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Liquid-crystal materials exhibiting up to three nematic phases are reported. Dielectric response measurements show that while the lower temperature nematic phase has ferroelectric order and the highest temperature nematic phase is apolar, the intermediate phase has local antiferroelectric order. The modification of the molecular structure by increasing the number of lateral fluorine substituents leads to one of the materials showing a direct isotropic- ferronematic phase transition.

The inclusion of secondary and tertiary benzanilide-based mesogenic groups into liquid crystal dimers is reported as a means to develop new materials. Furthermore, substitution at the nitrogen atom is shown to introduce an additional synthetic 'handle' to modify the molecular structure of the tertiary materials. The design of these materials has proved challenging due to the strong preferences of 3° benzanilides for the E amide conformation. In this work, lateral substitution is used to modify the conformational preferences of the amide linkage and promote liquid crystallinity for a series of N-methyl benzanilide dimers. As the proportion of the E conformer decreases, the nematic-isotropic transition temperatures increase, and enantiotropic nematic behaviour is observed. We also report the synthesis and characterisation of the analogous 2° benzanilide-based materials, which show nematic and twist-bend nematic behaviour. This approach highlights the effects that seemingly small structural modifications, such as the inclusion and position of a methyl group, can have on molecular shape and hence, liquid crystalline behaviour.

A selection of pyrene-based liquid crystal dimers have been prepared, containing either methylene-ether or diether linked spacers of varying length and parity. All the diether linked materials, CBOnO.Py (n=5, 6, 11, 12), exhibit conventional nematic and smectic A phases, with the exception of CBO11O.Py which is exclusively nematic. The methylene-ether linked dimer, CBnO.Py, with an even-membered spacer (n=5) was solely nematogenic, but odd-members (n=6, 8, 10) exhibited both nematic and twist-bend nematic phases. Replacement of the cyanobiphenyl fragment by cyanoterphenyl giving CT6O.Py, gave elevated melting and nematic-isotropic transition temperatures, and SmA and SmCA phases were observed on cooling the nematic phase. Intermolecular face-to-face associations of the pyrene moieties drive glass formation, and all these materials have a glass transition temperature at or above room temperature. The stability of the glassy twist-bend nematic phase allowed for its study using AFM, and the helical pitch length, PTB , was measured as 6.3 and 6.7 nm for CB6O.Py and CB8O.Py, respectively. These values are comparable to the shortest pitch of a twist-bend nematic phase measured to date.

Acknowledgements E.G. and D.P. acknowledge the support of the National Science Centre (Poland): (Grant Number 2016/22/A/ST5/00319). R.W. gratefully acknowledges The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland for funding the award of a PhD scholarship.

Whether ‘employee ownership’ takes the form of worker cooperatives, co-ownership or simply employee share ownership plans, there are normally high expectations that a range of positive outcomes will result. Yet many empirically based studies tend to find a much more complex picture. An influential segment of that empirical literature has posited the need for a number of mutually reinforcing workforce management components to be in place alongside co-ownership. Drawing on detailed case research in two large and successful co-owned retailers in Spain and Britain this paper examines the role of these wider elements supporting employee ownership. We find that employee ownership can be linked to higher productivity and lower employee turnover, while at the same time being linked to higher absenteeism and mixed effects on attitudes. Expectations held by managers and employees are higher; these expectations are not always fully met. The role of managers was also found to be crucial.

Cholesteric liquid crystals with helicoidal molecular architecture are known for their ability to selectively reflect light with the wavelength that is determined by the periodicity of molecular orientations. Here we demonstrate that by using a cholesteric with oblique helicoidal(heliconical) structure, as opposed to the classic right-angle helicoid, one can vary the wavelength of selectively reflected light in a broad spectral range, from ultraviolet to visible and infrared (360-1520 nm for the same chemical composition) by simply adjusting the electric field applied parallel to the helicoidal axis. The effect exists in a wide temperature range (including the room temperatures) and thus can enable many applications that require dynamically controlled transmission and reflection of electromagnetic waves, from energy-saving smart windows to tunable organic lasers, reflective color display, and transparent see-through displays., Comment: 11 pages, 5figures

This paper examines the erosion of autonomy among R&D engineers in a global IT company and the ways in which they responded. Over a 14-year period, we examine the changing regime of control as knowledge workers in this firm are increasingly subjected to increased project and portfolio management interventions. Drawing on extended interviews, we consider the propensity of such knowledge workers to challenge, subvert or else acquiesce to these enhanced control mechanisms. The idea of the project, we argue, plays a critical role in affording meaning and security and informing their responses.

Despite the widely-recognized importance of innovation to organizational competitiveness and national economic well-being, and despite the extensive commentary on the topic, the managerial processes which contribute to innovativeness and the factors and processes inhibiting its achievement remain underexplicated. This article contributes to an understanding of the management of innovation by approaching the innovation problem from an analysis of the accounts, interpretations and theories of the actors closely engaged with the process. Focusing on a large telecommunications equipment manufacturer, this article reveals how managerial discourse may hold the key to understanding the nature of the barriers to effective innovation.

This paper investigates the reasons for and implications of the recent merger between three of the largest unions in the retail finance sector, creating UNIFI. Recent union mergers have been explained by environmental changes adversely affecting membership and finances. These prompt leaders to consider merger as an appropriate organizational solution. Mergers are successfully concluded when leaders are able to overcome internal resistance and develop acceptable outcomes. We examine whether these factors are sufficient to explain how the merger between the national banking union and two large company-based staff unions was concluded, given longstanding institutional rivalry.

Here the authors take a critical look at the now popular concept of the ‘learning organisation’. In particular, they draw upon new research which helps to clarify some of the fine detail of current organisational practices with regard to skill formation. It is found that there are in fact some features of contemporary organisational practices which do accord with the concept but that, in the main, the abstract and aspirational character of the concept renders it a poor guide to understanding the dilemmas and activities of real organisations, and that on balance, the concept is more of a hindrance than a help.

This article reports on the first phase of an MIT-sponsored study of changing employment practices in banking. It gives an overview of the key issues and dynamics affecting employment management in this rapidly-changing sector. an analytical framework (based on the five dimensions of market characteristics, products and services, delivery systems, industrial relations and human resource management) is used in order to gauge the nature and extent of change.

John Storey and Nick Bacon discuss trade union reactions to HRM initiatives with John Edmonds and Phil Wyatt. John Storey and Nick Bacon are respectively Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Research Fellow at Loughborough University Business School. John Edmonds is General Secretary and Phil Wyatt Research Director of the General, Municipal and Boilermakers’ Union.

Book reviewed in this article: Business Transfers and Employee Rights John McMullen Butterworths Harmonization and Hazard: Regulating Workplace Health and Safety in the European Community Robert Baldwin and Terence Daintith (Eds.) EC Social Policy and 1992: Laws, Cases and Materials Union of Parts: Labor Politics in Postwar Germany Kathleen A. Thelen The Power to Manage? Employers and Industrial Relations in Comparative Historical Context S. Tolliday and J. Zeitlin (Eds.) Trouble on Board: The Plight of International Seafarers Paul K. Chapman (Introduction by Clifford B. Donn) Markets, Firms and the Management of Labour in Modern Britain. Howard Gospel Hard Cheese: A Study of Hotel and Catering Employment in Scotland Ian R. Macaulay and Roy C. Wood Working Miracles: Experiences of Jobs and Childcare Usha Brown and Louise Tait Scottish

Suitable o-bromo-N-methylanilides are efficiently converted into oxindoles by treatment with tributylstannane at 160 °C tanden translocation of the initially formed aryl radical and intramolecular homolytic substitution.

John Storey, the Guest Editor of this special issue, is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Human Resource and Change Management Research Unit at Loughborough University. In this introductory article he reviews the wide span of issues raised by the idea of ‘Making European Managers’ and he places the contributing articles in context. This scene-setting piece organises the literature into two main blocks: first, the analyses of the competencies required by those who manage transnationally, and second, the analyses of the contrasting ways in which managers are made in the different European countries.

Two topics that have become near obsessions in the personnel field are management development and the ‘Japanese model’. Current debates on the former have been reviewed elsewhere, while there are numerous surveys of the latter. Some studies have also set the Japanese system of training and development alongside that of Britain and other countries. What has been lacking is a directly comparative study looking at the experience of managers in the two countries. Such a study needs to address two of the key limitations in the extant literature. First, there has been a failure to take account of context: innovations in management development have been described with little consideration of how far their operation depends on the context of the organisation in which they are introduced. Second, there is evidently great variation between organisations, but the pattern of this variation, still less the reasons for it, has been largely neglected.

This critical review aims at presenting recent developments in intramolecular aromatic homolytic substitution which has become one of the common methodologies in modern synthesis. The application of Bu3SnH-mediated cyclisations have proved especially useful. The critical review illustrates the mechanistic considerations required for planning synthetic applications and a wide range of synthetic protocols and natural product syntheses are shown. The latest evidence for the mechanisms involved in aromatic homolytic substitution are presented. (152 references).

The extensive range of far-reaching managerial initiatives which are constantly reported might seem to signal a transformation to a totally new order of human resource management. This article examines some entrenched structural features of the British context which can help explain the limits to this pattern of change.

New polymer-supported imidazolium salts have been synthesised, and their utility as pre-catalysts in the benzoin reaction has been demonstrated.

Amongst the growing literature on the technical and social aspects of microelectronics in work organizations, a considerable portion has direct or indirect pertinence to the question of managerial practice. That segment of the literature relating to new office technology is perhaps especially conscious of this angle — not least because this sphere of innovation has a clear bearing on the managerial role itself. Drawing both on theoretical issues extracted from this literature, and on empirical studies in three insurance companies, it is argued that while control is of crucial long-term importance in shaping the general direction of organizational change using new technology, there are sound sociological reasons why the path which is beaten out in that direction remains a far from straight one. Moreover, while differences in organizational practice between these organizations are found to exist, these appear to be associated only indirectly with the diverse levels of technological sophistication.

Despite their often overlapping subject areas, management science and social science reveal only occasional promise of a fruitful interlink. However, recent developments in the study of managerial control suggest that this problematic could well be used as a suitable bridge.