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A big issue in research on leadership and organisation change is how, and how much, workers who will carry out the decisions should participate in the decision making process. An answer to this question has become more crucial now that several recent studies have shown that worker participation in the decision making process is by no means always successful: here the type of decision plays a large part. Certain conclusions from a study in three Dutch organisations are discussed below. This study is part of an international research project.

This paper discusses the issues relating to the origin, development, and management of the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness research program (GLOBE) project. GLOBE is a cross‐cultural research program involving 160 scholars in research teams in 60 nations. The discussion includes designing the research program; recruiting participating scholars; obtaining commitment to the program objectives; replacing country teams which fail to meet their objectives; establishing electronic and Web links; designing the documentation for data collection and coding; establishing rights to data sharing and authorship; and dividing responsibility for data analysis and writing. Special attention is given to lessons learned from managing the project.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the commitment‐ and control‐approaches on the use of competency management, and to investigate whether attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control mediate these effects.

In Study 1, using a survey, employees indicated whether their organization adopted a commitment‐ or a control‐approach towards competency management. Moreover, they rated their own attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, and behaviour. In Study 2 a scenario experiment was conducted in which the authors manipulated the commitment‐ and control‐approaches towards competency management in order to establish causal relations.

Results consistently showed that the use of competency management is higher within a commitment‐ than within a control‐approach. Furthermore, attitude and perceived behavioural control were found to mediate the relationship between the commitment‐approach and the use of competency management.

Future research should include other organizational members, for example (line) managers, to create future insight in the effects of commitment‐ and control‐approaches on the use of competency management.

The results of the studies highlight that a commitment‐oriented approach increases the use of competency management by employees and that a positive employee attitude and perceived behavioural control are of considerable importance when increasing the use of competency management is an organization's primary goal.

The paper gives insight in how to persuade and stimulate employees to use competency management more frequently.

In response to developments around as well as within organisations, managers are faced with a control‐commitment dilemma. A new rationality of governance has emerged besides the well‐known rationality of bureaucratic control. This new set of governance strategies, which is presented under different labels such as commitment‐based management or trust‐based governance, is directed at access to and leverage of intangible resources like employee commitment, tacit knowledge and learning behaviours. In this special issue, six studies are presented that address the subject of how top management teams deal with this control‐commitment dilemma and the intended or unintended consequences of choices made.

Introduces six empirical studies on trust within organisations which were originally presented at a workshop on “Trust within and between organisations”, organised by the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management at the Free University Amsterdam, in November 2001. Areas covered include: the legitimacy of the field of study; common understandings and disagreements in theoretical ideas; and directions for future research.

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.

Organisations engage in explicit and intentional communication with employees in various ways. However, communication will not be received in a “neutral” context. Employees operate in an organisational (or behavioural) context determined by the organisational culture, structures and systems, and the management practices. This context acts as a source of implicit communication towards employees. This view fits the various perspectives about communication, which does not need to be considered as a two‐way process, and which can be intentionally or unintentionally, transmitted and received. All too often, implicit communication is at odds with the “official” explicit communication. Through this latter form of communication the organisation might, for example, proclaim a quality image, while in reality employees experience that, in case of conflicts, delivery planning prevails over quality. Likewise, communication about the “learning organisation” appears to be cumbersome in a culture suppressing discussion about failures. The effect of implicit communication should not be underestimated. Cynicism among employees is repeatedly the result of inconsistent messages being received. This paper describes the aspects of organisational culture, structures and systems, and management practices, seen in a behavioural context, in order to illustrate how these aspects act as an implicit source of communication to employees. Additionally, this form of communication expresses whether employees themselves are seen as the crucial core of organisational success. The importance of consistent signals is illustrated, specifically with respect to organisational change programs.

Managing a large multinational team such as the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness (GLOBE) project (ongoing since the early 1990s) presents numerous leadership, communication and organization challenges. This chapter discusses the challenges that occurred in the GLOBE project owing to: (a) the long-term nature of the project, (b) the evolving (growing) size of the GLOBE team, (c) the large membership size of the GLOBE team, (d) the virtual nature of the team's communications, and (e) the cultural differences of the GLOBE participants. Survey responses from 50 researchers regarding their experiences in GLOBE help document our experiences. Because these challenges will be encountered by other multinational teams, we provide recommendations for forming and maintaining successful multinational teams.

The present study consists of managers and professionals in 26 countries including seven from Central and Eastern Europe. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether culture dimensions predict country differences in the relationship between gender and organizational commitment. The study integrated theories of social learning, role adjustment and exchange that link commitment to organizational roles to explain such differences in gender effects. Findings indicate that an alternative modernities perspective on theories of gender and commitment is better warranted than is a traditional modernities perspective.

This study examined the relationship between gender and organizational commitment using primary data collected in 26 counties. The cross-level moderating effects of individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, power distance and restraint vs indulgence was examined using hierarchical linear modeling.

Organizational commitment is found to be higher among men than women in four countries (Australia, China, Hungary, Jamaica) and higher among women than men in two countries (Bulgaria and Romania). Results shows that large power distance, uncertainty avoidance, femininity (social goal emphasis) and restraint (vs indulgence) predict an association between being female and commitment. These all suggest limitations to the traditional modernity-based understanding of gender and the workplace.

This study is unique based on the three theories it integrates and because it tests the proposed hypothesis using a multi-level nested research design. Moreover, the results suggest a tension between an alternative modernities perspective on top-down governmental effects on commitment through exchange and bottom-up personal effects on commitment through social learning with role adjustment in an intermediate position.