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This paper aims to encourage human resource (HR) specialists to challenge leaders to take responsibility for areas of underperformance in their organizations rather blaming others or circumstances. It also aims to argue that, by learning from their experiences, leaders can become stronger and fitter.

The paper draws on the author's personal experience of leadership roles in multinational corporations and as a consultant working with small and medium‐size enterprises and corporate clients.

The paper concentrates on three areas for leaders to examine: how their strengths can become weaknesses; how they can miss seemingly obvious things; and how they handle people‐management issues.

The paper suggests actions for leaders and HR specialists to mitigate the impact of the areas reviewed, such as increasing self‐awareness, including linking any tools such as 360‐degree feedback to a leader's personal examples, building diverse networks of contacts and dealing with any people issues in a systematic way.

The paper combines observations from more than 25 years of experience in diverse organizations and roles.

The paper targets leaders and HR specialists with an interest in developing leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge HR specialists to consider the value of experience, seek out older workers and ensure that younger staff are developed to give them experience beyond their years.

Recognizes that organizations need to ensure they get value for money from their employees, and that older workers are often perceived as expensive, less flexible and lacking technology skills. Gives examples from companies such as McDonald's, and from the author's own experience, which counter these perceptions. Concludes with practical actions to enhance employee value for money.

Argues that leading organizations such as McDonald's have found tangible bottom‐line impact of employing older workers. Provides five key benefits of experience and suggests nine ways that HR managers could develop their staff so they get old ahead of their years.

The paper challenges HR managers to go beyond a compliance approach to ageism, recognize the potential of older workers and ensure that younger staff are developed in ways that enhance their experience. Contains information that will be increasingly relevant as the proportion of older people in the workforce rises.

The paper is of benefit to HR specialists and line managers seeking ideas on how to ensure their employees provide value for money.

The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how delving into the data that measures business performance generates a detailed understanding of the issues that provides a platform for improved business results and teamwork in parallel.

An initial event, focused on improving client satisfaction, highlighted issues that were limiting it, such as processes, which were not able to deliver in line with expectations, and different departmental priorities. A detailed review of key business processes was undertaken department by department. Two areas were used as a pilot to test the approach – which involved initial interviews with key staff, data collection and analysis, followed by feedback and brainstorming with staff to develop and prioritise actions.

The key outcomes of the project were that using the data to generate a more detailed understanding of problems within the business processes led to increased staff engagement, increased focus on improving performance and specific cost savings, as well as identifying further potential savings.

The case study shows how staff can be involved with developing solutions to performance issues such as poor process reliability, thereby increasing their engagement, making a positive contribution to client satisfaction and reducing costs. It would be of particular benefit to HR directors and managers seeking ideas on how to increase the engagement and team performance of their people.

Reviews the snags of typical teambuilding sessions and advocates an approach to engaging staff in practical projects that will build teamwork and deliver business results.

Describes the typical problems that organizations may be facing in tough economic times and the kind of actions that management might take to deal with these, and their associated impacts. Offers an alternative approach, with examples from the author's experiences both in manufacturing industry and as a management consultant working with a wide variety of clients.

Outlines and illustrates seven practical steps to get results: acknowledge the situation; do an initial diagnostic; create a powerful vision; set a clear timescale; organize focused sessions; ensure clear actions come out; review how it is going and adjust.

Provides plenty to interest HR directors and line managers with small budgets who are seeking ideas on how to improve teamwork.

Describes how a simple seven‐step process can be used to generate improved business results and improve teamwork in parallel.

The purpose of this case study is to look at how supporting teams to dig into the details of specific work improvement projects not only achieves business results, but also provides a strong foundation for good human resource (HR) practices, such as performance management and appraisal systems.

Following the initial agreement of overarching goals with the project sponsors, an interview‐based diagnostic survey was used to identify key problems and opportunities from the staff perspective. A subsequent data collection and analysis phase concentrated on the key areas highlighted by the diagnostic survey. Bi‐weekly reviews with key staff were used to guide further analysis and to develop focused improvement activities.

Data help to clarify objectives and ensure that team discussions are action‐oriented. The use of simple charts to identify data trends prompts questions and involvement from staff and focuses the collective effort on performance improvement. The data can then be used to monitor progress and provide fact‐based input to appraisals, increasing their relevance.

The case study illustrates how significant performance improvements of the order of 20 percent productivity increases may be achieved, in a way that also embeds good HR practices into the organization. It would be of particular benefit to HR directors and managers seeking ideas on how to increase the engagement of their people.

Examines the issues involved in providing relevant cross‐cultural training to MBA students, the epitome of the “new” international manager. In particular, it addresses the pedagogical challenges of moving students away from a reliance on “hard” skills to a facility with “soft” skills.

The bibliographic record is the link between the software packages discussed in this article: cataloguing and acquisitions. Cataloguing software ranges from sophisticated online public access catalogues to cheaper and simpler software designed to produce catalogue entries for an existing manual system (e.g. cards). The range of acquisitions software is equally wide encompassing packages which simply print an order from data which is keyed in to those which incorporate the whole process of acquisitions from the recommendation stage through to receipt and full fund accounting. This article, the fourth in the series, describes the different features with examples, and concludes with a discussion on the nature of integrated systems.

This chapter addresses growing concerns that, despite being a radically intentioned community, Critical Management Studies (CMS) lacks an orientation to achieve pragmatic change. In response I argue that the failure to address the continuing marginalisation of the subaltern is key to CMS being negatively represented as an elitist self-preoccupied endeavour. This state of affairs is linked to a legacy of the ‘postmodern’ turn, which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, as evidenced by the nature of contemporary debates continuing to reflect the stylistic fetishes of that time. I contend that the ghost of postmodernism is evident in the continuing predilection to produce signification discourses marked by symbolic absences, which politically confine such texts to the level of epistemology. The lack of integration of ontological concerns means that corporeal aspects of daily life are neglected, resulting in an abstracted ‘subjectless’ mode of representation. To address these limitations, a feminist activist version of post-structuralism (PSF) of the time is revisited, which through its distinctive attention to community concerns, enabled the linking of epistemological and ontological representations; thereby facilitating the creation of a framework for pragmatic change. As the chapter demonstrates, by drawing attention to the integral relationship between the modes of representation, power relations and subsequent social effects, poststructuralist feminists were able to achieve praxis outcomes. Accordingly, I argue this treasure house of ideas needs to be reclaimed and provides illustrations of the design principles proffered to support my contentions.