Management Research News

Burkitt, Brian

1982 Management Research News

doi: 10.1108/eb027787

The economist, seeking to answer the most fundamental problems of union development, can get little help from the historical literature, and is largely left to his own devices. To him the most important question is the determination of the extent to which, at different periods, the trade unions have been able to affect wages. In order to be able to answer this question at all, some theoretical apparatus is absolutely necessary.

Mansfield, Roger; Poole, Michael; Blyton, Paul; Frost, Paul

1982 Management Research News

doi: 10.1108/eb027788

Managers today are a very large and growing occupational group. Indeed in the most recent census for which results are available 1971 there were nearly 1.7 million managers constituting nearly 7 per cent of the economically active British population. At the same time there can be no doubting the strategic position of managers with regard to the success of individual enterprises and for the resuscitation of the British economy. Considering all this, it is surprising how little systematic research has been devoted to the study of managers.

Hoffman, William H.

1982 Management Research News

doi: 10.1108/eb027789

MRP is the only way to go in industries characterised by batch production of broad and complex product lines. A mixture of standards and specials, common parts, and standard parts used in special products or sold for replacement further complicate the picture and increase the value of properly designed MRP systems.

Leduchowicz, Tad

1982 Management Research News

doi: 10.1108/eb027790

Articles have been written, and will continue to be published, about the variety of methods and techniques available to the trainer and the new technologies which relate to the job he must perform. Insufficient attention has been given to the trainer the trainer as a person. We must devote more of our energies to the consideration of what we expect of this person we call a trainer if the development of manpower resources is to achieve the purposes which are essential in an industrial society.

Buxey, Geoff

1982 Management Research News

doi: 10.1108/eb027791

The Vehicle Scheduling Problem VSP is to assign specific routes to a fleet of delivery vehicles so that management's standards of operational efficiency and customer service are both satisfied. The basic format requires all carriers to operate from a common depot and to furnish any particular order with a single drop. In addition, total loads must be within each vehicle's capacity limit and distributed during the driver's statutory working day, whilst a variety of further constraints may have to be taken into account as circumstances dictate.

Prattis, J.I.

1982 Management Research News

doi: 10.1108/eb027792

The general problem of structural unemployment has evoked three types of theoretical responses from the body politic of social science. The most ambiguous and least developed set of ideas refers loosely to the notion that structural changes in the economy necessarily lead to structural unemployment as a consequence. This has tended to be rejected by policy makers and indeed the views expressed within this mode of reasoning have been subsumed under discussions that refer either to inefficient labour markets or policy inconsistencies.