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This article describes the development of an instrument to measure the quality of managerial learning on the job. The instrument can be used to analyse the quality of the individual learning process on the job. The literature shows that two factors determine the quality of the learning process: the learning potential of the job context and the way in which the manager approaches their work. So the instrument has two components. The first component measures the four types of work experience that offer potential opportunities for individual learning. These are transitions, task-related characteristics, obstacles and support. The second component, the so-called learning behaviour, analyses the way the individual approaches the potential learning opportunities present in the job. This can also be divided into four categories: emergent learning, planned learning, instruction-oriented learning and meaning-oriented learning. Based on these two components, an instrument has been developed to measure the quality of learning on the job. This has been shown to be valid and reliable in a sample of European managers.

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The traditional [human resource management] HRM system has been job-based and has reflected a bureaucratic model of organising work. Such job-based personnel management systems have shown a tendency to break down when jobs are dissolving under more flexible work organisation. Many writers have called for a competency approach to replace the traditional job-based approach under these new conditions, and we have seen a growing literature on competency modelling. The study reported here suggests that jobs are structured along two independent lines: formal control and complexity of work tasks. Each combination of formalisation and complexity (high and low) gives rise to a different approach to align work and competencies. The job-based approach and the competency approach are only two of these, and an occupational and a professional approach are also identified. While formal company-internal training is related to job approach and competency approach, training for skilled tradesmen and professionals is a combination of company-external professional training prior to the work career and informal on-the-job and self-managed training.

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This paper analyses gender differences in regional employment in Europe. An industrial relations approach is used, which requires that regulations and institutions in the labour market be analysed in regard to power relations in the workplace. Gender relations and working conditions are seldom included when welfare-state arrangements and the functioning of the labour market are discussed at a national level. The results of this study show that welfare-state policies, in a broad sense, support women’s opportunities to take part in paid work in the labour market. Women in Europe are beginning to occupy an increasing share of the new jobs that are created as they improve their labour-force participation rates. Women are also moving into higher growth sectors of the economy to a larger extent than men. But in terms of occupations, hierarchies and power relations, the mechanisms of segregation in the workplace are changing very slowly. While considerable literature exists on the segregation processes within organisations, very little deals with how to change segregation patterns and how to balance the differences in power between women and men in the workplace.

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Very few systematic studies have been conducted on the managerial practices of Chinese Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) despite their increasing contribution to China’s economic development. Focusing on human resource management (HRM) practices in ten different TVE organisations in a new city in southeastern China, this study aims at filling a gap in the literature by exploring the general HRM practices in those organisations. Results show that HRM practices in TVEs, although still relatively primitive compared to those in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been much more formalised recently. The study points out that the firm size may be an institutional factor affecting the implementation of formal HRM practices. Yet, regardless of the form of personnel management, HRM practices are shown to be a very important factor in the economic success of TVE firms.

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This study explores the relationship between education (level and field) and job satisfaction among Kuwaiti women employees in the Kuwaiti private banking sector. The analysis focused on the responses of the female employees to their own jobs as indicated by their level of job satisfaction. Specifically, the research involved a stratified sample of the Kuwaiti women employees in the whole private banking sector in Kuwait. This study differs from previous investigations of job satisfaction in two principal ways: in dealing with the private sector (rather than the more common public sector in studies of the Middle East) and in taking into account education (level and field) in the private sector work setting. The major findings of this research indicate that a much broader approach towards increasing satisfaction than focusing on the job itself is required. The study shows that the respondents’ education background is of substantial importance in affecting job satisfaction.

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Donor conditionality involves the formal terms and commitments under which major international aid agencies, such as the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] grant aid or arrange loans for developing countries. In doing so, said agencies have tended to emulate, as a matter of policy, private-sector market reforms based on the contemporary neo-classical model. As a consequence, donor conditionality tends to place formalised and regular stress on inflationary control, privatisation of publicly owned equity and the deregulation of public-sector employment. In turn, the functional utility of strategic human resource management [SHRM] as a vehicle able to obtain major change-related outcomes has tended to give it an important role in the implementation process. This paper reports on events that took place in the Cook Islands, a central Pacific microstate, during a university-based training course for public service managers in which the government imposed on a virtual exercise the full weight of real decision making process. It will attempt to place this action in a larger context by, first, critically examining the tendency for SHRM initiatives to be distorted - a situation that arises when the requirements of donor conditionality do not fit the economic, social and cultural conditions in which they are to be applied. It will conclude by reviewing some of the issues to be debated should the tendency to use a single model of reform be replaced by a more country-friendly program of requirements.

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The interaction of Western and non-Western management practices is a growing issue in transitional and emerging economies throughout the world, not least within the multicultural context of South Africa. This is characterised in this article as an antithesis between instrumental and humanistic views of people in organisations, which is fundamental to the way change is managed. In order to understand more clearly how the management of people and change may be related to this antithesis, the results of an exploratory study, involving focus-group methods with thirty managers, and of a survey of some 200 employees in participating organisations are presented. Indicative results suggest that, despite best efforts from organisations which may represent best management and development practice, issues concerning the value attached to people in these organisations are still not being properly addressed. It may be only through understanding and reconciling this antithesis that change concerning the development of people, in South Africa as well as in other emerging economies, may be successfully achieved.

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The unprecedented internationalization of organizations in the past two decades has made the need for cross-cultural awareness, appreciation and understanding in the daily operations of international businesses increasingly prevalent. In both academic circles and the popular press much has been written about the need for individuals to be cross-culturally sensitive, adaptive and responsive when managing across national borders. One of the key aspects identified in literature as contributing towards achieving cross-cultural sensitivity of expatriates is correct selection, pre-departure and post-arrival training and in situ support for the expatriate and his/her family. The research presented in this paper examines the selection, training and support of Australian expatriates in China, a nation that has loomed large in the current and future trading and expansion plans of many Australian corporations since it opened its doors to international commerce in the late 1970s. Based on information gathered through semi-structured interviews conducted with expatriate Australians in Shanghai in 1999 and 2001, the results of this research indicate that, while organizations are recognizing the need to employ Australians who have prior China knowledge, organizational preparation remains negligible.

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Being a South Asian developing country, management development (MD) practices in Sri Lanka has received insufficient attention. The paper reports results of an empirical investigation of 219 managers and 78 human resource (HR) managers on MD practices in Sri Lanka. The study investigated different processes by which MD takes place in organizations, the nature of immediate senior managers’ support for MD, the importance given to the HRM [human resources management] function in the organizational strategy and the HR managers’ contribution to the organizational strategy on MD aspects. The research findings indicate more similar MD practices across the three forms of ownership - local, foreign and joint venture. The conclusions address the existing practice and implications.

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We present evidence on the association between the management practices conventionally identified with high performance workplaces (HPWs) and measures of work-life balance. Our framework identifies those practices associated with workers reporting that their employer makes work-life balance commitments, and separately identifies those practices associated with workers reporting that their employer keeps the commitments they make. Our results do not support a role for HPWs in either the making or the keeping of work-life balance commitments. Rather, they suggest that where workers are interdependent, as in team production, the resulting inflexibility of time scheduling drives down work-life balance commitments.

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