A Contemporary Look at Business Ethics provides a `present day' look at business ethics to include the challenges, opportunities and increased need for ethical leadership in today's and tomorrow's organizations. The book discusses current and future business ethics challenges, issues and opportunities which provides the context leaders and their organizations must navigate. The book includes an in?depth look at lessons learned about the causes of unethical behavior by examining a number of real?world examples of ethical scandals from around the world that have taken place over the past few decades. The analysis of the various ethical scandals focuses on concepts like ethical versus unethical leadership, received wisdom, the bottom?line mentality, groupthink and moral muteness, all of which contribute to the kind of organizational culture and ethical behavior one finds in an organization. The book discusses ethical decision making in general and the increased role of religion and spirituality, in confronting unethical behavior in contemporary organizations. The book also takes an in?depth look at the impact ethical scandals have on employees and more specifically the psychological contract and person?organization ethical fit with the goal of identifying, along with other things, what leaders can do to restore relationships with employees and rebuild the organization's reputation in the eyes of various stakeholders.

This book is written with the belief that HRD professionals will continue to learn, change and find ways to reinvent themselves and the profession individually and collectively as we move further into the 21st century. A major point of this book is that HRD will continue to become more and more important to organizational success. And, that in as calls for accountability and bottom line impact continue to rise, HRD professionals will be proactive in demonstrating their value to the organization. The primary audience for this book is practicing HRM and HRD professionals, and other organizational leaders. The book provides tested and proven ideas important to demonstrating the value of HRD. From a practical viewpoint, it is based on actual experience, a strong research base, and accepted practices presented in an easy to read form. A second target audience is students of HRD and HRM who are preparing for careers in this important field. This book will help them develop a solid foundation to the study of HRD practices that are key to HRD success regardless of the type of organization. A third target audience is managers or leaders at all levels of an organization who are increasingly expected to take on HRD responsibilities while also partnering with HRD professionals. It offers these individuals a firsthand look at what they should expect of their HRD functions or areas and how they can encourage HRD professionals in their organizations to be accountable' strategic partners in helping the organization achieve its success by getting the most out of its human capital.

Change is relentless, disruptive, and unavoidable. To manage organizations today, executives need new ways to look at the world, their companies, their jobs and, most importantly, the people who report to them. Sims sees these as the prime requisites for success in management today: an ability to feel comfortable with ambiguity, with constant and increasingly demanding change, with a new, unique commitment to teams and teamwork, and with a willingness to stay customer-oriented. Marshalling his evidence from academic research and practical experience, Sims shows how researchers are continuing to redefine the roles and responsbilities of executives and their reports. One crucial finding: the emphasis is now and must remain on people. The executive today has to be a facilitator, team member, teacher, advocate, sponsor, and coach--and it is all of these tasks, requirements, outlooks, responsibilities, and accountabilities that Sims explores here. Offering a new way to look at work, at organizations, and at oneself, Sims provides not only the reasons why the new organization is what it is, but how to cope with it and to succeed in it. A must-read for supervisors, managers, executives, and recent graduates who are ready to take their own places in the new world of business.

Sims sees people as the key to the successful performance of any organization. He provides a balance between theory and practice, nuts-and-bolts prescriptives, and interesting anecdotes. Detailed, wide-ranging, and readable, his book offers up-to-date, relevant, and engaging discussions of the individual foundations of behavior--perception, attitudes, personality--plus various theories of motivation and the most useful tools derived from them to use in managing people. He also covers such issues as communication, groups, and teams, and the decision-making challenges that leaders, managers, and employees must actively address. Sims highlights the increasing importance of conflict and negotiation within and between individuals, groups, and organizations, as well as the special personal demands placed upon people as they strive to acquire flexibility, to become adaptive and more responsive to new organizational designs and structures. With its coverage of traditional topics as well, Sims' book offers a balanced, rounded, forward-looking view of what it means to work in today's changing organizations, and how to help one's own organization not just to survive but to prosper.

A volume in Contemporary Human Resource Management: Issues, Challenges, and Opportunities Series Editor Ronald R. Sims, College of William and Mary The primary purpose of this book is to stimulate dialogue and discussion about the most effective ways of teaching ethics. Contributors to the book focus on approaches and methodologies and lessons learned that are having an impact in leading students to confront with accountability and understanding the bases of their ethical thinking, the responsibilities they have to an enlarged base of stakeholders (whose needs and interests often are conflicting), and their stewardship to use their talents responsibility not only in fulfilling an enterprise's economic goals but also to recognize the impact of their actions on both individuals and larger society. The primary audiences for the book are those individuals responsible for teaching management, especially those with responsibilities for teaching business ethics. But the book is also designed for practicing managers, for these managers have among their most important responsibilities the development of people in their organizations who have the integrity, values, and competences to be effective managers of economic resources while at the same time to recognize the roles of their enterprise in shaping society.

A new set of major changes is reshaping the economy and creating challenges that are testing the mettle and talents of organizations and their employees. Unless organizations and their employees develop the requisite skills they need to cope with these challenges, many will become casualties of their own deficiencies. "Keys to Employee Success in Coming Decades" seeks to prepare employees for future success in an increasingly demanding and competitive global environment. Sims, Veres, and their contributors are careful to focus on what employees at different levels in the organization will need to do to be successful in the twenty-first century.

Mastery of the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and behaviors discussed by the contributors in this book will lead to enhanced employee performance as the new decade approaches. The requirements for new employees or the redesigned employees is quickly changing. The organizations of tomorrow will expect employees who understand the importance of success; who welcome change and accept it, master it, and deliberately cause it. They are also employees who are proactive innovators, who confront constraints and the limitations on actions that they impose, who take risks and who continue to develop themselves professionally, technically, and personally. Written clearly, concisely, and with a minimum of academic jargon, the book will be important reading for specialists in human resource management, training and development, and others with critical responsibilities throughout the organization.

Among the most significant features of Sims and Dennehy's book are a focus beyond valuing and managing cultural diversity, and a demonstration of the interdependency that exists between a number of important individual differences (i.e., alienation, receptivity, style, power). They discuss some personal yet theoretical insights on answers and questions that are important in increasing our recognition, understanding, and appreciation of diversity and differences in general. In eleven original essays contributors examine a wide assortment of behaviors, issues, and individual differences while offering their reflections on answers and future questions that are key to leveraging diversity and difference in organizations.

Recent literature has emphasized the projected changes in organizational demographics and the fact that globalization also is changing the face of organizational landscapes. Taken together these trends are serving to increase the need to understand and appreciate cultural diversity in virtually all organizations. Many books already exist that attempt to address this topic. Each one attempts to provide a guide to dealing with a variety of racial, ethnic, or cultural backgrounds. The intent of Sims and Dennehy's book is to go beyond offering ideas or to serve simply as a guide to improve the management of diversity. Thus, a major goal of this book is to have its readers reflect on their personal diversity and difference experiences and to create a forum for answers and questions on the value of diversity and differences for all. The main thread that ties everything together in this book is the strategy of creating value through repeated emphasis on our need to look beyond valuing and managing diversity to the interdependency of a variety of individual variables that shape our lives.

The book begins by offering a bridge-building model as a tool that colleges and universities can use to decrease the alienation experienced by minority students on predominantly white campuses and to increase the social consciousness of all institutional constituents. The next chapter suggests that diversity is essential to learning, and good conversation is a powerful way to learn from diversity. The book then introduces a model that seeks to place the issue of diversity management as one part of an overall development change process. The notion that the success of some organizations in enhancing diversity is dependent upon the vision and strength of management is emphasized in the next chapter, which, by taking a different perspective, presents the argument that current corporate infrastructures do not promote diversity. Unless a company builds new internal support systems that encourage diversity of thought and action, employees hired to make the company more diverse will merely be homogenized into the prevailing culture. In the following chapter the role of training in U.S. organizations is discussed as a major component in increasing the recognition, understanding, and appreciation of diversity and difference. The concept of difference-based approach to advocacy and its relation to issues of gender are introduced as cornerstones of creating work environments that are supportive of employees' needs to balance work and family. The next chapter provides data for analysis of the expatriate's learning experience and applies the learning from expatriate experiences to those issues faced by minorities in a domestic setting. A need to create new intellectual diversity that focuses on foreign language skills applicable to the needs of economic, scientific, and technological markets is emphasized in the next chapter. Next, a comparison is made of the decision-making processes and practices of Japanese and American managers at a Japanese company in the United States. The author's pioneering findings can be generalized to understand decision-making in different cultures and organizations. The role of diversity educator is then discussed and the author persuasively argues that active learner participation, self-disclosure, and a trusting supportive environment are prerequisites to understanding and appreciating diversity. The book concludes with a review of the important points discussed by the contributors to this book, offers questions in need of answers, and identifies future issues on diversity and differences.

The key to teaching business ethics successfully, says Sims, is to start with clear goals and a sensible expectation of outcomes, and with a true knowledge and appreciation of how people actually learn. Seems obvious enough, he says, but the surprise is that so few understand this. Thus, the teaching of business ethics is often an unproductive, frustrating exercise in futility. Sims hopes to change that. Proceeding with the conviction that open communications between teacher and student before, during, and after the teaching experience is vital, Sims identifies key teaching processes, gives practical advice on designing and planning the curriculum, and offers guidance on how to develop a climate conducive to effective learning. He highlights the importance of creating a classroom climate that encourages open dialogue, good moral conversation, and conversational learning. And throughout he emphasizes that learning styles and experiential learning theory are cornerstones of teaching business ethics, thus taking an approach unlike any in the literature. An important guide for those who are new to teaching this essential subject, Sims' book will also be helpful for more experienced teachers who are wondering why their own methods do not always work, or do not work as well as they believe they should. Sims identifies important processes that must be managed if business ethics is to be taught and learned successfully--processes such as creating stakeholder commitment to the goals, purposes, and outcomes of the teaching effort, and curriculum design and planning that are attuned to individual differences in learning styles, motivation, and values. Also included in Sims' processes are thedevelopment of individual school outcomes, and expectations, and the assessment procedures that can measure them. He discusses the importance of incorporating debriefing into an experiential learning exercise or discussion, and goes on to give an in-depth discussion of the pedagogical approaches that allow teachers to teach the practical and theoretical components of the subject simultaneously. Well illustrated with examples, such as an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and a way to institutionalize outcomes assessment by means of total quality management, Sims' book returns constantly to his major theme: that to teach business ethics effectively the teacher must first create a climate of trust and sharing within and between students, and between students and teacher, and that the teacher must have a concrete way to measure the impact of the teaching effort's results.

This work looks at managing school system change. It covers such topics as: challenges to leading and managing school and school system change; key roles and competencies for administrators; stakeholder theory analysis; understanding school culture change; and more.

Not only are performance and human resources management (HRM) bound tightly together, but Sims even goes so far as to say that the way people are managed in coming decades will be the most important determinant of organizational success. He shows how success is determined by a firM's skill in attracting, developing, and retaining its human capital; how a firM's people are what give it a measurable advantage over the competition; and how an organization's commitment to developing its people's abilities and skills is an obligation at all levels. Sims focuses on practical, real-world human resources problems and activities emphasize the need for managers to prove themselves excellent people managers as well, and covers the traditional HRM tasks and responsibilities in ways that will give them new meaning and urgency. By focusing on current challenges, emerging issues, and HRM innovations now on the horizon, Sims' book is essential for managers and executives throughout the organization, and indeed throughout all sectors of the economy.

Sims provides a firsthand understanding of the importance of HRM and lays out the tools to help managers do it well. He emphasizes repeatedly how important it is for organizations to understand that their success depends on their ability to attract and keep talented employees. With its persuasive discussion of the trends and emerging issues in the development of proactive human resources policies and practices, the book shows how to anticipate and work towards the development and retention of the right people. It emphasizes the importance of taking a strategic approach to all of the various human resources activities, and proves throughout that for an organization to prosper and earn a profit, goals must be set and initiatives taken in all areas of HRM and by all people, whatever their levels of responsibility may be.

When a New Leader takes Over: Toward Ethical Turnarounds takes a detailed look at the experiences of new leaders who are charged with turning an organization around following an ethical scandal. The challenges confronting new leaders who are tasked with restoring trust, rebuilding reputation, and turning around an organization following an ethical scandal are discussed along with specific actions taken by these leaders during the turnaround process. A main focus of the book is to offer insight into the difficult situations confronting new leaders at the beginning, during and after their turnaround experiences which means turning an unethical organizational culture into an ethical one. A number of examples of turnaround efforts that have taken place over the past two decades are included to provide the most comprehensive documentation of the ethical turnaround process. The book includes an in-depth look at what led to the unethical behavior by examining a number of real-world examples of ethical scandals from around the world. The book will provide an analysis of the various ethical scandals by focusing on concepts like unethical leadership, received wisdom, groupthink and moral silence, all of which contribute to the kind of organizational culture and unethical behavior one finds in organizations that experience ethical scandals. The book also discusses proactive leadership and its importance in implementing ethical turnarounds based on values-based leadership, employee involvement and ethics education. A main premise of this book is that new leaders can successfully create an organization environment to rebuild and institutionalize ethical behavior as part of the turnaround process and sustain ethical behavior beyond the turnaround. The book will be of interest to employees at all levels of an organization, business professionals and other practitioners and others who have an interest in organization change, transformation and ethical turnarounds.

The training and development function has made important contributions to the success of American corporations, but is it time now for an overhaul? Sims thinks it is. Not only does his book delineate the ways in which T&D has lost touch with the times, but it also identifies the ways in which it can--and must--be restructured and, indeed, reinvented. It must be more responsive to customer demands and interests, it must participate in and contribute directly to competitive corporate strategies. And it must find ways to measure concretely its performance and its contribution to the corporate bottom line. Sims' book is thus the first to take a corporate strategy approach to understanding and developing the T&D function. In doing so, it dissects T&D, chapter-by-chapter, and in each chapter provides practical guidance on how trainers can improve their performance and thus contribute clearly to the success of their organizations. Not only training and development people, but management in other areas will find this book thoughtful, provocative, and challenging.

To accomplish this task of becoming a more active strategic partner, this book calls for the reinvention of training. Reinvention means that training professionals and their training functions must take a strategic, customer, performance improvement and accountability orientation to add more value to their organizations. After discussing the importance of reinventing training, the book turns to a discussion of the importance of ensuring that, given the organization's strategic agenda, a needs analysis of training goals and employee development needs are derived from a comprehensive analysis of the organization's T&D needs. The book stresses the importance of aligning the organization's strategic agenda and the T&D programs developed by the training function to support the organization's objectives. The book next turns to a discussion on the developing and designing of training programs that will result in employee and organization learning necessary for achieving key business results. Sims offers a detailed discussion of training's need to improve its measurement of the contribution of training. The book concludes with a discussion of issues driving the need for training to continuously learn and work to improve its partnering with customers, delivery of just-in-time customized training, and take on a more proactive role in consulting with the organization on both training and nontraining interventions intended to help the organization meet its intended objective and sustain their competitive advantage.

As we move through the 1990s, the role of HRM is becoming ever more demanding. HRM issues are replacing capital resource issues as the guiding force for today's and tomorroW's organizations. HRM professionals must respond to changes in the economy, government and legal influences, new organizational forms, and changing employee expectations. They must also anticipate changes in global competition and training requirements. In the future, HRM professionals must work to become equal strategic partners in their organization, if they are to add value to the company. Here is an in-depth discussion of current and future challenges and issues for HRM professionals and scholars of human resource managers.

The authors present these challenges, with specific examples of individual HRM managers and their department's responses to these problems. The authors discuss steps that HRM professionals need to take to become more efficient and productive with limited human resources. Cultivating ethical behavior, trust and teamwork, as well as the use of information systems are also addressed. Special attention is given to the need of HRM professionals to increase their competency in their expanding role of providing strategic advice to senior executives and line managers.

Sims and the contributors to this challenging new volume maintain that public sector organizations must radically reinvent themselves, if they are to survive and succeed in their missions: to provide quality service to their clients at a cost taxpayers can afford (or are willing to pay). They offer a firsthand look at how change occurs at all levels of government, and from this and other experiences they lay out strategies and tools that others in government can use quickly and with good results in their own public organizations. However, Sims and his panel of experts also note that not everything in organizational change will produce positive benefits; some results will be negative, and these too must be understood and dealt with. By compiling the viewpoints, advice, experiences, recommendations of public managers themselves, plus consultants, academics, and citizens who benefit from government (and are often its harshest critics), Sims gives readers a solid, realistic insight into the problems of today's public agencies, and workable advice on how to solve them.

"Accountability and Radical Change in Public Organizations" examines the current government and reinvention initiative occurring in public organizations at the local, county, state, federal and international levels. The book highlights the importance of understanding that change in government will continue to be a way of life for public managers, thus requiring an ongoing analysis of those forces driving change and the need to increase our understanding of why certain change efforts work and others fail miserably in government. The contributors to this volume emphasize that while reinvention, accountability, and change are serious initiatives that public managers must confront they must take caution and learn from each others' experiences.

As the way work is done changes and as organizations flatten themselves down in response to demands posed by the new global economy, managers on the front lines, where some say the real work is done, need a broader set of skills than ever before. They must learn to see their jobs differently--to become tougher and more durable--but they must also become more flexible in how they interact with the organization itself and its changing work and economic environments. The authors emphasize key tasks that front-line managers must do today, such as strategic planning, budgeting, quality management, and benchmarking, and how they must focus attention on their customers, until now far removed and perhaps out of mind. They must also recognize the need for effective information systems and find ways to align their immediate work units with larger organizational strategies and processes. In short, the authors offer essentially a new paradigm for the way management should now be practiced in a far-ranging book that today's managers will need to keep pace with changes that could threaten their careers, and a book that offers others on the way up a way to start their own careers on the right foot.

Becoming an effective front-line manager starts with understanding the job. The authors begin with a comprehensive look at what it means to be a front-line manager and the special challenges they face. They must become all things to all people, say the authors, and at the same time consider other, perhaps unfamiliar challenges, such as safety and health concerns. Front-line managers today must also learn to grow and adapt to changing work environments. The authors present an extensive view of these new tasks and roles and detail the ways in which front-line managers can address and overcome the obstacles they will find. The book is a readable, thought-provoking study of special interest to teachers of general management courses on the undergraduate and graduate levels.

This 2nd edition of Executive Ethics provides a variety of contemporary and timely readings squarely focused on the ethical dilemmas and challenges faced by today's C?suite executives. In addition to identifying these dilemmas and challenges, the contributors provide both knowledge and insight on how C?suite executives can proactively address such ethics issues. The contributors provide unique value propositions for the C?suite regarding the most critical ethical issues facing organizations today while also highlighting useful information for senior executives interested in integrating ethics into the leadership and management practices of their organizations. In the end, the book empowers C?suite executives to build a long?term, strategic, and enterprise?wide approach to ethics.

An in-depth discussion and analysis of corporate misconduct and its complexities. Volume editors and their contributors explore the legal, societal, and business ramifications; offer a wide range of real-world and theoretical examples and the lessons they teach; and provide practical recommendations to management for countering misconduct in their own organizations. The book is also a valuable resource for teachers and students of business ethics, management, and business-government relations.

To cope with the chaotic new business environment, organizations must find ways to manage the problems of change--but also the process of change itself. Yesterday's solutions are obsolete. Innovative solutions are rare, yet even the best require not only the efforts of individuals but other agents as well. Sims sees change agents throughout any organization and at all levels--line and staff people, human resource specialists, and those who have hitherto had little reason to tackle such tasks and have not been accountable for their outcomes. Unique models are presented for change interventions, along with techniques and tools that executives need to accomplish them. The result is a book that experienced executives will understand and utilize, but also one that will bring novices up to speed, providing new ways to use their own instincts and capabilities for innovation.

Sims and his contributors challenge the traditional prescription for creating change, providing a compelling critique of accepted approaches to change management, highlighting the strengths of these approaches and emphasizing what can be extracted to foster change. Each author provides insights into the competencies, skills, and values required for the rapid and successful creation of lasting change. In doing so, they also reemphasize that there is no universal approach to change management, and that the need for innovation, flexibility, and adaptability remains dominant.

Rising costs, shrinking enrollments, more diverse student populations, the need for adaptive management, the trend toward evaluation and assessment of programs and students will require proactive responses by college and university administrators in the 1990s and beyond. This book provides analyses of the key issues that must be addressed. The Sims have assembled a distinguished group of contributors who discuss in detail issues, threats, and opportunities for administrators, where feasible action plans that can be adopted by colleges and universities are provided. A key theme throughout is that administrators must view periods of financial stress as opportune times to eliminate outmoded facilities and equipment, re-evaluate the roles of faculty and programs, and investigate service markets that may have been ignored in the past. Cost-reduction strategies, selective marketing, asset redevelopment and repositioning have a place in modern administrative thinking, and this book shows how they can be employed in successful institutions of higher education. Higher education administrators, faculty, graduate students, and policy makers concerned with education management and public administration will find this book invaluable.

Decision making is the critical key to survival in the future. It is the contention of this book that we must increase our understanding of organizational decision making in general and ethical decision making in particular. Ethics underlies much of what happens in modern organizations. Organizations, which institutionalize ethics, develop a culture based on ethical values and consistently display them in all their activities. They derive a number of positive benefits: improved top management control, increased productivity, avoidance of litigation and an enhanced image that attracts talent and the public's good will.

The major aim of this book is to provide a better understanding and integration of the variables that are important to institutionalizing ethics within any organization. It pays particular attention to decision making, organizational culture, the role of management, and groupthink. Clear lessons from real firms' experiences are drawn: firms can counteract and turnaround unethical behavior by learning to cope with inevitable conflicts, by introducing disagreement as part of the decision making process, by installing an effective training program and by changing employee-employer contracts. The author takes corporate CEOs, human resource managers and scholars from understanding the problem, to what it takes to establish, institutionalize and maintain ethics in organizations.

Veres, Sims and their contributors focus on the nuts-and-bolts issues in human resource management (HRM) created by passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), then identify future issues and their projected impact. With practical discussion of traditional HRM activities and innovative activities the act has created, they help alleviate fears and, in doing so, fill a wide gap in the literature on ADA compliance. A welcome resource for human resource professionals and their academic colleagues as well.

The history of federal regulation in the United States is such that fears in the human resource management community with regard to the Americans with Disabilities Act are hardly irrational. Especially disconcerting is the act's scope; and, to make matters worse, its provisions are often vague and even obscure. Writing from the viewpoint of human resource professionals, Veres, Sims, and their contributors look closely at some of the major issues raised by the act's passage, then forecast what other issues will be in the future. In doing so they provide practical advice on how to comply with the act in day-to-day situations and on crucial management topics.

Veres, Sims, and their contributors examine the act's provisions and the ways in which it demands that managers scrutinize and reassess their essential functions. Compliance issues and how to avoid running afoul of the act's provisions are examined next, followed by a discussion of how the act applies to recruiting, testing, and employee selection. The performance appraisal process and how non-imparied employees will respond to accommodations required for their non-impaired colleagues is carefully laid out, and the interaction of the Equal Pay Act and the ADA is examined. Training needs in an ADA context and other problems are also treated, with special focus on ways in which employee discontent can be minimized as such problems are met and solved. A valuable guide and resource for human resource professionals and their academic colleagues.

Training in government is not a primary mission for a variety of reasons, and this book attempts to increase the importance of training in government organizations by showing how training can increase individual performance and overall productivity. Sims challenges recent commission findings that excellence in training government workers is not a priority and offers a framework to better centrally manage governing training efforts.

Sims has designed the book to help government organizations (federal, state, county and local) demonstrate the value added of efficient and effective training programs. In addition, the book offers a helpful discussion on the differences between private and public sector organizations and the training issues germane to each sector (for example, the availability of financial resources alloted for training in the private sector far outweigh those in the public arena). He concludes is that if training is functioning in government, then it is contributing to the activities of the organization in a number of different ways (for example, improving performance through the application of what has been learned).

Ethical failures are rooted in leadership failure, the lack of a corporate culture in which ethical concerns have been integrated, and unresponsiveness to key organizational stakeholders. This book seeks to enhance our understanding of the causes of ethical debacles in an era when ethical missteps can often lead to corporate bankruptcies or worse. Sims offers practical solutions for mitigating damage and preventing such problems from happening in the first place. He also explains how to institutionalize ethics throughout an organization. Sims asserts that organizations wishing to behave ethically must do more than harbor good intentions. Such companies must implement policies that inculcate the corporate culture with ethical values. They must also commit to ethical behavior in all interactions with internal and external stakeholders, including investors, customers, employees, and the community.

"Change (Transformation) in Government Organizations" discusses recent efforts to bring about change in government organizations. The book brings together contributions by a number of managers, practitioners, academics and consultants in the study of international, federal, state, and local government efforts to respond to increased calls for change (transformation) in public sector organizations. Each contributor describes their work in this area using as a backdrop the fact that public sector organizations continue to be under new and substantial pressures to change and transform themselves. Hence a collection of current contributions such as those in this book are intended to add to the ongoing debates and rewriting of the success and failures of change in public sector organizations. The ultimate purpose of this book is to further our knowledge about the related issues and current efforts to bring about change or transformation in public sector organizations. The contributors, all experts with extensive experience as change agents in both public and private sector organizations not only support their analyses and discussions of specific cases and change (transformation) management issues but also provide practical tools, ideas and lessons learned, intended to be generalizable to other public sector agencies and helpful to those responsible for developing, implementing and evaluating similar efforts in the years to come. The audience for the book will be government managers, scholars and others interested in undertaking or learning about such efforts.

The contributors in this book identify and clearly discuss contemporary and critical issues, challenges and opportunities in HRM. The book attempts to achieve the delicate balance between basic HRM functions, and the new world of HRM. Moreover, in a dynamic field like HRM, a complete look at contemporary HRM issues, challenges, and opportunities is a must for today's and tomorrow's students and future manages and leaders. After all, it is important for any book to undertake a current state of the field while also bridging the gap of traditional HRM activities (i.e., issues, challenges and opportunities) and the possible future state of the HRM field. An organizing principle for this book is the need to for an integrated HRM system, comprised of multiple activities, designed to influence organizational and employee behaviors. The books contributors include some basic theories and models that simultaneously consider how HRM activities like recruitment, selection, reward practices, and development activities among others are being impacted by contemporary issues, challenges and opportunities for the field of HRM, particularly HRM functions and professional as they are increasingly expected to play a role in enabling organizational managers and other employees to achieve desired organizational results. Thus, the essence of the book is that the collective chapters reflect both a functional orientation built on theory and models but also provide insights into how to translate theory into practice via the establishment of the increasingly critical role HRM procedures, practices, and processes play in accomplishing the goals and objectives in contemporary organizations.

A pioneering contribution to the professional training literature, this book is designed to help trainers and human resource managers to more effectively manage training programs. The author develops a unified framework for the training function that combines a systems perspective with the experiential learning approach to training efforts. The result is a step-by-step guide to conducting key phases of any training program: pre-assessment, needs analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation. Sims focuses throughout on the principles of good training program design as well as on training for the development of certain pivotal skills, competency levels, and individual differences. No prior knowledge of training procedures and techniques is required to successfully use the concepts introduced.

The author begins by addressing training systems in general and the increasing need for training within the context of global markets and competition. He then discusses how to determine training needs within the individual organization. Subsequent chapters address each phase of the training process in turn. Sims reveals the importance of completing a thorough job analysis before embarking on a training program, shows how to design training programs to fill specific skill and competency needs, and demonstrates how to establish training objectives and determine program content. The experiential learning model is introduced as a viable system for managing the learning process in training in three major areas: the selection of training methods, trainees, and trainers; the development of certain training environments which are more responsive to trainee and trainer learning styles; and the provision of several psychological contracting activities which can facilitate various phases of a training program. Finally, Sims offers a systems analysis approach to the planning, design, and conduct of training program evaluations that includes a thorough discussion of the training audit and cost-benefit techniques. Both the novice and experienced trainer will find this book a comprehensive yet practical guide to the employee training process.