Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to share a perspective new to the author, regarding how acquisitions problems in the library grow and present themselves. Design/methodology/approach – The paper considers possible ways to prevent problems and minimize time spent solving them. Findings...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to suggest that leaders use staff retreats as a time for budget and planning, more than as a time for working on the prototypical subjects of group cohesion, personality pairing/profiling and teamwork exercises. Design/methodology/approach – Analysis...

Purpose – The paper's aim is to provide insights into issues encountered in maintaining library technologies and electronic collections on a limited budget and with limited personnel. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses real‐world experiences and evidence from the body of...

Purpose – Budgetary and activity‐based data examination and analysis are core to planning for all organizations. This paper seeks to explore aspects of budgetary financial data and activity data focusing on how each is presented separately and in tandem for more productive decision making....

Purpose – Recently, the demise of the dot.com mania, coupled with slow economic growth has caused organizations to cut costs in an attempt to improve efficiency and the bottom line. Discontinuing or suspending knowledge management efforts and disbanding the chief knowledge officers' (CKOs)...

Purpose – There are two objectives of this paper: first, to examine the application of lean production improvement techniques to the pure‐service context; and, second, to evaluate the contribution of lean production techniques to services marketing improvement. Design/methodology/approach...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to argue for the necessity of regulating European club football financially, in order to create a fair structure of sporting competition. Design/methodology/approach – By deploying the soft budget constraint approach – originally developed by...

Purpose – Supplier involvement in cost reduction efforts has been concentrated mainly in the product development phase of the life cycle of the product. Often this concentration on the early phases of the product life cycle is defended with referral to the 80/20 rule that says that 80 per cent...

Purpose – The motivation for this study is triggered by the fact that lately contract manufacturers in China have to deal with a number of unprecedented cost pressures such as currency fluctuations, the VAT rebate reduction, and minimum wage enforcement. As cost pressures in China continue to...

Purpose – Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach – Scans the top 400 management publications in the world to identify the most topical issues and latest...