This book takes the reader beyond net effects and main and interaction effects thinking and methods. Complexity theory includes the tenet that recipes are more important than ingredients-any one antecedent (X) condition is insufficient for a consistent outcome (Y) (e.g., success or failure) even though the presence of certain antecedents may be necessary. A second tenet: modeling contrarian cases is useful because a high or low score for any given antecedent condition (X) associates with a high Y, low Y, and is irrelevant for high/low Y in some recipes in the same data set. Third tenet: equifinality happens-several recipes indicate high/low outcomes.

Updating the book since its last publication in 1985, this new edition of the landmark work on human resource accounting has been substantially revised to reflect the current state of the field through the late 1990s. The economies of many nations are increasingly dominated by knowledge- or information-based sectors driven by highly trained and specialized personnel. Whereas physical capital was of the utmost economic importance in the past, the distinctive feature of the emerging post-industrial economies is an increasing reliance on human and intellectual capital. The growing importance of human capital as a determinant of economic success at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels dictates that firms need to adjust to this new economic reality. Specifically, if human capital is a key determinant for organizational success, then investment in the training and development of employees to improve performance is a critical component of this success. This broad socioeconomic shift underscores a growing need for measuring and analyzing human capital when making managerial and financial decisions. Yet important human resource decisions involving hiring, training, compensation, productivity and other matters are often made in the absence of specific information about the different costs and benefits of these particular choices. Human resource accounting is a managerial tool that can be used to gain this valuable information by measuring the costs of recruiting, hiring, compensating and training employees. It can be used to evaluate employee training programs, increase productivity, and improve managerial decision-making regarding promotions, transfers, layoffs, replacement andturnover. Case studies illustrate, for example: How an insurance company evaluated a training program for claims adjusters and found that it would return two dollars for every one dollar spent. How a human resources accounting study revealed that an electronics firm's losses from employee turnover equalled one year's new income, and how the company initiated a program to reduce turnovers. The third edition presents the current state of the art of human resource accounting by (1) examining the concepts and methods of accounting for people as human resources; (2) explaining the present and potential uses of human resource accounting for human resource managers, line managers and investors; (3) describing the research, experiments and applications of human resource accounting in organizations; (4) considering the steps involved in developing a human resource accounting system; and (5) discussing some of the remaining aspects of human resource accounting that require further research.

The Economics of Social Insurance and Employee Benefits focuses on non-wage benefits paid to workers in the United States, covering both government-mandated and voluntarily provided benefits. The author argues that benefits affect workplace productivity, and concentrates on the economic thinking behind how to design non-wage benefits in order to achieve competitive advantage. Part I briefly introduces these programs and discusses some of the insurance and economic concepts that are useful both for evaluating current programs and in analyzing what changes might mean for future costs and benefits. Part II deals with mandated social insurance programs, while Part III discusses benefits voluntarily provided by employers. Throughout the book, private sector human resource practices and public sector human resource policies are linked to various benefit models: the human capital model; the passive participant model; the insurance model; the managed care model; and the integrated health benefits model. Butler argues that the current program-centered approach to human resource and risk management is often ineffectual because it (1) ignores overlapping benefits that mitigate useful cost-sharing mechanisms; (2) often results in the concentration of benefits among relatively few workers; and (3) sometimes has the unintended consequences of negatively affecting workers' human capital. In advocating a worker-specific' approach to employee benefits, the book offers a unique perspective on how human resource managers, risk managers, and public policy makers can promote those institutions and programs that best increase workers' productivity.

The theoretical and empirical literature to date has fallen short of reaching a consensus as to whether granting more managerial discretion to managers tends to enhance, not alteror diminish organizational performance (the discretion puzzle). This book aims to build a bridge between these contradictory results by synthesising principal-agent theory, stewardship theory, and managerial discretion theory into a new empirically-validated model. Using a representative sample of 'double-blind' interviews with managers of 467 firms in China and applying partial least squares path modelling (PLS), the study identifies a potential cause of the discretion puzzle: the failure of the extant literature to account for granularity in the way that managers use their discretion. This generates far-reaching implications for theoretical and empirical research as well as practical recommendations for managing managers in multinationals and Chinese companies."

Commitment in the workplace has been an enduring concern of managers at all levels. On the basis of extensive research and practical work with corporations, Stephen L. Fink establishes a sound basis (Commitment Diagnostic Instrument) for diagnosing essential characteristics of employee commitment and, importantly, offers practical guidance for remedying situations in which commitment levels constitute problems.

Fink examines the differing experiences of corporations with dissimilar personnel approaches. His analysis involves consideration of common, but highly relevant, factors including age, length of service, and educational level. Types of commitments are differentiated, for example, commitment to co-workers is distinguished from commitment to one's specific performance. Managers are guided on the approaches conducive to establish, monitor, and strengthen commitment as a means to a qualitatively better and more productive workplace.

This is a reprint of ISBN 978-0-901-35743-4 Widely acknowledged as the one stop summary of health and safety fundamentals, Principles covers law, safety technology, occupational health and hygiene and safety management techniques. Originally written by the late international health and safety expert Allan St John Holt, this new edition has been comprehensively updated by Allan's colleague Jim Allen. The book is designed as a concise, accessible introduction to health and safety basics and includes revision notes and a wide range of references. It is a first class resource for NEBOSH Certificate students.

Contrary to popular conceptions that ethical failures in leadership are correlated with economic downturns and other stressful market conditions, this book argues that such transgressions are an intrinsic element of leadership, as it is defined under the current prevailing paradigm. In recent years the crisis of failures in ethical leadership across organizations, particularly corporations, has been highlighted more than ever, both in academic discourse and the public sphere. Psychological maladies leading to higher number of sick leaves, general feelings of disillusionment among employees, loss of motivation and employee loyalty, even suicide (both in Western corporations and in other parts of the world) are just a few examples of how ethical failures in leadership are expressed. In order to gain original insight into the phenomenon of ethical leadership, the author explores the origins and effects of the current leadership paradigm along two dimensions: (1) a revisit of the leadership construct from a historical and philosophical perspective, with a focus on the relationship between theory and practice; and (2) the theoretical roots of the ethical component of leadership theories, identifying the reasoning behind the value system in our paradigm. Subsequently, by linking these constructs together, a meta-theory emerges suggesting that the three main ethical departure points of virtue ethics, teleology and deontology (all of which have emerged during the past three thousand years through a confluence of the Abrahamic religions' and Greek value-systems) are the basis for our reasoning about leadership, its construct and the practice of leadership itself. Challenging traditional views of ethical leadership, the author goes beyond theory and philosophy to consider practical implications, including alternative ways to improve executive recruitment, training, and involvement of followers in decision-making; experiments like rotating leadership; and a peek into other paradigms, such as the Zoroastrianism, hence making an original contribution to the field of leadership both for scholars and practitioners.

The implementation of new ideas in organizations is often hampered by the political dynamics of lateral relationships. The authors of this book offer a balance of theory and cases designed to give managers and executives strategies for dealing with power relationships in an effective way. This book highlights common mistakes people make in managing lateral relationships. Most problems concern misunderstandings about the political realities that arise from underlying power distribution inherent in any organization. The authors offer a roadmap based on real-life dilemmas faced by both new and seasoned managers in order to help solve seemingly unsolvable problems. Using ideas from the resource-dependence paradigm, they model and diagram lateral relationships in a way that create effective plans of action. Managers, executives, and MBA students will find this synthesis of theory and practice an important tool for building a model for success.

Part I gives the reader an understanding of the workings of lateral relationships within organizations. It goes on to provide specific models and strategies for working within these relationships. Part II details specific scenarios that will be faced by managers and executives and offers ways to cope with them. The increasingly diverse workforce and growing reliance on team management only intensifies the need for more effective lateral relationship management. This book provides the application of theories and skills vital to coping in such an organizational environment.

Prepare future managers with an understanding of HR skills. Managing Human Resources gives future managers a solid business understanding of human resource management skills. The approach used in this text makes human resources relevant to anyone who has to deal with HR issues in the workplace, even those who do not hold the title of manager. The 8th Edition is updated to include new introductory vignettes, new case studies, and a focus on emerging trends in HR.

Using a new theory of evaluation research, which is based on social science and economic theory, Hawthorne describes three evaluation methods: benefit-cost analysis, multiattribute utility technology, and impact evaluation. She illustrates the usefulness of each method by using each to evaluate a forty-hour, week-long training program conducted in a high-technology Fortune 500 company. The author shows how her technique for measuring increases in productivity in terms of monetary benefits can be used. She provides specific guidelines to be used by trainers and management in planning and implementing program evaluations. Through her practical application of these methods the author shows how to use evaluation methods to improve training and enhance its impact. "Business Library Newsletter"

This rigorously researched volume explores evaluation methods that can be used to improve employee training for increased benefits to the employer. Hawthorne establishes a historical context for the development of corporate-sponsored employee training programs and evaluation efforts. She then presents a new theory of evaluation research which is grounded in social science and economic theory, and which offers practitioners of employee training a functional vantage point from which to view program evaluation. She provides specific guidelines which will assist educators in preparing evaluation plans, implementing evaluations, and using evaluation techniques to improve the training and to enhance its impact. The author describes three traditional evaluation techniques--benefit--cost analysis, decision analysis, and impact analysis--and reports on the three methods as applied in a management education program offered by a Fortune 500 company for its supervisory and managerial personnel. Hawthorne's technique for measuring increases in productivity in terms of monetary benefits is employed to factor difficult-to measure benefits into a multiple criteria framework of analysis.

This book examines how individuals and organizations in Africa have found ways to integrate work and life roles effectively. It reflects on the notions that while many cultures have embraced women's participation in the workplace, African culture has been more resistant to change thereby forcing companies and employees to invent their own solutions. This presents its own set of challenges, for example African organizations are generally not up to speed with the family-friendly policies that are required in the modern workplace; the effectiveness of such policies is questionable and there is an increasing realization that work-family policies are not the only way to achieve work-life integration and others may be considered, such as workplace mentoring and introducing incentives. With this in mind the authors consider multiple approaches to balancing work and life responsibilities with emphasis on three perspectives, namely organizational, individual and family and cultural. The book highlights and examines the joint responsibility that organizations, leaders and individuals have in achieving work life integration. Secondly the book considers why work-life integration initiatives fail and identifies the sources and remedies for these failures. Each chapter discusses the role of the identified dimensions necessary for collective achievement of work-life integration, while the final chapter sets out further research avenues and a conceptual framework that brings together the findings of the book.

International business is synonymous with big challenges. Cultural and institutional complexities remain ever potent, so are newer concerns like climate change and international terrorism. This timely book examines these challenges from the perspectives of different international business actors.

The promotion of workplace partnership in the high performance workplace has become central to policy debates on the 'modernization' of employment relations in British industry. This book provides critical insights into the dynamics of partnership by way of in-depth case studies of employee experience in an under-researched industry noted for its high concentrations of skilled workers and graduates. Drawing on rich interview and questionnaire data, the authors highlight considerable conflicts of interest in the development of partnership that derive from the competitive capitalist environment in which management strategies operate.

First published in 1985, this book examines the major components of working time from an international perspective, considering the individual aspects of working time, with particular emphasis on the argument that work should be shared to alleviate unemployment and the case for further increasing the flexibility and choice in working arrangements. Paul Blyton reviews working time since the Industrial Revolution, when a strict time-frame was first imposed on workers, and the growth in work-sharing, flexitime, part-time working and changes to the retirement age.

Whilst the topic is gathering significant interest, this is the first book to present a guide to coaching and playfulness. It has the ‘why didn’t I think of this’ factor: once said, it seems obvious but, until then, few people had thought of it. Written by two coaching practitioners, the book provides a practical and cohesive manual for coaches to incorporate playfulness into their praxes. Fully researched, and evidence provided to support the practice throughout.

This book gives the findings and solutions on the poor organizational performance the author experienced in so many of the companies he had worked with, in particular the human side and how the human and technical should be integrated in the major functions for best results. The work incorporates in each case the human relations and ethics found to have been grossly neglected.

HRM ethics is a root cause of many important problems in business ethics, and may represent the solution to even more. This volume defines, analyzes, and proposes solutions to ethical problems related to both the executive levels of the organization, and the organization as a whole. This book contains a fascinating range of scholarship from highly regarded authors. Macro and micro perspectives are presented, including perspectives from psychology, social psychology, organizational behavior, strategy, law, spirituality, critical studies, public/nonprofit management, and a variety of functional areas within the field of HRM.

This book takes a multi-dimensional approach to the concept of organizational fairness, one that views organizational fairness as being comprised of procedural justice, organizational politics, organizational trust, and psychological contract breach, all of which are indicators of the global evaluation of the (un)fairness of the organization.