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Research findings from a major survey of British practice.

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.

Managers are a very large and growing occupational group of substantial economic and social significance. Indeed, by 1978, Lindley estimated that there were as many as 2,146,000 managers in Britain, corresponding to no less than 8.7 per cent of all employed persons. Despite this, there has been surprisingly little systematic research on managers as an occupational group. However, this has not precluded a substantial amount of comment and speculation about managers and their roles in modern industrial Britain, particularly in the popular media. In a large number of cases, the tone of the argument suggests that managers are being increasingly constrained in their activities and that their “prerogative to manage” has been substantially undermined.

In general from the early 1960s onwards there was a marked acceleration of interest in employee participation and industrial democracy. Although this was by no means novel in conception, it was occasioned in this particular period not just by changing balances of power but also by a major adaptation in the climate of values in British industry and society. This quickening of attention culminated in the establishment of a Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy, and although since that point there has been a period of retrenchment and a decline in overt enthusiasm for schemes of this type, this in no way invalidates the importance of the wide range of experiments which were instigated in the 1960s and 1970s nor suggests that political enthusiasm in this direction will not re‐emerge with renewed vigour in the later part of this century.

Profit‐sharing and employee share ownership schemes have attracted great interest in the 1980s. The findings of the first phase of a Department of Employment study which involved a large‐scale investigation of British companies is reported. Details on the operation, coverage and type of scheme which had been adopted were gathered for 822 firms and extended interviews were conducted with a further 303 firms. A highly varied rate of adoption of schemes in different industrial sectors and with diverse economic and industrial relations experiences is revealed. If further advances in profit‐sharing and share ownership are considered to be worthwhile, policy initiatives should be centred on the medium and smaller companies in Britain. Considerable efforts outside the financial sector are necessary to effect any marked acceleration of profit‐sharing and share ownership. If future developments are envisaged senior management of the main types of enterprise are a vital target group. Foreign‐based companies should also be encouraged to embark on profit‐sharing or share ownership. If the advancement of more specific Inland Revenue APS schemes is to become general policy, information and advice for companies outside the financial sector is needed.

Managers today are a very large and growing occupational group. Indeed in the most recent census for which results are available (1971) there were nearly 1.7 million managers constituting nearly 7 per cent of the economically active British population. At the same time there can be no doubting the strategic position of managers with regard to the success of individual enterprises and for the resuscitation of the British economy. Considering all this, it is surprising how little systematic research has been devoted to the study of managers.

Financial participation schemes have become much more prevalent in recent years. It is clear that many organisations view them as an important component in the search for competitive advantage. However, their distribution is far from universal and many firms have decided not to deploy them. For example, the third Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (WIRS 3) indicated that 57 percent of establishments possessed no profit‐sharing scheme and 66 percent possesses no share‐ownership scheme. Moreover, it is clear that not only does the penetration of different schemes vary but so does the pattern of their distribution.

This paper involves an examination of public sector managers attitudes and reported behaviour, based on a longitudinal UK study, which broadly corresponds with the so‐called ‘Thatcher Years’. In Britain, the ‘Thatcherite critique’ of public enterprise has been fundamental in its consequences with ideological, economic and industrial relations components which are interrelated but which have had varying priorities attached to them at particular points in time. Above all, public ownership has been opposed because it has been seen to involve the government in economic functions which were considered properly to lie with individuals in the private sector. More specifically, too, public sector enterprises have been seen as inherently bureaucratic, as ‘crowding out’ enterprise, as being inefficient and costly and because of their monopolistic position (and consequent insulation from market and performance pressures) as being the seedbed of trade union power.

Change is the only certainty of the management function. Compares the managers of 1980 with those of 1990 from the viewpoint of gender, age, nature of employment, management salaries, managerial function and size of employer.

The central aims of this paper are to address: (1) whether or not approaches to human resource management in manufacturing industry in Britain differ from those obtaining in other branches of the economy; and (2) the current situation in manufacturing industry in Britain with respect to developments in human resource management.