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This paper seeks to illustrate and explore strategic issues from the perspective of the research team in designing, delivering and monitoring an education programme for new technology based firms (NTBFs) which has been run successfully for the last two years by the Robert Gordon University. Findings from recent research, involving innovative NTBFs, have shown that these organisations may be struggling in a number of areas such as maintaining communication with their main customers and staff recruitment which relates to serious skill shortages. The model proposed in this paper of an effective management skills programme for NTBFs is one way forward in assisting owner/managers in developing and utilising their scarce resources effectively.

The Dynix system was purchased by Napier Polytechnic of Edinburgh in March 1990, replacing a mixture of manual and small‐scale automated processes. The paper outlines the reasons behind the choice, describes the implementation of the system to date, and discusses the library's development plans. The system is integrated with the Polytechnic network and public access microcomputers in the three major campus libraries.

This study contributes exploratory evidence on the relationships between corporate culture and company size, competitive environment and corporate performance in the U.S. and Taiwan. The findings indicate that environmental uncertainty – one aspect of industry dynamics – failed to uncover any widespread effects of this variable on Taiwanese firms’ corporate culture. In contrast, not only did we find that the corporate cultural aspects most valued differed from country to country, but that they related to corporate performance in different ways.

National treatment guidelines regarding Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, 2009) make a number of recommendations relating to system and cultural treatment variables including: access to services, autonomy and choice, developing an optimistic and trusting relationship and managing endings and transitions. The purpose of this paper is to look at a model which could help organisational effectiveness across a range of service settings in relation to personality disorder.

Explanation of why the McKinsey 7S organisational model (Waterman et al., 1980) may be useful in assessing organisational effectiveness in relation to personality disorder.

Cultural and organisational factors across a range of levels need to be aligned to allow for effective service delivery. This is particularly important in working with this client group where strong emotional reactions and subsequent organisational splits are common.

The application of this tool within clinical leadership and service development would be particularly important for coherence within generalist (as opposed to specialist) settings.

To the authors’ knowledge this analysis is unique as a review of NHS culture across a range of settings and discussion of the implications for service delivery for patients with BPD.

This chapter presents a novel human arm gesture tracking and recognition technique based on fuzzy logic and nonlinear Kalman filtering with applications in crane guidance. A Kinect visual sensor and a Myo armband sensor are jointly utilised to perform data fusion to provide more accurate and reliable information on Euler angles, angular velocity, linear acceleration and electromyography data in real time. Dynamic equations for arm gesture movement are formulated with Newton–Euler equations based on Denavit–Hartenberg parameters. Nonlinear Kalman filtering techniques, including the extended Kalman filter and the unscented Kalman filter, are applied in order to perform reliable sensor fusion, and their tracking accuracies are compared. A Sugeno-type fuzzy inference system is proposed for arm gesture recognition. Hardware experiments have shown the efficacy of the proposed method for crane guidance applications.

In this paper, I sum up more than 20 years of research and reflection on jealousy. A chronological account of this work is followed by a thematic summary of the findings and some discussion of the relationship between sociology and psychology. Sociological analysis shows that jealousy and other emotions are shaped by social situations, social processes, and social forces. Micro‐sociology reveals that jealousy is learned. Jealousy reflects the life experience of the individual. Meso‐sociology reveals that jealousy is socially useful, indeed, indispensable to social order. Jealousy reflects the institution of marriage and the prohibition of adultery. Macro‐sociology reveals that jealousy is shaped by society and culture. Jealousy reflects the history and the values of a people—and the relevant values vary from time to time and place to place. In the United States, for example, a new and more negative view of jealousy emerged after about 1970 as a result of the sexual revolution and the women's movement.

Purpose – This chapter examines the challenges in exploring, analysing and developing the concept of social capital, seen as the proclivity (or otherwise) of societies to engender stable structures for cooperativeness that support economic exchange and control. The authors focus on Asia and outline a theory of researchable social capital elements. Methodology is considered against the contexts of Asia. The authors emphasize the role of higher education as determinant, seeing it as crucial to the accumulation of human capital and often at the centre of many theories of societal progress.

Findings – The authors’ findings are that social capital is a contested concept that does not rest within a bed of widely adopted theory; researching it comparatively requires acknowledging societal meaning structures; there is emerging acceptance of complexity theory, evolutionary dynamics, and multi-disciplinary analysis; it is possible to disaggregate the concept into researchable issues; many research methods are available.

Implications – Modes of human cooperativeness are crucial for the understanding and comparison of economic systems. Implications are strong and pervasive for policy and practice. The authors find no evidence of a distinct indigenous ‘Asian’ perspective in research but much evidence of powerful contributions from Asian scholars working collaboratively with colleagues internationally.

Originality/Value – The chapter provides a helicopter perspective of an emerging field, notes conceptual challenges and gives practical guidance for researchers.

In this paper we present a corporate information system for untrained users to search gigabytes of unformatted data using quasi‐natural language and relevance feedback queries. The data can reside on distributed servers anywhere on a wide area network, giving the users access to personal, corporate, and published information from a single interface. Effective queries can be turned into profiles, allowing the system to automatically alert the user when new data are available. The system was tested by twenty executive users located in six cities. Our primary goal in building the system was to determine if the technology and infrastructure existed to make end‐user searching of unstructured information profitable. We found that effective search and user interface technologies for end‐users are available, but network technologies are still a limiting cost factor. As a result of the experiment, we are continuing the development of the system. This article will describe the overall system architecture, the implemented subset, and the lessons learned.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The increasingly globalized nature of the business environment demands that firms incorporate cultural awareness into their strategies. Traditional Chinese Yin-Yang harmony offers an alternative approach to identifying the strategic positions which could be the most suitable for particular organization types.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.