Because of the almost total absence of research on annual reports of university and technikon libraries in South Africa, very little is known about the everyday use of their reports outside their institutions.1 This article reports the findings of a survey aimed at obtaining more knowledge on the topic. Areas covered include the purpose of annual reports of university and technikon libraries, issues included in those annual reports, recipients of the reports, promotion and distribution of annual reports, availability of annual reports, and feedback. The findings presented a wealth of information previously not available or known and also draw attention to a number of issues that could lead to further research.

The many practical economic and political difficulties encountered in discretionary fiscal stabilisation policy highlight the potential benefits of allowing automatic fiscal stabilisers to operate over the cycle. This article investigates the relevance of tax revenue as an automatic fiscal stabiliser in the South African economy by an empirical analysis of its role and impact since the 1970s. The study finds that cyclical changes in tax revenue are relatively small and provide no significant evidence of automatic stabilisation; however, the potential of this tool as an effective automatic fiscal stabiliser in South Africa cannot be overlooked as results show a high correlation between the output gap and automatic stabiliser estimates. Automatic fiscal stabilisers were employed symmetrically over the cycle and results showed that automatic fiscal stabilisers became increasingly important towards the end of the sample period.

Project portfolio management could be regarded as one of the most comprehensive ways of managing a software project environment. To implement such a management approach in a large organisation, could also be seen as an endeavour that can only have a chance of success if all role players understand the pitfalls involved and how to deal with each. In this paper, a structured approach is proposed to identifying and addressing pitfalls that may potentially hinder the successful implementation of project portfolio management as a strategic initiative in an organisation. Furthermore, the paper presents an approach to combine checklists and pitfall management theories to identify those pitfalls that may realise during the implementation of project portfolio management.

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Organisations deploy information systems (IS) with the exclusive intention to pursue their business objectives. Executive managers assign ownership of IS to business leaders, expecting them to leverage the IS towards achieving the objectives of the business areas. Many business leaders are reluctant to take ownership of the IS in their business areas, placing the organisation at risk that IS may not be optimally utilised and business areas not attaining their objectives. Little guidance exists to understand what 'taking ownership of IS' entails. In the research, a framework for understanding IS ownership was developed through a process of induction. The IS ownership framework discusses the different perspectives of the roleplayers with respect to defining IS ownership, the rationale for IS ownership, the criteria for having ownership and the rights, obligations and expectations associated with IS ownership.