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This study of 429 United States pleasure visitors to Canada demonstrates that research based on personal values can be fruitfully applied to the segmentation of international tourism markets. The relative importance attached by a visitor to 16 attributes which describe the touristic attractiveness of a foreign city were used as clustering variables. Three major segments were found, with each segment possessing a unique personal‐value profile. These value profiles were meaningful and distinctive enough to offer the international tourism marketer actionable portraits on which to base product development and marketing communication strategies that match a segment′s personal‐value orientations.

To determine whether French and English Canadians had different information search patterns prior to automobile purchase, 210 buyers of 1983 and 1984 Ford and Toyota automobiles in two Ontario and two Quebec cities were surveyed. We hypothesised the English‐Canadian car buyers prefer printed sources of information, while French‐Canadian buyers prefer personal sources, consider fewer alternatives, devote less time to the search process, and generally search less extensively for a new car than do English Canadians. Three of the five hypotheses were supported. Compared to their English counterparts, French Canadians evaluated ten per cent fewer alternative car makes, spent 30 per cent fewer days in the search process, took 67 per cent fewer test drives, and scored eight per cent lower on a measure of overall depth of search. As the French search pattern perhaps entails a greater risk, marketers in Quebec may need to provide better warranties and after‐sales service than in Ontario.

Surveys the perceptions of attributes of three‐ to five‐star hotels by marketing managers and by older people aged 60 and over who return to a satisfying hotel. The attributes studied were price, location, facilities, hotel restaurant, room furnishings, front‐desk efficiency and staff attitude. Usable data were analysed for 154 older consumers in Queensland, Australia, and 44 hotel marketing managers in Australia working at three‐ to five‐star hotels. Respondents’ ratings of a set of eight hotel attribute‐level scenarios were subjected to conjoint analysis in order to infer the relative importance of each attribute to both groups. Results show that both seniors and marketing managers considered hotel facilities to be the most important attribute, followed by room furnishings. The managerial implications for hotels and future research opportunities are also discussed.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

Develops an original 12‐step management of technology protocol and applies it to 51 applications which range from Du Pont’s failure in Nylon to the Single Online Trade Exchange for Auto Parts procurement by GM, Ford, Daimler‐Chrysler and Renault‐Nissan. Provides many case studies with regards to the adoption of technology and describes seven chief technology officer characteristics. Discusses common errors when companies invest in technology and considers the probabilities of success. Provides 175 questions and answers to reinforce the concepts introduced. States that this substantial journal is aimed primarily at the present and potential chief technology officer to assist their survival and success in national and international markets.

Virtual teams are on the rise and many companies are implementing them to compete for the most talented experts. However, the use of information and communication technology (ICT), on which virtual teams depend, often ends in communication chaos. Research has shown that shared mental models (SMM), which are knowledge structures on team level, enhance team communication. In teams, which use ICTs, shared mental models of ICTs (ICT SMM) seem to be important. However, few studies that investigated ICT SMM have used different measurements that restrict their generalization. The purpose of this study is to define ICT SMM as well as develop and validate an ICT SMM scale.

This study used a cross-sectional questionnaire in two different samples (N1 = 117 students and N2 = 165 employees).

The results of item and factor analyses indicated that ICT SMM contain at least two facets, ICT functionalities and task-specific ICT use and are distinct from teamwork, taskwork and temporal SMM. The ICT SMM scale reached good validity and reliability. On an individual level, ICT SMM were positively associated with perceived team performance and coordination and negatively with ineffective communication, workload and frustration.

Future research using teams as sample to validate the ICT SMM scale seems to be promising.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that developed and validated a rating scale to measure SMM of ICT in different samples.

IT is fitting that a new series of this magazine should be introduced by some reflections on the whole question of book selection, both for the general public and libraries.

Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

THOMAS Carlyle's personal crusade for the opening of a lending library in London and his enlisting for the support of that cause influential and wealthy patrons such as Lord Clarendon, Bulwer‐Lytton, Lord Lyttelton, Dean Milman, Lord Houghton, W. E. Gladstone, Sir G. Cornewall Lewis, Henry Hallam—amongst a host of other now forgotten early Victorian luminaries—is well documented. According to Robert Harrison's Preface to the 1888 fifth edition of the Catalogue of the London Library, it opened on 3 May 1841 “with a collection of about 3,000 volumes, which, by the following March, when the first Catalogue was published, had increased to 13,000” (p.viii). The Library was declared formally open on 24 May 1841 using a hired hall in Pall Mall. There were 500 members. In April 1845 the Library moved to its present location in St. James's Square.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest a more central role for reflexive artistic practices in a clarified research agenda for second-order cybernetics (SOC). This is offered as a way to assist the field in the further development of its theoretical/methodological “core” and, subsequently, enhance its impact on the world.

The argument begins by reviewing Karl Müller’s account of the failure of SOC to emerge as a mainstream endeavor. Then, Müller’s account is recontextualized within recent developments in SOC that are traced through the Design Cybernetics movement inspired by Ranulph Glanville. This alternate narrative frames a supposedly moribund period as a phase of continuing refinement of the field’s focus upon its “proper object of study,” namely, the observer’s mentation of/about their mentation. The implications of this renewed focus are then positioned within Larry Richard’s vision of the cybernetician, not as “scientist” per se but rather as a “craftsperson in and with time” capable of productively varying the dynamics of their daily interactions. Having centered widespread capacity building for this “craft” as a proposed research agenda for a new phase of SOC, the paper concludes by pointing to the unique and necessary role to be played by the arts in this endeavor. Personal reflections upon the author’s own artistic and theoretical activities are included throughout.

The development and application of artistic methods for the enhancement of individual capacity for second-order observation is consistent with the purpose of SOC, namely, “to explain the observer to himself.” Therefore, it is in the field’s interest to more fulsomely embrace non-scientific, arts-based forms of research.

In a truly reflexive/recursive fashion, the very idea that first-person, arts-based narratives are seen, from a mainstream scientific point of view, as an insufficiently rigorous form of research is, itself, a research limitation. This highlights, perhaps ironically, the need for cybernetics to continue to pursue its own independent definitions and standards of research beyond the boundaries of mainstream science rather than limiting its own modes of inquiry in the name of “scientific legitimacy.”

A general uptake of the view presented here would expand the horizon of what might be considered legitimate, rigorous and valuable research in the field.

The view presented here implies that many valuable contributions that SOC can make to society take place beyond the constraints of academic publication and within the realm of personal growth and social development.

The very clearly defined and “refocused” vision of SOC in this paper can be of substantial utility in developing a more robust, distinctive and concrete research agenda across this field.