and interaction with the environment. This form of knowledge is still held by many societies and can provide an important contribution in emergency management for natural hazards. Those holding traditional knowledge can assist in understanding the nature of local hazards, suggest appropriate risk reduction and response mechanisms, and even give options for recovery based on past experiences.

The paper first discusses the nature of traditional knowledge and how it can contribute to emergency management. It then goes on to investigate a particular case study where a traditional Native American story has been combined with contemporary methods of hazard mitigation to create an educational video for tsunami hazard.

Traditional knowledge can be used effectively to undertake hazard education and enhance response to warnings. The video, titled “Run to Higher Ground!”, is an example of this, and has been readily taken up by indigenous communities and the general population (both in the USA and internationally) as an educational tool.

The paper will be of value to those working within the emergency management sector, and is particularly useful for communities who need to respond to warnings.

A topic currently receiving significant academic and practitioner attention is called evidence-based management. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that this approach is sometimes over-sold and may be a fad. Additionally, evidence-based management fails to fully recognize the importance of tacit knowledge, what Kahneman calls system 1. Evidence-based management does provide tools to better use what Kahneman calls system 2, rationality. Decision-makers need to take advantage of both rational and beyond rational processes.

This is an essay, it is not a report of a study. At this point in time, this paper needs thinking, reflection, pondering, more than a data-based study.

Advocates promote evidence-based management in part to help avoid fads, yet evidence-based management itself has many of the characteristics of a fad. Evidence-based management is based on an objective rational view of the world and suggests highly rational methods of decision-making. However, a rational fact-based might not give sufficient credit to instinct and feelings. Decision-makers should take into account facts, evidence, when making decisions, but not ignore intuition, hunches and feelings. This study is learning that decisions use a galaxy of approaches, with both cognitive and affective flexibility.

As with any opinion-based paper, this lacks empirical support. Proponents ask us to believe in evidence-based management. Neither we, the authors of this paper, nor the proponents of evidence-based management can empirically support the ideas offered. An additional limitation is that the paper is written in one language, English. Translation into another language might yield different meanings.

There are advantages for scholars and practitioners to look at the best available evidence. There can be disadvantages in overlooking non-quantifiable factors.

Those who use evidence-based management should also take into account feelings, ethics, aesthetics, creativity, for the betterment of society. To solve wicked problems one needs more than facts and rational analysis.

The overwhelming majority of those writing about evidence-based management are supporters. This study offers a different view. This paper brings new ideas and new thinking to both the extensive fad literature and the huge evidence-based management literature. Evidence-based management is discussed widely. Google Scholar lists more than two million papers in 2019, 2020 and 2021 on evidence-based management. Readers of this journal should critically evaluate this popular set of ideas.

Relates some instances of Government censorship of the press in Nigeria. Discusses their implications for communications, scholarship and education within the country. Indicates prominent Nigerian periodical and newspaper publications and stresses their importance as free agents of communication within the country.

This paper aims to develop an instrument for measuring Consumer Protection and its Determinants (CP&Ds). This is because literature on an instrument to measure CP&Ds is scarce.

In Nigeria, 53 questionnaires were distributed to legal practitioners. The study used 24 items to operationalize the CP&Ds. The research data were coded and scored, and the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted using SPSS version 22. The Bartlett’s test of sphericity, Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin, Cronbach’s alpha and Pearson’s correlation coefficient were used for the EFA, internal consistency reliability and multicollinearity, respectively.

The EFA produced seven factors, and each determinant was found reliable with its measure of internal consistency.

The research result may not be generalized across jurisdiction because of the limited sample size and the fact that the data were collected from Nigerian legal practitioners.

This study can be used by policymakers and even private electricity companies in the deregulated electricity sector in Nigeria for policy design and effective consumer protection.

From the extensive literature review none was identified on the scale development for measuring CP&Ds. This exploratory research is the first attempt to develop an instrument for measuring CP&Ds.

This paper aims to identify factors influencing and shaping community perceptions of oil companies which present fertile ground for a better understanding of their actions.

A qualitative methodology is adopted where primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews from members of three communities in the Niger Delta: Ogbunabali community in Port Harcourt (Rivers State), Biogbolo community in Yenagoa (Bayelsa State) and Ogunu community in Warri (Delta State). The interview data were recorded, transcribed and qualitatively analysed using content analysis with NVivo software.

Perceptions regarding negative and positive aspects of the oil companies were identified. These included environmental concerns; lack of compensation; health effects; lack of social development; neglect of communities; not creating employment opportunities; and providing community and educational support.

A major limitation regards the small number of respondents selected from the communities. The sample of the interviewees was constrained by their availability and accessibility, which might have injected some bias. Gathering data from other stakeholders such as non-governmental organisations, consumers, investors and creditors may provide a deeper understanding of social and environmental practices. Another approach would be to extend this study by examining the perceptions of relevant government officials towards social and environmental concerns in developing countries.

The qualitative research methodology utilised in this study uses content analysis to examine views of communities about oil companies’ commitments to their social and environmental concerns. An understanding of social and environmental commitments allows diverse stakeholders such as communities to become more engaged with issues affecting them.

Our nineteenth volume opens with this page in circumstances as unsettled and uncertain as any in the history of this or any other journal. In defiance of prophecy the European conflict drags its colossal slow length wearily along, bearing with it the hopes and fears of the whole human race. It is not to be wondered at that the aims for which we strive have not made great strides in the year that has just closed. Important as we recognize literature and its distribution to be, the pressing material needs of the people often cause them to lose sight of the invincible fact that the freedom of the human spirit, its intellectual and humane expansion, are, after all is said, the ultimate aims of the war. It will not be of abiding service to the British race if in conquering the Germans we sacrifice beyond redemption all those sources of sweetness and light which have been the outcome of centuries of British endeavour. We do not fear that such sacrifice will be demanded of us, but the logic of material facts demonstrates that all who care for schools, libraries, museums, art galleries, music, and all other agencies for the moral and spiritual uplifting of men, must be on their guard against the well‐meaning but ignorant encroachments of those who would rather “save money” by abolishing them, than, for example, by foregoing their own individual luxuries.

A New Year message from the Director General. The beginning of a new calendar year is a good time for any organisation not only to review its achievements during the past year, but to look forward and set goals for the year to come.

The following problems affecting newspaper collection management in Nigerian libraries are identified and discussed: publishing and distribution; misconception of the role of libraries; ineffectiveness of the Nigerian Library Association; position of libraries in their parent institutions; laymen′s control over libraries; position of newspapers in libraries; absence of newspaper departments; inadequate staffing; selection criteria; inadequate powers of librarians; inadequate preservation and storage facilities; neglect by library schools; ineffective bibliographic control; and absence of a professional body.

The concept of corporate social responsibility of the enterprise covers a vast territory! This paper proposes to limit the analysis and evaluation of this concept to three distinct aspects. The first will treat the comparatively new and evolving common law implied term in corporated into the contract of employment relating to the enterprise’s social responsibility of respect towards the employee. The second will analyse an other generically linked recent common law development in the field of the enterprise’s social responsibility of respect towards the employee, namely the implied over‐riding term. Thirdly, the novel and developing wider concept of corporate social responsibility will be addressed and assessed. Some concluding thoughts will follow.