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Earlier this year (RDM, March/April 1981), David Walters examined the 1970s in retailing. It was a strikingly hectic decade, with endemic inflation and the energy crisis of 1974 providing the backcloth for substantial changes in consumption patterns. Meanwhile the retail sector itself was racked by change. The move towards size — especially in food outlets and the emergence of the superstore and hypermarket — was consistent throughout the decade, whilst at the other end of the spectrum small grocers disappeared by the hundreds. Diversification was the watchword, with food multiples moving into non‐food areas and new sectors, such as DIY and home improvement, developing. In this sequel, David Walters looks forward to the 1980s and outlines future trends as he sees them. How will market structures change? What direction will consumer behaviour take in a period of mass unemployment? What will be the impact of technology? Part 2 of this feature follows in our next issue.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/eb014330. When citing the article, please cite: David Walters, (1974), “The Cost of a Stock-out”, International Journal of Physical Distribution, Vol. 5 Iss: 1, pp. 36 - 48.

In the second part of his prospective view of the 1980s in retailing, David Walters examines the questions of supply and sourcing, location policy, and consumer legislation. In what is undoubtedly going to be a difficult decade, the one certainty is that competition is going to be intense. As one retailer said to the writer: “Competition accelerates the competitive process; some companies do better faster and some do worse faster.”

The pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities is not always successful. On the one hand, entrepreneurial failure offers an invaluable opportunity for entrepreneurs to learn about their ventures and themselves. On the other hand, entrepreneurial failure is associated with substantial financial, psychological, and social costs. When entrepreneurs fail to learn from failure, the potential value of this experience is not fully utilized and these costs will have been incurred in vain. In this chapter, the authors investigate how the stigma of failure exacerbates the various costs of failure, thereby making learning from failure much more difficult. The authors combine an analysis of interviews of 20 entrepreneurs (who had, at the time of interview, experienced failure) with an examination of archival data reflecting the legal and cultural environment around their ventures. The authors find that stigma worsens the entrepreneurs’ experience of failure, hinders their transformation of failure experience, and eventually prevents them from utilizing the lessons learnt from failure in their future entrepreneurial activities. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for the entrepreneurship research and economic policies.

Two years ago David Walters carried out his well publicised “Delphi” study which attempted to establish cause and effect relationships between changes in retailing and developments in physical distribution (RDM, September/October 1973). This article, proceeding logically from the study, looks into the future development of physical distribution in terms of changes in the grocery retailing environment. For the High Street supermarket, more efficient forecasting and inventory control programmes are already available which should help offset the supermarket's lack of storage space and need to be serviced by small vehicles. Supermarkets in edge‐of‐town locations have fewer problems; storage space is generous and volume is such that orders can be delivered in unit loads on pallets or containers.

Outlines the aims, purposes and contents of the various reference guides to the manuscripts, poems and novels of Sir Walter Scott, to the dramatizations of the novels, to contemporary and subsequent reviews and critiques of his literary work, and to bibliographical studies.