Search results

Job design/work organisation change continues to be the subject of much debate amongst practitioners and academics. Whilst many case examples have been reported (see Birchall and Burbridge for two reviews), often insufficient detail is provided to permit the reader to fully assess the impact of changes upon all parties involved. Rarely, for example, is reference made to planned changes which were not included in a final change programme. Here, we report a case involving changes in work organisation on a continuous process plant. Given space limitations we intend to concentrate upon a consideration of the approach adopted for the action research project, planned changes, the impact of those changes adopted upon management and employees and reasons for non‐adoption of some planned changes. The observations made derive from the views of the researchers involved in the project and their discussion with both managers and workers. Information from two surveys of employee attitudes is also included; the first was used as the basis for planning change and the second was undertaken eleven months following initial changes.

This paper aims to examine short-distance firm relocations, the most frequent form of relocation, to better understand how employees as individuals experience those relocations.

This study was a multiple-case study with five organisations that had relocated within the same metropolitan area during the previous 18 months. To understand why and how the relocation was carried out, 15 semi-structured interviews were conducted with company representatives who were actively involved in making decisions and executing the relocation of their organisation. Subsequently, to study the employees’ experience and perception of the process, 17 employees who did not have an assigned role in the process were also interviewed.

The findings show that even within the same organization, people experience relocation differently; therefore, the employees should not be treated as one object of change but as several individuals who experience change. Further, it was identified that relocation included both location and workplace change aspects.

The study is of qualitative nature and, therefore, the findings should not be generalized to individuals outside of the context of study. Instead, the value lies in the description and the themes developed in the specific context. The findings show that emphasis needs to be put on how the relocation process is managed, and that relocation change management efforts should include both location and workplace changes.

This study provides new insight on how individual employees experience the relocation process and augments the previous body of knowledge on employee experiences and satisfaction with various elements in the work environment and/or with new ways of working, and the previous studies on relocation that focus on comparing employees’ experiences of the old office with the new one.

The purpose of this paper is to participate in the discussion related to why IS projects, both in Western and in Eastern European countries, e.g. Poland, often fail. One major reason is claimed to be poor implementation, and the article asks whether the stakeholders involved overlook the challenge of and the need for knowledge in change management (CM) when implementing complex IT systems.

The research is based on observations of what is reflected in the CM, the project management (PM) and the IS literature. A basic assumption for the approach is that what PM and IS textbooks focus on strongly influences the views and practice of practitioners. A content analysis method was applied to examine empirically 22 textbooks to evaluate whether the IT/PM literature emphasizes relevant essential recommendations developed in the CM literature for handling changes. A mini‐case was used to illustrate how implementation is done in practice.

The research reveals that in particular the PM authors give little priority to implementation and to essentials developed in the CM discipline. Further, the authors apply rather rational perspectives when discussing implementation. This implies focus on deterministic N‐stage models and overlooking vital organizational processes. The research also reveals that IS success depends to a large extent on how well the interfaces between the project development and the implementation processes are coordinated. The stakeholders often split the project development and implementation into two projects and postpone implementation until the development is completed. This may lead to coordination problems and to ineffective implementation.

The main limitation of this research is the assumption that what is written in the IT/PM books influences what the practitioners do. This may be an area for further research.

The authors of IS/PM textbooks and the practitioners should pay more attention to implementation. The textbooks may benefit from borrowing essentials from the CM literature. Further, the stakeholders should start the implementation processes early and ensure effective coordination between project development and the implementation processes.

The main value of the paper is related to the contribution to the discussion related to why IS projects, both in Western and in Eastern European countries, often fail.

Job design and work organisation are important current problems of industrial societies. It is argued that many jobs make low demands on the skills and abilities of employees, are monotonous and involve little obvious contribution to an identifiable task. This is seen as leading to low motivation to work. Attempts at increasing the ‘motivation potential’ of work are seen as means both of increasing employee satisfaction with work and leading to reduced absenteeism, labour turnover, increased output, improved quality and reduced waste. The literature contains many case descriptions of job design change based on assumptions of this type in which results of this nature are reported.

The aims of this paper are to investigate the barriers and the sources of resistance to change in hotel firms and to evaluate the change in strategies adopted in seeking to overcome these barriers. Primary data were gathered through in‐depth semi‐structured interviews in nine hotels in the UK. The findings indicate that the cost of change, financial difficulties and the pressure of other priorities are the main barriers to change in hotel firms. The findings also indicate that hotel companies use multiple change strategies in overcoming barriers to change. Finally, the limitations of the research are discussed and opportunities for further research are identified.

The history of Organizational Development (OD) reveals a much older tradition of organizational science than the conventional wisdom would suggest. By the 1960s and 1970s OD became self‐confident and dynamic. This period was not only highly experimental but established the principles of OD for much of the twentieth century. By the end of the twentieth century new images of OD had occurred and much of the earlier thinking had been transformed. This review illustrates some examples under a series of themes that have had a major impact on the discipline of OD and on the wider thinking of organizational theorists and researchers.

The monograph analyses (a) the potential impact of information technology (IT) on organisational issues that directly concern the personnel function; (b) the nature of personnel’s involvement in the decision making and activities surrounding the choice and implementation of advanced technologies, and (c) their own use of IT in developing and carrying out their own range of specialist activities. The monograph attempts to explain why personnel’s involvement is often late, peripheral and reactive. Finally, an analysis is made of whether personnel specialists – or the Human Resource Management function more generally – will play a more proactive role in relation to such technologies in the future.

The literature is reviewed on buffer stock allocation strategies in serial production lines. A number of experiments are conducted to analyse the behaviour of work‐in‐process inventory given that the objective is to maximise throughput. Both balanced and unbalanced lines are examined. The same analysis will be repeated for assembly type of production lines (merging lines). A key concept in this article is the “long pull” (or constant work‐in‐process inventory) Kanban system.

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of purposeful attempts to cope with stress by senior educational administrators in an Australian state education department of over 2,000 schools and employing teaching and administrative staff in excess of 60,000. At the time of the study this department was undergoing the initial stages of large‐scale restructuring, moving from a centralized system of management to a school‐centred, decentralized structure. This provided a unique opportunity to examine the ways in which senior executives respond in a time of discontinuous change. Presents general findings of a self‐report coping strategies questionnaire and reveals some significant relationships between general wellbeing, personality type and coping strategies.