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Sets out to encourage a critical reappraisal of the models and practices of management consultancy. Tracing the historical development of management consultancy, argues that management thinking and practice has been unduly influenced by management consultants who have made use of flawed and increasingly faddish ideas and models. Examining these fads, and the groups who have promoted them, concludes by arguing that managers should dispense with the services of management consultants, and should instead learn to understand the world of work as experienced by their employees.

The question of how to get students to apply new ideas, skills and knowledge to their own work situations has been a continuing problem in management and supervisory training. Organisations complain that, despite spending large sums of money on staff training and development, no perceptible changes in on‐the‐job performance occur. Tutors reply that the subject matter they teach is both useful and relevant, but that either the individual student chooses not to apply what he has learned, or, if he does, the organisation either obstructs his attempts at innovation, or else merely fails to support him. In recent years, research has focused increasingly on the organisation's role in utilising the product of its staff training and development activities (see Vandenput; Temporal; Huczynski.

Whatever diverse aims and objectives company training policy may have, there tends to be a general agreement on the need to ensure that any new ideas, skills, knowledge or attitudes which are presented to trainees on training courses are actually transferred back into their work situations. As a result of the author's research, we now know more about the key factors which influence the transfer of training. A great deal of this research has focused on variables in the trainee's own work situation which appear to influence training transfer. The research has stressed the need for the returning course member to have developed interpersonal transfer skills, so as to enable him to act as an individual change agent. The results have also emphasised the important role played by the trainee's immediate boss with respect to the application of the learning within the organisation.

The development of interpersonal skills continues to be a key area of management training. There is a need for managers at all levels to understand the importance of interpersonal relationships, and to be able to establish and develop constructive relationships that contribute significantly to organisational effectiveness. There is now a great deal of research and theory, from psychology and social psychology, on the nature of relationships in organisations. This has been translated in several ways into attempts to change the behaviour of managers. Many courses have tried to change attitudes and knowledge, and have given participants sound general guidelines about what they should do to improve human relations and the effective use of human resources in organisations.

Employee absence costs British industry £5 billion per year; 200 million working days are lost annually. The average shopfloor worker takes eleven days off each year. In their book, Managing Employee Absence for a Competitive Edge, the authors recommend a systematic seven‐step approach to absence control called ALIEDIM. The framework stands for Assess, Locate, Identify, Evaluate, Design, Implement and Monitor the company′s absence control procedure. The first step of assessing an organisation′s absence problem is examined. How big is it compared with similar firms in the industry? The benchmarking approach can indicate whether an expensive and time‐consuming programme of absence reduction will be cost‐effective. Internal and external benchmarking approaches are described in turn with examples, and the advantages and disadvantages of each are summarised.

In the previous article, the author introduced the elements of a framework for the analysis of management learning methods. It was argued that systems for the classification of different teaching and learning methods were unlikely to have universal validity or application. Two reasons for this were proposed. The first was that a method label such as lecture gave little indication of the type of interaction between teachers and students that it purported to describe. One was, therefore, left with grouping some idealised representation or stereotype of a method. The second reason related to the fact that any method‐in‐use had a number of facets. For example, it was suitable for use with large or small groups, it was student or teacher centred, it encouraged or discouraged students' autonomy in learning, and so on. While it might be possible to arrange methods or classify them using the single criterion in which one was interested, it was not possible to generate from this any universally applicable classification system. For these reasons, it was suggested a framework for the analysis of methods‐in‐use be used, not a methods classification system.

The behaviour of an enterprise (including ethical behaviour) strongly depends on the organization’s culture, values and beliefs. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that organizational culture differs according to enterprise life cycle stage. Also the importance of the knowledge and awareness of these differences to enterprises’ management in order to be able to ensure enterprises’ success is argued.

The case study research methodology was applied to explore the differences in the type of organizational culture as well as cultural strength depending on the enterprise’s life cycle stage. For the empirical testing, the author have selected Slovenia, one of the most developed European post-socialist transition countries.

The research revealed differences in the types and strengths of enterprises’ organizational cultures and showed their dependence on the enterprises’ life cycle stages.

Knowledge of differences in organizational culture in relation to an enterprise’s life cycle stage can significantly contribute to the behaviour of the enterprise’s key stakeholders by ensuring the long-term and sustainable success of the enterprise.

The available literature does not provide similar research of differences in organizational culture in relation to an enterprise’s life cycle stages.

In the 1980s and 1990s enthusiasm for Japanese or “lean” manufacturing methods swept through Western industry. At the time, commentators argued that these methods represented a new paradigm of manufacturing, a radical break with traditional methods. The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of conversion from one paradigm to another, drawing on Kuhn's ideas on the structure of scientific revolutions.

The paper uses a critical‐incident approach to illustrate the conversion to, and defence of, a particular view of the world. Two incidents are used. The first is a one‐day seminar by a leading proponent in the field, in which the author acted as a participant observer. The second is the response of the UK engineering community to the publication of a report questioning the financial benefits of Japanese or lean manufacturing methods.

Although the introduction of new management methods is typically justified on rational grounds, this paper argues that, in common with the scientific paradigm shifts identified by Kuhn, enthusiasm for lean methods is based on non‐rational criteria as well as on their apparently superior efficiency. The language used to discussion of lean ideas in the two critical incidents is reminiscent of that used in religious conversions, and the responses to criticism of the methods are analogous to responses to blasphemy in a religious context.

The research is based on analysis of conversion to, and defence of, lean ideas, but it carries implications for many other types of organisational change as well. The findings draw attention to how non‐rational criteria can shape the direction of major programmes of change, and hence the direction and strategies of organisations.

The paper carries implications for the process by which change can be engendered and managed. It identifies the processes by which conversion to new ideas can occur, identifying critical conditions on the part of the purveyors of the ideas (expertness, trustworthiness and personal dynamism) as well as features of the ideas themselves, such as the availability of local demonstrations of applicability, their aesthetic appeal and their ability to predict events and/or solve problems previously considered to be intractable.

The paper represents a novel perspective on processes of organisational change, by likening the process of change to that of scientific revolutions and demonstrating the non‐rational aspects of the change process.

In the global economy, managers of organizations are constantly innovating with their use of available supply chain management tools. Some tools, like strategic planning and customer segmentation, have gained strong global acceptance while others are less universal. The paper aims to focus the contribution on the organizational factors that predict firm usage of supply chain management tools in two Eastern Europe countries, Slovenia and Croatia, while also comparing them to the global use of similar management tools.

This research provides an empirical analysis of supply chain management tool usage from a survey of 155 firms in Slovenia and 185 firms in Croatia while also comparing these findings to results from a global Bain & Company survey.

The 25 most commonly used supply chain management tools in the Eastern European survey were found to be relatively similar to those used across Europe and North America. However, further analysis of five selected tools reveals important differences. Evidence is found to support that particular organizational factors have a significant influence on supply chain management tool usage, of specific importance is the education level of the organization manager.

The findings are useful for business practice in understanding the influences of organizational factors on supply chain management tool usage. Also, the research is original as previous management literature has not provided a similar approach to researching management tools and their usage.

Summarizes part of the findings of the author′s research into the popularity of management ideas. Taking a historical perspective, the six families of popular management ideas of the last century – bureaucracy, scientific management, classical management, human relations, neo‐human relations and guru theory were identified. Following an analysis of these ideas, 12 recurring features which are found in the majority of them were discovered. These features were labelled communicability, changeable human nature, individual focus, control, steps and principles, universal application, applicability, authorization, self‐confirmation, unitary perspective, contribution‐ownership potential and leadership focus. Defines and describes each characteristic briefly, and relates it to the action which management consultants need to take if they are successfully to influence managers to adopt their ideas and prescriptions.