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Unions are the potential but secure democratic counterforce to capital. The creation of “objective conditions” for international co‐operation has preceded but must result in “subjective conditions”. This theme survives little challenged as a central tenet of the official labour movement in country after country. The pervasive complacency in other circles concerning the prospects for industrial democracy to be achieved through the internationalisation of the evolutionary, pluralistic collective bargaining model, particularly at a time when that model seems unable to cope with born again free market philosophies even at a national level.

The present state of film information is nothing short of chaotic. Individual organizations do sometimes keep records of films in their own fields of interest and occasionally publish these lists. The Educational Foundation for Visual Aids has catalogues of films of use in direct teaching; the Royal Institute of Chemistry has published a list of films on chemistry; the Scientific Film Association has published many catalogues on different subjects but these are restricted—because the Association lacks funds—to subjects on which another body is prepared to spend money. The British Film Institute has extensive records but these exist only in the form of its own card indexes and are available only at the Institute's premises. If information is to be wholly useful, it must be freely available and known to be available. The haphazard nature of current sources of film information makes it extremely difficult for the outsider to use them.

Despite the new ‘needs driven’ criteria for public funded admission to nursing homes, there remains concern that older people are entering such care inappropriately. However, neither previous research or policy makers have sub‐divided such inappropriate entries into their constituent groups: those who are inappropriate because they are too independent and those who are inappropriate because they are too dependent. The aims of this study were to determine the extent of inappropriate nursing home admission amongst older people in nursing homes in six areas of England and Wales between 1995‐96. This was done through a retrospective case‐note review using a structured data‐collection pro forma. Although the study found no evidence of extensive inappropriate placement, extrapolation of these data suggests that 6,750 of those admitted to nursing care could have coped in a more independent environment. The inappropriately admitted group were more likely to have lived alone, be female, elderly and not to have seen a geriatrician. It is concluded that the most effective way to prevent such admissions would be to ensure the involvement of specialist geriatricians in the multidisciplinary team involved in admission decisions.

This paper synthesizes the extant feedback literature, focusing on how feedback affects an auditor’s learning, performance, and motivation. Performance feedback is an important component in the auditing environment for ensuring quality control and for developing and coaching staff auditors. However, the literature on feedback in the audit environment is fragmented and limited making it difficult to assess its behavioral effects on auditors. This paper has three main objectives. The first is to review some of the influential research in psychology and management to identify key variables and issues that appear to be critical in the study of behavioral consequences of feedback in organizational settings. The second is to review performance feedback research specifically in auditing to identify the areas previously examined and synthesize the findings. The third is to suggest a variety of future research opportunities that may assist in developing an understanding and knowledge of the behavioral effects of feedback on auditors. The literature analysis has significant implications for audit research and practice. In particular, the analysis provides important insights into understanding who, how, and when performance feedback should be given to improve its effectiveness in the audit environment.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Focuses on an attempt to determine whether or not there is a link between TQM and learning organizations. Data from three TQM companies are tested against a series of building blocks for developing learning organizations. Total quality management tends to create the environment necessary for organizational learning to occur. The learning organization creates competitive advantage by adapting to changing environments, continually improving and being able to absorb new concepts and innovations.

Employee involvement (EI) is a major part of high-performance work systems (HPWS) that have successfully transformed a large number of organizations and have become standard practice in many new organizations. Despite the proven benefits of EI, however, it is still not as widely utilized as it could be even when accounting for industry and organization differences in its applicability. We suggest that EI implementation is limited in part by the change management challenges it presents. We review the recent research on EI and HPWS, and suggest ways in which change research and theory can inform our understanding of why EI practices have fallen short of their potential and how they can be effectively implemented.

THE choice of a carburettor to suit a particular aero engine lies firstly in the choice of a make and type, then in the determination of the correct size. The choice of make (assuming a suitable type and range of sizes is available) is governed by a purely qualitative consideration of the properties of each type available and by consideration of the production facilities. The decision can, therefore, only be made after careful study and full understanding of the functional principles of each type, and weighing these up with the advantages claimed by the maker in each case. Points to be considered in the decision as to make and type are these:

Under high turbulence conditions, a company's periodic planning cycle needs to be supplemented with a dynamic, real‐time, strategic‐issue‐management system. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

A case study of a prominent Australian healthcare organization shows the eight steps for how its management used the strategic issue management (SIM) process to identify, rank and address strategic issues in a rapidly changing business environment.

The paper finds that, for companies entering a period of turbulence, the tracking, monitoring, and management of strategic issues become s imperative so that the corporate, strategy, and capability do not fall out of alignment.

The company's survival may well depend on having a well‐developed process for decision‐makers to rapidly put forth critical rebalancing responses.

In the SIM approach, external issues are manifest as opportunities and threats, and internal issues as strengths and weaknesses. Issues are viewed in the context of the environment, strategy, and capability (E‐S‐C) framework. A 3×3 strategic issue priority matrix is used to map the level of urgency and potential impact of each issue.

Decision-making in human resources management is done at both the micro and macro level of organizations. Unfortunately, the decisions at each level are often executed without consideration of the other, and current theory reflects this issue. In response to a call for integration of micro- and macro-level processes by Huselid and Becker (2011), we review the extant literature on strategic human resources and high-performance work systems to provide recommendations for both research and practice. We aimed to contribute to the literature by proposing the incorporation of the situation awareness literature into the high-performance work systems framework to encourage the alignment of human resources efforts. In addition, we provide practical recommendations for integrating situation awareness and strategic decision-making. We discuss a process for the employment of situation awareness in organizations that might not only streamline human resources management but also result in more effective decisions. Additional considerations include implications for teams, boundary conditions (e.g., individual differences), and measurement.