Search results

From the organisation's point of view, feedback assists effective learning. From the individual's viewpoint it can satisfy any personal need for information on progress and facilitate social comparison with others. Whether criticism achieves any beneficial effects is dependent on the amount of critical feedback; a balanced review of performance, covering strengths and weaknesses; clear, relevant feedback content emphasising the performance of the individual; the availability of other sources of feedback; the extent of subordinate participation in the interview; and the relationship between the manager and the subordinate. Self‐appraisal may be a more robust approach and may overcome many of the problems normally encountered in discussing performance. There is ample evidence for its effectiveness.

Numerical predictions of laminar and turbulent fluid flow and heat transfer around staggered and in‐line tube banks are shown to agree closely with seven experimental test cases. The steady state Reynolds‐averaged Navier‐Stokes equations are discretised by means of a cell‐centred finite‐volume algorithm. Two‐dimensional results include velocity vectors and streamlines, surface shear stresses, pressure coefficient distributions, temperature contours, local Nusselt number distributions and average convective heat transfer coefficients, and indicate very good agreement with experimental data. It is found that a relatively fine grid is required to be able to predict the surface heat transfer behaviour accurately. Also, three‐dimensional simulations are shown, which are physically consistent. The numerical procedure presented here is robust, accurate and time efficient, making it suitable as a design tool for tube banks in heat exchangers.

Describes the extent to which attending an assessment centre (AC) generates anxiety amongst candidates, and its effects on them. Questionnaires were administered to 70 bank staff before and after attending ACs. Results show candidates experienced rather high levels of anxiety, and that higher anxiety level was associated with lower ratings given by assessors, though the candidates′ post‐AC self‐perceptions of ability tended to be higher for those with higher anxiety. The nature of the anxiety reported seemed to be situation‐specific and to be akin to test anxiety and evaluation apprehension. Discusses findings in terms of implications for the quality of the assessments made and the way in which ACs should be run to minimize anxiety effects.

Over recent years there has been a move towards more open appraisal, with the individual appraised being shown the written assessment of him, but there is little evidence to indicate what effects this change in practice may have had on the value of the appraisals. The survey of appraisal schemes in private and public sector organizations reported in this paper attempts to gauge the influence of greater openness on the standards of written appraisals and on the amount of reliance organizations place upon them in deciding such matters as promotion.

The interview is still the main tool in selection, and rather ironically the pressure put on users of psychological tests by the Sex Discrimination and Race Relations Acts may lead to even more emphasis being placed on interviews—despite the questions raised about their effectiveness. The research literature on interviewing is substantial and covers a wide range of variables. Strangely, however, one element of the interview situation has scarcely been touched by this research and that is the interviewee. The picture one gets from most studies is that of an inert lump of material being placed in front of the interviewers for them to respond to—the candidate is simply a passive source of information, and the real interest is in how the interviewers go about eliciting and processing this information. Some researchers even dispense with real candidates altogether, preferring to use written pen‐pictures which the “interviewers” assess.

Most research on appraisal interviews has dealt with aspects of the interview itself. The study described here investigated the background to the interview — the day‐to‐day contact between appraiser and appraisee and how it affects the success of the interview. From a questionnaire survey of appraiseees, the amount of communication a manager had with his subordinates and his leadership style were related to three outcomes of the appraisal interview. The results obtained are discussed with reference to the most effective and appropriate use for appraisal schemes.

Multi‐source processes have been increasingly adopted by organisations in recent years and most projections suggest this trend will continue. As a developmental technique, one underlying rationale to such systems is their potential impact on target managers’ self‐awareness; increasing self awareness is thought to enhance performance. The main theme of this paper relates to the potential of 360‐degree assessment for yielding measures of self‐awareness and the different ways of deriving indices of this variable. The relationship between self‐awareness indices and measures of performance are discussed in light of research findings. It is concluded that different self‐awareness measures used in the research literature are not equivalent, and may have differential relationships to performance. It is argued that self‐awareness should be assessed in selection and other settings using a variety of methods, not necessarily utilizing the kinds of measures typically associated with multi‐source feedback systems.

Despite strong attacks on its use—such as that of Eysenck—and the consistent conclusions of the literature reviews that its reliability and validity is unsatisfactory, the interview continues to be the main technique in selection. Whilst a great deal of research has been done on it, the focus of attention has usually been on interviewers themselves and the results they achieve. Other perspectives, such as the influence of the candidate or the effects of different types of interview, have been relatively neglected. The study reported then concerns the latter, comparing the efficiency of two of the most widely‐used kinds of selection interview—the Board or Panel in which a candidate faces several interviewers at once, and the sequential interview, where the interviewee meets a series of interviewers one at a time.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between gossip and emotion in health‐care organizations. It draws on findings from empirical research exploring the characteristics and function of gossip which, to date, has been a relatively under‐researched organizational phenomenon.

A multidisciplinary approach was adopted, drawing on an eclectic range of discipline‐based theories, skills, ideas and data. Methods included repertory grid technique, in‐depth interviews and structured diary records of work‐related gossip. The sample comprised 96 qualified nurses working in a range of practice areas and organizational settings in the UK.

Template analysis was used to integrate findings across three phases of data collection. The findings revealed that gossip is used to express a range of emotions including care and concern about others, anger, annoyance and anxiety, with emotional outcomes that include feeling reassured and supported. It is the individual who gossips, while the organization provides the content, emotional context, triggers and opportunities.

Nurses were chosen as an information‐rich source of data, but the findings may simply reflect the professional culture and practice of nursing. Future research should take into account a wider range of health‐care organizational roles and perspectives in order to capture the dynamics and detail of the emotions and relationships that initiate and sustain gossip.

Because gossip makes people feel better it may serve to reinforce the “stress mask of professionalism”, hiding issues of conflict, vulnerability and intense emotion. Managers need to consider what the emotions expressed through gossip might represent in terms of underlying issues relating to organizational health, communication and change.

This paper makes a valuable contribution to the under‐researched phenomenon of gossip in organizations and adds to the growing field of research into the role of emotion in health‐care organizations and emotion work in nursing.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.