Personnel Review

This paper argues that the concept of human resource management was created and has been developed in the United States of America. The relevance of that model in other parts of the world is open to exploration, conceptually and empirically. Looking at Europe, the paper examines successively the differences between the US and European HR management systems; the differences between regional groupings within Europe; and then the differences at national level. Finally, the article looks at some of the explanations for the differences identified and whether there are signs of convergence and outlines some of the implications for scholarship in the field.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report a study investigating the predictors of acceptance of multisource feedback (MSF) by managers. Specifically, it investigates the extent to which locus of control, cynicism and perceptions of procedural justice predicted acceptance by feedback recipients. Design/methodology/approach Quantitative data were analysed from 520 questionnaires completed by managers who participated in a multisource feedback programme as part of a leadership development process. Findings The study findings reveal that managers' perception of procedural justice was most significant in explaining variance in acceptance of MSF. Cynicism also explained significant variance in acceptance. Practical implications The findings highlight the importance of attending to procedural justice issues when implementing MSF. They also highlight the need to assess cynicism levels in the organisation. Originality/value The study combines variables not included in previous studies.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the most important dimensions and antecedents of the employee's commitment to the firm using a multidisciplinary perspective. Design/methodology/approach Using a national sample of 285 employees working in different firms, the research reported here portrays the paths which link the economic and relational antecedents of commitment with the dimensions of organizational commitment. A structural equations analysis is performed. Findings It was found that the most effective way to get normative commitment and thus make the employee continue working in the same firm is to engender affective commitment. And affective commitment is determined mainly by interaction between the firm and its employees (participation, flexibility and information exchange). Employee gender, level of studies, offspring and firm size and belonging to a group show a moderating effect on the global model. Research limitations/implications Information has only been collected from the employee and only in Spain. Hence, it would be interesting to collect information from the firm, supervisors and managers and to replicate the study in other cultural and labour contexts. Practical implications This research shows the most important ways for an organisation to get their employees' commitment. In this sense, relational norms are essential to retain employees in the firm. Originality/value A multidisciplinary perspective is adopted to improve the understanding of employee‐firm relationships. It is one of the few studies that include relational norms and opportunism to explain organisational commitment. Besides, the paper offers an exploratory study of the moderating effects of firm and employee characteristics on the global model.

Purpose The aim of this paper is to examine the significance and the implications of efforts to institute workforce modernization within the police service in England and Wales. Design/methodology/approach The approach taken uses an analysis of the modernization proposals advanced by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary as its starting point. Findings The development of workforce modernization in the police service would appear to have eroded the hitherto “reform‐resistant” nature of policing, however political factors continue to impede reform. Research limitations/implications Although more evidence concerning the scale and the outcomes of the reform process would be desirable, the main implication of this paper is that workforce modernization in the police is viable, but constrained by political factors. Originality/value Empirically, the paper focuses on developments in a sector – the police service – that has been neglected by the existing literature on workforce modernization; theoretically, it demonstrates the important influence often exercised by political contingencies over public sector workforce reform.

Despite a promising outlook in the 1970s, it has been claimed that human resource costing and accounting have progressed at something less than snail’s pace over the past two decades. This is largely due to difficulties in the application of the concept. In this article several extant studies regarding the application of HRCA are classified and exemplified. The idea is to increase our knowledge of how implementation of the concept could be achieved from a management control perspective. Most managers in the majority of studies hold very positive attitudes towards HRCA, but the integration of HRCA in the management control process has never been really attained. In seven Swedish case studies, the inhibiting factors in the implementation process of HRCA are compared. The lesson is that training, information, reward, target setting and cultural systems have to be worked actively to overcome inhibiting factors when trying to implement HRCA. Efforts should focus on: (1) knowledge of human resource costs, values and outcomes as well as how to calculate these; (2) top management demand as well as other elements in the reward system; (3) HRCA target setting; and (4) openness for change.

Most of us have read and thought about job enlargement, job enrichment, job design and restructuring. Much has been said and written on these subjects, and perhaps we may now be forgiven if we are somewhat confused by the differences in methodology, terminology, perspectives, etc presented by authors in this area.

What is likely to happen to management development in the seventies? I believe that it will become closely linked with a newly evolving branch of management— development management. Development management is concerned with building new forms of organisation that will enable the enterprise to cope effectively with change. This contrasts with operations management, which is concerned with the efficient use of existing resources to make the goods and services currently required, and with the rapid restoration of a steady state whenever a breakdown occurs. In some enterprises, it is possible to relate the two aspects of management very closely in day-to-day working. In others, the two need to be sharply separated if they are to be mutually effective. In either case, the co-ordination of operations and development is a vital function of general management. With the growth of development management, general management will need more careful study, as its tasks will become more complex and demanding.

Using data from the Price Waterhouse Cranfield Project, investigates a number of key aspects of industrial relations at organization level as a means of evaluating the nature of change in industrial relations. Examines levels of trade union membership in organizations across Europe; the extent and nature of trade union recognition; perceived changes in trade influence in organizations; the locus of policy determination in industrial relations and the nature of management-employee comunications. Considers the aggregate evidence with respect to differentiation and convergence in European industrial relations.

This article has no abstract

A previous article compared the OPQ and 16PF in terms of content. It commented also on the dearth of papers on the use of personality questionnaires in selection, guidance and development. This article considers (i) the general issue of the use of personality questionnaires as a source of learning in management education and training, and (ii) more specifically, the comparative acceptability to testees of the OPQ and 16PF within this context. The general issue is considered in relation to: (a) the role of personality in effective managerial performance, and (b) current trends in management education and training. Data on the comparative acceptability of the OPQ and 16PF extend that on comparative content given in the first article. While the data were collected in an education/training context, they may be indicative of relative acceptability in other occupational applications.

This article seeks to assess the likely impact on British managers of the 1975 UK legislation prohibiting sex discrimination, drawing on experience from the United States. It will consider the development of the US law and the effect this has had upon practice in the traditional personnel function. It will review portions of the British Statute and British case law dealing with discrimination in employment. In an attempt to assess the impact upon British practice it will explore the relationship between the UK and the US legislation and evaluate the strengths and weakness of each in its context.

This report deals with the experiences of a group of men and women who attended one of a series of seven courses at the University of Manchester in the period October 1972 to March 1975. It brings an earlier report published in Personnel Review of July 1975 up to date. The students included in this survey number eighty-nine out of a possible 130 former students who were sampled. This report cannot be compared directly with the earlier report which stated the position up to November 1974, because both questionnaires were returned anonymously. It must be borne in mind that those returning an answer to our survey may not be typical of the total group of redundant executives as a whole. In this survey members of the two most recent courses replied in a ratio of 2:1 when compared with the course immediately before, and there is a possibility that older students and those who held higher grade employment were more likely to respond. It is also possible that those who are now in employment were more ready to reply. With this caution in mind, it is felt that the information contained in this report is of interest to those concerned with the problems of career change in middle life, particularly when the response rate for our sample was 68%. It is not yet possible to report on the state of the job market during the present recession with more general unemployment and this will be the subject of a subsequent report.

Developments in personnel recruitment and selection “technology” have been both varied and extensive in the 1980s, and a number of overlapping and simultaneous developments are immediately apparent. Here, “technology” refers to methods, strategies, techniques, theories and practices of staff resourcing.

Explores three themes: quality in EAPs; the regulation of the EAP profession; and integration between the EAP and the organization. Sounds a note of qualified optimism for the future.

The importance to the personnel profession of the management of working women is discussed with reference to the position of women at work in Britain today, how gender inequalities arose, and how the position needs to change through this decade. The issue of child care is addressed, and women’s stress, coping and health reviewed. Women’s economic value as producers and consumers is cast in a European-wide framework. An analysis of the effects of their historic position on Britain’s working women today is made with particular reference to the powerful influence of Victorian domestic ideology. A personnel management policy that accommodates women’s needs and capacity for exercising choice is advocated, as a potential mutual benefit to the woman and her employer.

This article has no abstract

The Manpower Consultative Group for the Hotel and Catering Industry has for the last 18 months shown a serious concern for the critical manpower situation faced by that industry. The Group's Chairman, in a recent statement entitled ‘Manpower weaknesses hamper industry's efficiency and restrict its growth’ drew attention to the achievements of the Group and to a number of important studies due to be reported this year:

Over recent years there has been a growth in the number of British organisations using assessment centres for purposes of selecting staff and providing developmental feedback to employees. This article analyses the importance attached to the ratings of particular managerial characteristics and their inter-relationships using data from an assessment centre operated for existing staff by a financial institution. The implications of the findings for the processes of assessor decision making and the provision of meaningful developmental feedback are then examined.

Purpose: we explore potential benefits and possible pitfalls of the removal of the default retirement age. Design/methodology/approach: a human capital and labour market perspective provide theoretical lenses for exploring the potential implications for individuals, organizations and societies. We employed financial costing analysis to demonstrate Findings: we use the UK case to illustrate anticipated managerial and societal outcomes. The main finding from our discussion and the financial analysis is that indeed the current system in unsustainable. Originality/value: we offer areas where lessons about age management can be learnt from other experiences of flexible retirement strategies such as enhancing older workers’ human capital The idea is of global nature and relevance and forms a ‘wake-up call’ for decision makers at national level.

Management texts abound on how to develop effective techniques to manage absence, but what actually happens in practice? Aims to shed light on how organisations try to cope with the "problem". Examines the practices of seven companies from three sectors (financial services, retail, and manufacturing) and has drawn upon the views and opinions of personnel practitioners, line managers, occupational health advisers as well as employees themselves. Focuses on how organisations are addressing the issue of absence and the organisational factors which make up the day-to-day policing of absence levels. Three themes are relevant to the context of this study. First, when is absence perceived to be a problems? Second, how do companies manage absence and do line managers view the management of absence as being within the remit of their responsibilities? Finally, the issue of negotiated discipline is considered. How are rules applied in practice?

In carrying out its statutory advisory duties, the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) makes a broad operational distinction between the “advisory visits” and “in-depth” work undertaken by advisers. Typically, an advisory visit may entail a day's work and consist of helping a small company to improve its procedures or particulars of employment. By contrast, the average number of man-days required for a piece of in-depth work (which might consist of helping with the reform of a payment system) total approximately twelve.

Over the last decade, writings on the personnel profession have been pervaded by a sense of exclusion from the major management decisions. For example, Hunt and Lees report that human assets are rarely considered in decisions on company acquisition policy and that personnel managers are only involved in relatively peripheral aspects, such as the transfer of pension rights. Daniel found that personnel managers are normally excluded from decisions on re-organisation which follow the introduction of new technology, although they are sometimes involved in other forms of organisational change. In fact even this latter involvement may be of a fairly passive character in view of Evans and Cowling's finding that personnel managers do not usually take an executive role in company re-organisation.

Analyses the effects of age on the level of job satisfaction of accountants in Singapore. Four categories of accountants namely, government auditors, internal auditors, non-auditor accountants, and external auditors were identified according to the nature of work performed by each, i.e. job-type. Results of a three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) show that both age and job type, taken individually, have a direct significant effect on job satisfaction. In addition, there is also an interaction effect between age and job-type on job satisfaction. In general, older accountants are more satisfied with their jobs than their younger counterparts. However their satisfaction increases at varying rates depending on their job types.

Since the time of Adam Smith, economists have grappled with the concept of human capital whilst more recently attempts have been made to assess the rate of return made on the investment in education and training. In the last few years considerable interest has been aroused by attempts to include people in the assets of a company, applying to them accounting conventions and assigning some value to the organization's employees. In the United States, William Pyle and his associates at the University of Michigan, backed by a growing Human Resource Accounting Association, have pioneered a particular method. The publication of the joint working party of the ACMA and IPM favoured a different approach. It is the intention of this paper to review the two approaches, highlighting their similarities and differences and to examine the criticisms that have been levelled against both. Finally, a possible solution will be suggested to the identified shortcomings.

Purpose To apply and develop Stephen Barley's model of career structuration to offer insights into the transition into portfolio working. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study methodology is used. Interviews were conducted with managers who had left the National Health Service to develop portfolio careers. Findings The adoption of the Barley model of career structuration as a sensitising device has made it possible to show how individuals have drawn from existing scripts embedded in institutional forms but have also contributed to developing new career scripts, such as portfolio working. Their enactment of career scripts is a dynamic process whereby they impact back on those scripts in both intentional and unintentional ways. Thus the transformative capacity of individual career actions is asserted but, critically, alongside awareness of constraints as bound up in structures which have salience for individuals and for collectives. Research limitations/implications This is a study based in one large public sector organisation. Further exploration of the potential role of career as a way of understanding socially embedded action and its capacity for change is required, which takes account of different occupational settings. Practical implications The study outlines some of the frustrations experienced by portfolio workers and has practical implications for the ways in which they should be managed. Originality/value The paper contributes to the debate concerning structure and agency in career theory.

Since the evolution of theories of organisation in relation to environment the issue of environmental turbulence has come to dominate the literature of management. The strategists in organisations have become the repositories of this turbulence. A policy statement is defined as a statement which absorbs uncertainty, that is, states which are regarded as having a probabilistic formulation may be regarded via an interpretive policy statement as having quasi-certainty. This protective function of policy permits parts of an organisation to operate in a regular, technically efficient fashion. In this sense all organisation boundaries are policy statements. Within the confines of ordered, stable or quasi-stable states the disciplines of accounting and operations research may flourish. The accountants in organisations have become the repositories of this order. Accounting is a language of order, an instrument of control which is ordered, narrowly rational and reflects in the organisation that which is similar to the super-ego. Environmental turbulence threatens chaos and chaos is the antithesis of order. The tension which is experienced in many organisations is exactly the tension between chaos and order, between the threat of being overcome and the need to maintain organisation boundaries. This tension exists in individuals and persons become established in roles which are psychologically comfortable for them (i.e. the accountant is an accountant because he is comfortable with high levels of order and stability). This paper will argue that the use of accountants and accounting as the repository of the problem of order is not accidental and that it is caused by the splitting and projection of parts of whole problems of organisation into variously attuned receptacles. Further, any attempt by accountants to break away from the role of repositories of order will be resisted by other organisational participants mainly because the anxiety associated with a contingent ‘free for all’ is unacceptable.

There is no doubt that personnel management and accounting have traditionally been viewed as separate functional areas of management with only slender and rather tenuous connections. The concerns of the personnel manager have been seen as related to crucial, but limited, aspects of the behaviour and management of people at work, whilst the accountant's role in the provision of financial information has been seen as an impersonal concern, abstracting from rather than enriching the human environment of an enterprise. Moreover, even where the two functions are clearly interrelated, the relationship has all too often been seen in terms of differing orientations and conflicts, rather than a co-operative concern with the interests of the enterprise as a whole, as is often and so clearly demonstrated by their joint involvement in the setting of performance standards and the subsequent reaction to the reporting of actual results.

Hessling defines training as “a sequence of experiences or opportunities designed to modify behaviour in order to attain a stated objective”. The operative word in this definition is “designed”. As Hamlyn points out, people can learn to modify their behaviour as a result of all kinds of experience, but when they are being trained they are being put through an experience or given an opportunity which has been deliberately designed to make them learn.

Human resource management (HRM), in contrast to “personnel management” and “personnel administration”, is often held to be proactive rather than reactive, strategic rather than tactical, and integrated with corporate strategy rather than marginal or peripheral. Argues that it is important to distinguish several dimensions of “integration” -internal, external and institutional – and that the strategic integration of human resource development (HRD) is achievable through the adoption of career-focused, competence-based models. However, existing competence frameworks are criticized for their generic character, their retrospective orientation, their abstract nature and their focus on the individual job rather than the career stream or wider organizational role. Prospective, organization-specific, anchored, collaborative and career-focused models seem more promising vehicles for achieving not only “internal integration” – the consistent, coherent application of a range of HR policy levers – but also “external integration”, the integration of HR strategies with corporate strategies. Explores such a framework in relation to two empirical studies of competence-based approaches to managerial assessment and development, one a management development programme in the National & Provincial Building Society, the other a senior management development workshop in Oxford Regional Health Authority.

In the considerable literature on the use of information systems in organisations there are occasional discussions of issues broadly relevant to the area of job redesign. Hedberg, for example, has pointed to the potential of such systems for facilitating organisational change, advocating what he termed ‘participative management information systems’. Attention has also been paid to the influence that computers and information systems have on different forms of employee participation (see for example Mumford and Sackman). But very few writers have specifically considered the impact of information systems on attempts at redesigning people's jobs. Of the few acknowledging the centrality of these systems, Wilkinson has stated that ‘a careful analysis and some redesign of the information systems … seems to be one of the most important aspects of redesigning jobs’, and Birchall in his statement that ‘information systems must make available all the data required for execution of decision-making duties’, has intimated why this may be necessary. More recently Sime and Fitter have discussed the information needs of those responsible for making decisions, commenting that these needs are likely to change if decision-making is devolved by job redesign exercises.

This paper is concerned with two questions: 1 What are the kinds of skills and other qualities in managers that contribute to managerial success and performance in various forms? 2 To what extent are these acquired by learning, and what are the sources of such learning? The aim is to propose and test a general framework or taxonomy describing what managers might need to learn, and to understand from where existing managers have acquired the skills and qualities they currently use. This further allows us to draw some conclusions about the part played by deliberate training and education activities, in comparison with ‘natural’ ones, in the development of managers. The paper considers and reports in turn on existing theories and research relevant to managerial qualities, a hypothetical model of such qualities, an empirical test of the models, and the results of a study of the sources involved in the acquisition of specific qualities contributing to successful management actions in a sample of managers.

The present account results from twelve months of the authors' involvement with a probation service undergoing change. The change was initiated by an external body to the service and was based upon an apparently plausible rationale. Nevertheless considerable difficulties arose in the implementation of the change and these have provided some specific insights into the functioning of the organisation, and the values, attitudes and beliefs of some of its key decision-makers. The data have also formed the basis of an action research programme (which is currently underway) and have generated substantive material from which to draw conclusions concerning the salient factors affecting the change. We believe that these conclusions, which form the core of this article, have particular implications for the management of change in professional settings, such as research and development, schools and further education establishments. These settings, like a probation service, are characteristically client centred, where the professionals ‘… are trained on the outside, usually at the public expense, and a large number of rules are inculcated into them. They bring these into the organization and are expected to act upon them without further reference to their skills’. Furthermore we consider that the essence of our findings has important implications for any organisation where internal or external change agents are attempting to bring about change.

Entering a work organisation is a time of uncertainty both for the newcomers and for the organisations they join. For new graduates, uncertainty surrounds their own skills and attitudes, their future work and colleagues, and organisational practices. This uncertainty is particularly marked for the many graduates who have never worked full-time. For the organisation, sources of uncertainty include the graduates' competence, motivation and ability to “fit in” with their work colleagues.

What accounts for the different experiences of success, failure, well-being and personal change of graduates adjusting to their first career jobs in organisations? Do the causes lie in themselves, their circumstances or how they are managed? This article and its successor[1] look for answers to these and similar questions by telling the story of the experiences of an elite group of recent graduates settling into their new lives as employees of what is widely regarded as one of Britain's “top” companies: British Petroleum. The study was part of a continuing collaborative research relationship between the company and the Sheffield University Social and Applied Psychology Unit (SAPU). The focal point of the relationship was SAPU's independent one–year longitudinal study of new and recent graduate entrants in four head office departments. The primary outcomes of the research were detailed descriptive reports containing recommendations to the company about how to improve its management of the transition at all its stages. Some of these have been summarised elsewhere[2].

In this two-part article, we hope to communicate our enthusiasm for a simple proposition: that some areas of training activity can be better understood and more effectively carried out when consciously viewed from a marketing perspective.

With the publication in January 1977 of the Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy has come a recognition that the rights of employees are almost equal to the rights of shareholders and management. Industrial democracy is seen to represent an extension of modern political democracy to industrial companies. In society, political enfranchisement no longer takes account of the ownership of capital or land; nor requires an education or qualifying period. Democracy has come to mean ‘one adult, one vote’. While the Bullock Report is not recommending that degree of industrial democracy in companies, it is theoretically allowing employees an important influence on decision-making at the policy level, with a subsequent loss of influence to the shareholders and relevant property owners. The majority of the Bullock Committee believe that the native capacities of the working population can be drawn out by putting the relationship between capital and labour on a new basis which will involve not just management but the whole work force in sharing responsibility for the success and profitability of the enterprise. This they believe can only be done if the representatives of the employees are given a real, not a sham or token share, in making strategic decisions which in the past have been reserved to management and the representatives of the shareholders. The debate about industrial democracy is much less about the desirability of moving in the direction of greater participation than about the pace of change and the need to extend such participation to the Board.

Purpose - This paper attempts to investigate the transformation in the role of the HR function in Greek firms, as a result of the use of internet and technology. Design/methodology/approach - The paper is based on both quantitative and qualitative methodology. A survey and focus groups took place in order to meet research objectives. Findings - This paper examines and discusses the development of e-HR use in Greece and the reasons for adoption of e-HR practices focusing on strategy, process and HRM issues. Findings show that e-HR facilitates the transformation of HRM role into a more strategic one. Driving forces and critical success factors of e-HR adoption and implementation are identified and discussed. Research limitations/implications - Limits its usefulness to countries that experience a stage of HRM professionalisation and technological development similar to that of Greece. Practical implications - Identifies critical success factors in e-HR adoption as well as main problems associated with it. Originality/value - Qualitative results provided by the focus groups give an illustrative picture of the companies presented.

Significant progress has been made linking innovative human resource (HR) practices such as systems of high performance work practices (HPWPs) to organisational performance. However, evidence would suggest that the rate of adoption of these and other types of HRM innovations is minimal. It was determined that an area not commonly addressed in the literature is the role of the HR practitioner in the adoption process. An argument is presented concerning the pivotal role of the HR practitioner in the adoption process due to their ability to influence a number of contextual dimensions. Research was undertaken to establish the link between the innovativeness of a practitioner and their perceptions regarding the relative importance of individual and contextual factors in the adoption process. Four dimensions, organisational leadership, HR group role, HR group climate and networking skills were identified as being the possible differentiating factors in the successful adoption of HPWPs.

It has recently been argued that the use of external consultants is indicative of a crisis in personnel management. However, the use of consultants, of whatever type, has not been adequately explained for a number of reasons. The reasons underlying the increasing usage of external consultants by personnel is a form of defence, allowing it to shed some activities thereby strengthening its position within the organisation. To illustrate this argument the reasons for the growth in the use of a particular type of consultant by personnel – executive recruitment consultancies – are considered. The results reported draw on two major surveys. The first was directed at executive consultancies whereas the second was directed at corporate personnel directors in the Times 100 companies. Response rates of 42 per cent and 55 per cent were achieved.

Composed earlier this century, the distribution of men′s and women′s jobs in the 1980s demonstrates a concentration of women in low‐paid, low‐opportunity jobs despite women having longer working lives and being better educated. Barriers to women′s progress, both attitudinal and structural are examined, with examples from banking and other industries. The role of legislation in stimulating questioning of women′s under‐representation in management positions is acknowledged, and the reasons for starting positive action programmes are explored. An explanation is given of these programmes, which are similar to the American affirmative action programmes. How positive action can break down barriers is discussed in relation to the European banks studied. It is concluded that without positive action the position of women at work will deteriorate, but that employers will increasingly become involved in the programmes, as will unions and consultants.

The first paper in this series explored the effects of the tor-learner relationship on learners' feelings, learning and interest during management learning events.

Purpose – In the public sector, Training and Experience (T&E) exams assess prior experience and are one of the most often used methods for selecting job applicants. This study uses a KSA approach, where raters judge the quality of job relevant prior experience, not its duration or quantity. It was hypothesized that an additional rater and a consensus meeting between raters would increase reliability and validity. Design/methodology/approach – T&E and supervisory ratings were obtained over a 12-year period for 166 candidates seeking promotion to a budget analyst position. Validity was measured by the correlation between T&E scores and supervisory ratings. Consensus was required only for T&E scores differing by a specific amount (hybrid consensus). Findings – Intraclass reliability was 0.73, 0.84, and 0.95 in the one-rater, two-rater, and hybrid consensus conditions with each coefficient greater than the next (p<0.05) showing the benefit of multiple raters and consensus for reliability. Validity was significant at 0.21, 0.26, and 0.251 for each rating condition, respectively (two-tail test; p<0.01). Validity was greater in the two-rater condition than in the one-rater condition (one-tail test; p<0.05). Consensus did not improve validity beyond that of two raters. For consensus T&Es (n=76), two raters improved validity (one-tail test; p<0.05), moving from 0.112 to 0.231 but not reliability; consensus improved reliability (two-tail test; p<0.05) but not validity. Originality/value – There has been a vacuum in T&E research for close to 20 years. Validity data are difficult to obtain but critical for meta-analysis. T&Es showed validity. Use of two raters improved validity but consensus did not increase the gain.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of organizational size and individual tenure on the relationship between organizational justice and organizational affective commitment. Based on the literature on organizational justice and justice climate, this paper tests whether the role of justice climate, measured at the organizational level, is affected by these organizational and individual characteristics in determining individual organizational affective commitment. Design/methodology/approach – Data on 20,936 employees from 1,496 companies that were included in the 2004 Workplace Employment Relationships Survey were used. Findings – Hierarchical linear modeling analysis shows that the importance of the justice climate extends beyond its effect on individual perceptions. Moreover, whereas the organization size does not influence the justice climate – affective commitment relationship, organizational tenure moderates it. Originality/value – This study shows the impact of justice climate on affective commitment beyond the effect of individual justice. It also examines organizational (organization size) and individual characteristics (tenure) as possible moderators, constructs rarely considered in studies on justice climate.

In recent years, the problems of men as they pass through the period of ‘middle age’ have gained prominence in both the behavioural science literature and the general press. This article seeks to outline the nature of the ‘mid life crisis’, to examine some of its major symptoms in managerial behaviour and to explore the implications it has for management development.

Purpose – As a backdrop to the empirical contributions contained within this special section, this Guest Editorial aims to review the context of construction employment. It summarises the challenges inherent in construction work which have impeded the development of human resource management within the sector and discusses the mutually supporting contributions of the papers in furthering our understanding of how to improve the performance of the industry. Design/methodology/approach – The operational context of the sector is reviewed briefly, before the efficacy of the industry's employment practices are examined through a review of the contributions contained within the special section. Findings – The papers reveal the interplay of structural and cultural factors which have led to the skills shortages currently impeding the industry's development. There is a need for the sector to modernise and formalise its working and employment practices if performance and productivity improvements are to be achieved. Originality/value – By revealing the interconnected nature of the construction employment perspectives presented within this special section, this paper presents a case for adopting a fresh transdisciplinary research agenda for addressing the industry's employment concerns.

Argues that because of a number of significant changes in the last ten years, individual issues such as grievance and discipline should now become more prominent concerns of industrial relations research. Some important differences which distinguish discipline and grievance are identified, and a conceptual model of the potentially complex internal dynamics of discipline is given. This is used to highlight a number of important implications for the formulation of disciplinary policies, and for the training of those responsible for handling procedures. Finally, the model is used to develop a research agenda which identifies some of the more pressing topics on which information is required to help to unravel the complex nature of discipline.

Purpose This paper aims to map some of the diversity in employee relations in Germany that is overlooked, first, within assessments of the German labour market that focus on the national level and second, within separate studies in this area that emphasize attempts by employers to circumvent important institutions. Design/methodology/approach The research adopts a quantitative approach to examine data for German manufacturing and service sectors on both the spread of industry‐wide collective agreements and the extent to which workers are paid wage rates that are higher than those set out in those agreements. It also assesses the prevalence of profit sharing and employee share ownership schemes. Findings Industry‐wide collective agreements are not the burden that they are often portrayed. Actual wage rates and the prevalence of profit sharing and ESOSs make German workplaces more heterogeneous than critics and advocates of the German economic model posit. Research limitations/implications The data are limited to Germany; however, Germany occupies a prominent position, not just within much of the employment relations literature, but also in terms of economic output. The research is also limited by an inability to provide evidence on workplaces that undercut sectoral collective agreements and to disaggregate the data further by sector and firm size/location. Originality/value The paper provides a counterpoint to the portrayals of employee relations in Germany that often present a homogeneous picture of those relations. For the first time, data on the spread of profit sharing and employee share ownership schemes in German workplaces at the sectoral level are provided.

The influence of the Experiential Learning Model, and of the Learning Style Inventory, on aspects of management education and development have been substantial. But they have potentially much wider application, particularly in examining managerial decision behaviour and in the analysis of the effectiveness of groups and teams.

The purpose of this article is to consider the main issues for managers in dealing with problem drinking. It reviews legal and medical criteria, and society’s ambivalent attitude towards alcohol. The importance of the work nexus in devising policies and approaching situations is explored. Based on a thorough review of tribunal cases – it looks at some of the errors management make in dealing with the issue as a discipline problem. The article considers current medical and legal opinion and the views of ACAS in treating alcohol abuse as an ill health issue, and expresses reservations about the danger of creating an “alcoholic elite”.

Alcohol abuse can be detected at an early stage in the work setting. Absence of appropriate training and of an alcohol policy often results in negative and collusionist attitudes from employers and colleagues until a crisis arises which necessitates dismissal. A properly implemented alcohol policy allows the employee to gain help at an early stage, is costeffective for the employer, and is very relevant to an employer's legal obligations in relation to fair dismissal. An alcohol policy must be clearly communicated and must apply to all employees regardless of status. The responsibility for the policy and its implementation needs to be established and there must be access to treatment agencies for those employees willing to accept help.