European community developments

The drive to construct a European market free of trade barriers by 1992 is now proceeding. The article below discusses some of the challenges and opportunities which this radical opening up of the European market will present to every industrial and commercial organisation, and how to prepare for them. It goes on to outline the establishment by the EEC of new networks of information agencies and consultancy services which are intended to enable firms, particularly small firms, to obtain the fullest information and support to enable them to expand into the new European market and to take advantage of EEC loans and grants for R&D, training and other business activities. In a final section the article discusses the opportunities for managers and higher educational institutions in the COMETT and ERASMUS Programmes as they become fully operational.     

The European community: Institutions and publications

The purpose of this speech was to review the institutions of the European Community, their decision-making processes, and the resulting publications. The services of the Washington, DC office of the Commission were also touched upon.     

Michel Carpentier on a strategy for European community electronics

The European Community was born at the start of the micro-electronic age. The first transistor radio appeared in 1954, the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957 and the first silicon chip made its debut in 1959. Now the electronics sector, broadly defined, is scheduled to be the biggest business in the world by the end of the century. At a time when Community leaders still thrash out the details of agricultural cooperation, as at their last Summit in Brussels in February, this article outlines the issues and strategies that underlie the mobilisation of the European information technology and telecommunications sectors to meet the international challenge of electronics in the 1990s.     

Working women in the European community—The future prospect

EEC regulations direct that as well as equal pay for equal work, women should have equal access to employment. However, obvious distinctions between male and female employment still abound in European countries—though they vary from one country to another—and the difficulties in implementing the legislation are further compounded by the effects of the recession. Business and government will have to plan for the growing demand of women to work and the authors examine the major problems which have to be addressed.     

European economic community depository libraries and documentation centers in the United States

A general discussion of the organization and operation of the European Economic Community and its institutions is presented. Growth of the Community's forty depository libraries and documentation centers in the United States is discussed, and the results of a 1974 comparative survey of these libraries is presented. Recommendations point to the need for greater communication and co-operation between these depository libraries to meet the coming information demand for the Community's primary and secondary materials. Concluding appendix lists depository and documentation centers in the U.S. plus English language series titles received by these libraries.     

New developments in behavioral pricing research

Behavioral pricing extends traditional price theory by exploring consumers’ reactions to prices from a psychological perspective. With the constant and substantial evolution of this research field, we review the progress on the state of knowledge on consumers’ processing of price information and price behavior. To this end, we develop a framework to classify the advances made in behavioral pricing research during the past decade. We discuss conceptual developments, the contribution of the adoption of new theories, and new relationships and pricing phenomena. We show that several concepts have undergone conceptual developments (e.g., price search) while other concepts are new to the literature (e.g., participative pricing mechanisms). Regarding theoretical developments, the adoption of theories from other disciplines has contributed to enhance understanding of price-related effects. Finally, new pricing phenomena, such as the zero price effect or the placebo effect of price promotions, challenge the traditional view of consumers’ response to price information. Furthermore, a number of recent empirical findings contradict existing knowledge on price-related concepts and phenomena. Thus, it is of prime importance to integrate the latest findings with prior literature. From the key findings in the literature, we derive directions for future research.     

Planning developments in British Nuclear Fuels Ltd

The state of the corporate planning art in British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. was described in this journal by N.R. Geary¹ in September 1973 just 2 years after Company formation. This article discusses more recent planning developments over the period to date during which the Company adopted a Divisionalized structure (from October 1974) and has been required to submit an annual Company plan to the Department of Energy (from November 1975). Background information on the origin and nature of BNFL and its business, and the particular features of the Company which reflect into the nature and method of its planning were given in the 1973 article and only a brief introductory updating of the Company position is included here. Subsequently the features and problems of BNFL's operating and developing planning system are described. Finally, messages arising from BNFL's planning experience to date which the author considers of general application and therefore of value to other practitioners of planning are listed.     

Efficient jobshop dispatching rules: Further developments

Many dispatching rules for scheduling in dynamic jobshops have been proposed over many years. The research issues in jobshop scheduling seem to be still open in the sense that no single rule has been found to be the best under all shopfloor conditions even with respect to one single measure of performance. Added to this problem, there are several measures of performance, e.g. the minimizations of mean, maximum and variance of flowtime, percentage of tardy jobs, and mean, maximum and variance of tardiness of jobs. Recent studies have reported the development of more efficient dispatching rules than the popular rules, e.g. SPT, COVERT, MOD and ATC. This study is an attempt to improve some of the recently reported dispatching rules. An extensive simulation study reveals that the improved rules developed in the present study appear to be quite effective in minimizing mean flowtime, and maximum tardiness and variance of tardiness of jobs.