Poor employee performance is one of the most pervasive problems in organisations, for which there are two major contributory factors. The first is the ‘deficiency problem’ �…
Abstract
Poor employee performance is one of the most pervasive problems in organisations, for which there are two major contributory factors. The first is the ‘deficiency problem’ — employees do not possess the necessary skills, abilities and attributes for the job. This can be alleviated by selection strategies and training programmes, and by designing jobs to fit the people available, their strengths, weaknesses and expectations. The second factor is the ‘motivation problem’. This is much more serious and, in part, is often associated with the joining‐up process. The latter embraces recruiting, hiring, formal training and first assignment to the point when the new employee is performing at a pre‐determined level.
Danielle A. Tucker and Stefano Cirella
In the context of organizational change, identifying, and organizing the various roles of change agents remains a challenge for practitioners and scholars alike. This chapter…
Abstract
In the context of organizational change, identifying, and organizing the various roles of change agents remains a challenge for practitioners and scholars alike. This chapter examines how different agents can enable an effective change process. Empirical evidence from three hospitals illustrates the process of transformation and its underlying arrangements to identify agents and their roles. The findings underline the importance of designing a coherent system of agents, determining where they come from, their role during the process, and how this may change throughout the change process. Managerial choices in the cases are discussed, leading to implications for theory and practice.
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Employment Relations was set up in 1977, funded by the Manpower Services Commission, to provide information, advice and support to practitioners and educators in human resource…
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Employment Relations was set up in 1977, funded by the Manpower Services Commission, to provide information, advice and support to practitioners and educators in human resource management. The Centre has now become self‐financing. Guest speaker at the launch of the new service was Parry Rogers, Chairman of the Institute of Directors, Personnel Director of Plessey, and President of the Association of Business and Administrative Computing (ABAC) who said:
The focal point of the Information Technology Skills shortage problem has been the Butcher committee, which first met in June of 1984. This Department of Trade & Industry…
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The focal point of the Information Technology Skills shortage problem has been the Butcher committee, which first met in June of 1984. This Department of Trade & Industry committee, chaired by John Butcher MP, arose from several sources. First NEDO and its electronics committee has been saying for some time that there is an acute problem which was not being tackled. Secondly the Alvey committee, organising important research activities, became alarmed that its plans were at risk because it could not see where the human resources necessary to carry out the additional work were to be found. Thirdly the CBI took up the problem and, led by Sir Austin Bide, made representations to Kenneth Baker MP who was then the Minister of Information Technology in the DTI.
As a business man, I have experienced and observed stress in the management situation in a number of different companies and organisations. I hope, therefore, that I may be able…
Abstract
As a business man, I have experienced and observed stress in the management situation in a number of different companies and organisations. I hope, therefore, that I may be able to offer some observations on what seemed to me to be the factors which create stress in management. I do this, of course, as a layman; and will set out my observations and views without any attempt to interpret them in medical or mental health terms.
This paper outlines 4 assumptions behind attempts to explain the sequential organization of communication behavior during conflict. These assumptions were supported by an analysis…
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This paper outlines 4 assumptions behind attempts to explain the sequential organization of communication behavior during conflict. These assumptions were supported by an analysis of behavioral sequences coded from 9 hostage negotiations and 20 divorce mediations. Analyses showed that negotiators use only a small proportion of available responses to other party's behavior, and that this proportion rapidly decreases as sequence length increases. Critical to this channeling in behavior was the triple‐interact (i.e., cue‐response‐cue‐response), which represents the maximum sequence length required to enable accurate prediction of negotiators' future behavior. More detailed analysis showed that the triple‐interact reduced uncertainty in behavior by over 70%, which compares to less than 1% from knowledge of negotiation context and approximately 10% from knowledge of individual differences.
Currently Britain has over three million unemployed. However the latest Confederation of British Industry survey, the most optimistic for seven years, confirms that economic…
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Currently Britain has over three million unemployed. However the latest Confederation of British Industry survey, the most optimistic for seven years, confirms that economic recovery is not only being sustained but is spreading. Service and consumer industries have been feeling the beneficial effects of recovery for some time, but other parts of the economy now being reached for the first time are metal and engineering goods.
Neoclassic economics is a thing of considerable beauty. It yet finds an increasing tendency on the part of those trained in its discipline to rebel from its neatly fitted…
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Neoclassic economics is a thing of considerable beauty. It yet finds an increasing tendency on the part of those trained in its discipline to rebel from its neatly fitted abstractions and intriguing diagrams. The rebellion stems from two sources. Veblen's sweeping attacks upon its postulates16 shock its theoretical foundations. The rapid changes in the industrial and business world discredited it on another front by bringing into increasingly sharp relief the divergence between the institutional assumptions of the orthodox theory and the conditions actually obtaining. The giant corporation, overhead costs, and the necessity for maintenance of volume, industrial concentration, the trade association, a widening spread among income classes, advertising, the growing inability of the consumer to gauge quality, the resort to reorganization instead of the “going out of business” of the long-run analyses – what place could the orthodox theory give to these important characteristics of the existing business economy?
US firms have long since recognized the economic necessity of expanding their market overseas; however instead of adopting cross‐cultural management strategies used by their…
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US firms have long since recognized the economic necessity of expanding their market overseas; however instead of adopting cross‐cultural management strategies used by their European and Asian counterparts, US firms proceed with an ethnocentric or geocentric viewpoint. Provides an outline of EuroDisney as an ethnocentric example and lists cultural mistakes; supplies McDonald's Moscow experience as a famous geocentric example and outlines cultural challenges. Illustrates several connected realities which managers should acknowledge and expresses the view that cross‐cultural management affairs cannot be explained by economic methods.
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The Institute of Manpower Studies (IMS) was established because of a widespread belief that there was a need for a national centre of practical knowledge and experience of the…
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The Institute of Manpower Studies (IMS) was established because of a widespread belief that there was a need for a national centre of practical knowledge and experience of the manpower field; it would be available to all those working on manpower problems, particularly in employing organisations. It was thought that it should be possible to develop techniques and approaches of general applicability to those interested.