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The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of the quality of employee enablers (in this case measured by the quality of the communication relationship between local government employees and supervisors) with the ideal “high quality social capital network” on the quality of outputs (such as employees' level of ambiguity in relation to customers and/or their level of productivity).

This research uses a concurrent nested mixed methods strategy – gaining the majority of the data from a cross‐sectional, survey‐based, self‐report strategy and supporting these findings with qualitative data.

The findings suggest that the quality of employee enablers did affect the quality of outputs and these conditions were ideal for achieving high quality service delivery. Employees experienced some level of dissatisfaction with communication frequency, mode, content and bi‐direction and this significantly contributed to their experiencing some level of ambiguity in relation to customers, ethical issues and their supervisors.

The sample is limited to local government employees that provided front‐line service to the public located within one state of Australia. Moreover, common methods bias is often cited as a problem of data obtained from self‐report surveys.

The implementation of NPM aimed to embed private sector practices within a public sector context so as to make the organisations more customer‐focused – however, the findings appear to be contrary to this aim.

The findings from this study provide another piece of evidence about the impact of recent reforms on the effectiveness of Australia's local government in providing the employee enablers to meet the needs of customers. As such, it provides a building‐block for further studies to review the impact of changes resulting from the implementation of NPM.

This paper uses a social capital theoretical framework to examine how the relational dimension of business networks affects the networking activities of female entrepreneurs. In particular, the study examines the role of trust on women's networking behaviour and the part played by government business development officers in supporting women entrepreneur's opportunity recognition behaviour.

The research used mixed methods to gather and analyse data. A survey instrument was used to gather quantitative data and qualitative data was gathered from interviews and written responses to open‐ended questions included in the survey.

The quantitative findings suggest firstly that approximately 20 per cent of the reason why women entrepreneurs belong to formal business networks is to search for business opportunities; however, their experience of trusting significantly affects their perception of the potential benefits of networking activities. Moreover, government development officers appear not to positively affect women entrepreneur's trusting behaviour.

The sampling process could have caused bias in the data collection and therefore the generalisability of the findings may be compromised. This is because the sample came from a state with the most start‐ups and therefore it is likely that these women are more entrepreneurial than normal. In addition, there may be bias in the type of women entrepreneur likely to have responded to the survey. It seems likely that the women entrepreneurs that would respond to this questionnaire are apt to be more entrepreneurial in their behaviour of recognising new opportunities, thereby biasing the sample used. Finally, another limitation of this study is common methods bias in relation to the data collected using self‐report questionnaire.

The findings have implications for government because these findings suggest that they have wrongly assumed that entrepreneurs will behave in “politically constructed business network” the same way as they behave in social networks where trust levels develop over time. This may be the reason why trust was such an important variable in affecting these women entrepreneurs' networking behaviour. The findings suggest that if women entrepreneurs are to be supported to grow, the government should focus its scarce resources on building trust within these formal business networks, so that women can build the relational trust context needed to share information likely to lead to good business opportunities.

The paper provides information on the role of trust on women's networking behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to use a social capital and learning organisation theoretical framework to clarify two issues: how female entrepreneurs manage interactions with employees and whether they learn about new business opportunities from workplace networks. The qualitative findings demonstrated that female entrepreneurs used a relational approach to manage their employees which social capital theory (SCT) predicts should have promoted a workplace environment‐based on trust and reciprocity of ideas, information and resources.

Data were obtained from semi‐structured phone and person‐to‐person interviews. The qualitative questions sought to solicit information about how female entrepreneurs managed (particularly their staff) and whether they used workplace processes to be innovative and learn about new venture opportunities from within their firms.

The paper provides support to previous research that argues female entrepreneurs traditionally use a relational approach to managing their businesses. However, in contrast to previous literature about SCT, this paper found that only about a quarter of the female entrepreneurs used a social capital approach to learn about potential venture opportunities from their staff. Hence, the findings suggest that these female entrepreneurs did not engage in active learning from employees.

This study's findings have a number of limitations. Firstly, the sampling process could have caused bias in the data collection and therefore the generalisability of the findings may be compromised. Moreover, the sample size is limited; hence further research is necessary across numerous countries to improve the generalisability of the exploratory study.

The implication of these findings is that the majority of female entrepreneurs probably do not use workplace employee networks to provide new venture opportunities. Governments may need to consider strategies for supporting female entrepreneurs to capture new venture opportunities.

Previous research suggests that small to medium‐sized enterprises do not necessarily perceive networks outside of the firm as a source of new ideas and the findings from this study suggest than only a quarter of the female entrepreneurs attempted to learn from inside the firm.

This paper aims to examine the impact of resources, accountability, management practices and organisational culture on the implementation of a policy (in this case, a domestic violence policy/program) within an Australian state police department. The paper argues that successful implementation requires a synergy between the established goals and beliefs, the level of resources and accountability provided to support the implementation process, and a performance‐based rather than process‐oriented type of management practice.

A mixed methods approach was used.

The findings suggest that successful implementation of policies requires that senior and lower managers must be in congruence in relation to the stated goals and objectives of a new policy. This is because the role of senior managers is to determine the goals and resources that accompany a new policy. On the other hand, if first‐level managers perceive a lack of synergy between a written policy and the supporting implementation variables (funding), then it is likely that, to the extent that they have power, they will use it to maintain the status quo.

A limitation of the study is that the implementation of only one program was examined and it is hoped that future research is able to further generalise these findings.

The implication of these findings for police management is that the past method of increasing accountability to ensure the successful implementation of an under‐resourced policy is unlikely to be successful. This is because of the unwritten cultural messages (about the real agenda of a policy) that flow through the hierarchy when a new policy is not accompanied by adequate resources – especially if the police culture is unsympathetic to the goals of the policy.

This paper adds to the body of knowledge about what factors affect implementation outcomes within a police context.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the impact of management and colleagues on the perception of work harassment and outcomes of local government employees in Australia and the USA.

Completed surveys from local government employees (265 from the USA and 250 from Australia) were analysed using structural equation modelling and an ANOVA.

The results depict support for the overall measurement and structural models showing that workplace relationships impact on work harassment, and in turn employee outcomes (psychological wellbeing and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour-Individual (OCB-I)), although not all paths were accepted for each country. Statistically significant differences were found between the Australian and USA samples for both the measurement and structural models, with the sample from the USA showing much higher levels of satisfaction with workplace relationships, higher levels of psychological wellbeing, OCB-I, and lower perceptions of work harassment.

The findings provide implications that Australian and US local government employees, positioned closest to the public, experience work harassment probably as a result of chronic under-resourcing both in terms of manpower and other resources, and coupled with unrealistically high-performance targets. The results depict that such work harassment is resulting in lower psychological wellbeing (USA only) and lower extra-role behaviour associated with OCB-I (Australia and USA).

The value of this paper is that it benchmarks the impact of workplace relationships on work harassment for local government employees across two Anglo-American countries.

This study first reports findings about what factors affect the job satisfaction of one group of public sector employees and second, uses social identity theory to explain the results. The results indicated that working with fellow employees enhances job satisfaction. In contrast, dealing with the clientele (possibly without appropriate training) and organisational management polices compromise the job satisfaction of early career Australian police officers. These findings challenge existing managerialist beliefs that suggest that significant attempts to reform organisational processes within the public sector organisations of a number of Western democracies have improved the effectiveness of employees. These reforms have changed the organisational context within which policing takes place and consequently, the work practices of police officers have changed. Some of these changes have reduced the satisfaction of employees. The implications of the findings are that when employees are dissatisfied with a number of the working conditions, it is likely that their workplace effectiveness may be jeopardised and in turn, the efficiency and effectiveness of scarce public resources may also be compromised.

This study reports findings about what factors affect the job commitment and satisfaction of lower‐ranked police officers. Over the past decade, there have been significant attempts to reform organisational processes within police services of a number of Western democracies. These reforms have changed the organisational context within which policing takes place and, consequently, the work practices of police officers have changed and, in turn, their commitment and satisfaction may also have been affected. The study used Metcalfe and Dick’s instrument for measuring police commitment and Johlke and Duhan’s instrument for measuring the employees’ satisfaction with communication processes between supervisors and service employees. The findings first suggest a relatively high level of pride in the police service, with reasonable levels of identification with the police service’s goals and increased involvement with rank (from constable to sergeant). On the other hand, there is increasing dissatisfaction with appraisal/promotional procedures and information communication modes as rank increases (from constables to sergeants) and an inverse relationship between rank and organisational commitment overall.

There is an assumption that the implementation of managerialism within public sector organisations has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of their management of processes and the outcome achieved. The aim of this pilot study was to compare the impact of changes post managerialism to organisational processes on outcomes for different types of employees. The findings suggest that the implementation of managerialism within the Australian public sector organisation has been significantly different depending on the type of employee examined. The implications for management in general are that most of the outcomes were counterintuitive and further research is required to examine the impact of the implementation of managerialism within different types of public sector organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the key antecedents of leave intention demonstrated by nurses employed in UK National Health Service (NHS).

Survey assessment of a sample of 433 nurses employed within the NHS was undertaken, potential relationships relating to both affective commitment and leave intention and work-place experiences assessed through leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived organisational support (POS) have been evaluated quantitatively, using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equations modelling (SEM).

The study indicates that both LMX and POS act as direct antecedents to nurses’ leave intention. Additionally, both LMX and POS in combination, significantly effect employees’ affective commitment, the latter further impacting on employee leave intention. This would suggest that both LMX and POS have a significant role to play in employee leave intention that is partially mediated by affective commitment, further analysis confirming this to be the case.

The sample of nurses is large in absolute terms, permitting the CFA/SEM analysis undertaken, although the data represented only two NHS trusts, hence generalisation across the NHS should be done so cautiously. Various other drivers of leave intention, personal and organisational, have not been assessed here.

The implications of these results are that to safeguard nurse retention, appropriate line manager engagement is crucial, but this requires organisational support that is recognised by the employees, especially to enhance their levels of affective commitment.

This is given by providing NHS-based assessment of the role of both POS and LMX in the realisation of both affective commitment and desire to remain with their current organisations amongst members of the UK nursing profession.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the direct impact of some of the salient factors from the talent management (TM) literature (role conflict, extrinsic rewards, and job satisfaction) and the indirect impact of other factors (organisational commitment, talent retention, and talent engagement) on talent turnover intention.

A survey questionnaire collected 521 valid responses from employees holding managerial and non-managerial positions at various levels in 54 five-star hotels in 6 cities in Saudi Arabia.

Significant support was found for all nine hypotheses formulated to test the relationships among the seven constructs above. The model was found to explain 68 per cent of variance in talent turnover intention.

The study contributes to human resource management literature in general and TM in particular by examining the different constructs used in the TM models and by conceptualising a research model, which was empirically validated within the service sector in the context of Saudi Arabia.

The research has several implications for practitioners in the tourism/service sector in the Middle East, pertaining to the management of talented employees. Specifically, it recommends that managers should promote training and development scenarios and provide a better work environment to strengthen individuals’ commitment to their jobs.

This is one of the first studies to examine a comprehensive model of TM in the Arab world in general and in Saudi Arabia in particular, using data gathered from employees in the tourism sector.