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There is an increasing realisation that managerial and professional staff play a crucial role in determining the success of the organisations which employ them, whether in the private or the public sector. Hence there is a growing concern with the quality and development of such staff. A detailed study of these important occupational groups, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC reference F/00/23/00 98) was recently conducted by the authors. Although focused on Britain, the research is linked with parallel studies being undertaken in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and several other European countries. The broader international study will be published within the next year as Roomkin, M. (Ed.), The Changing Character of Managerial Employment: A Comparative View Oxford, University Press, New York and Oxford. The demographic and educational trends which relate to managerial and professional employees, their careers and other aspects of the management of such human resources are discussed. The remuneration of managerial and professional staff, their unionisation and their role in the wider society are then considered.

We explore the role of workplace friendships as a lens for understanding the emotional element and relational context for personal engagement (Kahn, 1990). The review of engagement theory differentiates personal engagement, recognizing the role of emotions play in enabling individuals’ “preferred selves.” Workplace relationships and friendship provide a conceptual discussion of individuals in social and workplace roles in engagement, drawing on friendship, emotion, attachment theories, particularly Kahn’s work. A case study drawn from recent research illustrates our discussion before concluding with ideas for the development of a future research agenda in answer to recent calls for work on the social context of engagement.

The purpose of this article is to understand how academics in management deal with the concept of generation in the workplace. We begin by conducting an interdisciplinary literature analysis, thereby elaborating a conceptual framework concerning generational diversity. This framework consists of four levels of analysis (society, career, organisation and occupation) and three dimensions (age, cohort and event/period). We then conduct a meta-analysis using this conceptual framework to analyse papers from the management field. The results from this analysis reveal the existence of a diversity of generational approaches, which focus on the dimensions of age and cohort on a societal level. Four factors seem to explain these results: the recent de-synchronisation of generational dimensions and levels, the novelty of theoretical models, the amplification of stereotypes by mass media and the methodologies employed by researchers. In sum, this article contributes to a more realistic view of generational diversity in the workplace for both academics and practitioners.

Attention was called in the March number of this Journal to the promotion of a Bill for the reconstitution of the Local Government Board, and the opinion was expressed that the renovated Department should contain among its staff “experts of the first rank in all the branches of science from which the knowledge essential for efficient administration can be drawn.”

For many of the current leadership theories, models, and approaches, the answer to the question posed in the title, “Is leadership more than ‘I like my boss’?,” is “no,” as there appears to be a hierarchy of leadership concepts with Liking of the leader as the primary dimension or general factor foundation. There are then secondary dimensions or specific sub-factors of liking of Relationship Leadership and Task Leadership; and subsequently, tertiary dimensions or actual sub-sub-factors that comprise the numerous leadership views as well as their operationalizations (e.g., via surveys). There are, however, some leadership views that go beyond simply liking of the leader and liking of relationship leadership and task leadership. For these, which involve explicit levels of analysis formulations, often beyond the leader, or are multi-level in nature, the answer to the title question is “yes.” We clarify and discuss these various “no” and “yes” leadership views and implications of our work for future research and personnel and human resources management practice.

The aim of this chapter is to emphasize the importance of archival material and how, despite its secondary nature, it is capable of providing first-hand information for researchers. By providing a variety of examples from tourism, hospitality and leisure, this chapter demonstrates how this underused data can be a valuable resource for these areas of study. In order to illustrate how to use archival material as data, a step-by-step process to analyzing archival photographs is provided. The chapter discusses the challenges and ethical considerations associated with using archival material while also providing suggestions for the use of this data source in future studies.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the use of a qualitative approach using cognitive mapping techniques in the study of a decision‐making process. This study takes place in a public sector and in the context of a performance appraisal system (PAS). This is in line with recommendations by scholars and researchers to conduct a management research in a public service context (see Brown, 1999; Bissessar, 2000; Jabroun and Balakrishnan, 2000; O’Donnell and O’Brien, 2000; Redman, Snape and Thompson, 2000). This article also intends to elucidate and justify the methodological approach used, examine the assumptions underlying the use of a particular research design, and provide arguments for the preference of the methodology used. It is hoped that this will contribute to the understanding of the nature and validity of the research undertaken. This article begins by reviewing the theoretical issues of the research framework, the main features of the qualitative methodologies, and finally, the research method applied in this research is determined and justified.

Taking an international comparative approach, this chapter investigates the variance in the adoption of employee share ownership and stock option arrangements across countries. In particular, we investigate the influence of multinational enterprises (MNEs), industrial relations factors, HRM strategies, and market economies on the adoption and spread of the arrangements across countries. We find that industrial relations factors do not explain the variance in adoption by companies in their respective countries. MNEs and HRM strategies are important drivers of adoption. Market economy does not moderate the influence of MNEs on adoption, suggesting that MNEs universally apply the arrangements across borders.