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Is labour's decline permanent, or is it merely a temporary weakening, as Beverley Silver suggests in her recent book, as the labour movement is unmade and remade in different locations and at different times? The article aims to examine this question in South Africa, one of the newly industrialised countries of the 1960s and 1970s, now largely bypassed by new manufacturing investment destined for countries such as India and China.

The paper concentrates, through six case studies, on the growing non‐core and peripheral zones of work and examines the impact of the restructuring on labour.

The evidence presented is ambiguous. While there have been significant innovative union organising experiments, it may be that the structural weakening of labour has been too great and that the new sources of power are too limited, to permit effective reorientation.

It is concluded that significant progress will only be made if there is a concerted effort to commit resources and above all to develop new associational strategies that recognise the potential for symbolic power as an alternative to the erosion of structural power of workers and the unions that represent them. Unless such a shift is made the crisis of labour movements internationally may be better understood as a permanent crisis than the temporary one Silver suggests.

The paper identities the potential for new strategies to develop and sustain associational and symbolic power that might compensate for weakened structural power and facilitate a remaking of the labour movement under new conditions.

This article aims to explore the nature of contemporary HRM practice in Mozambique, and the extent to which “best practice” HRM strategies are likely to emerge, given present institutional realities.

The research was based on an extensive survey of Mozambican employers concentrated in the major urban centres of the country.

The survey revealed little evidence of innovation or of leading edge practices, other than in a small minority of firms. It is concluded that the diffusion of higher value added managerial strategies is only likely to take place in a more supportive institutional context.

The failure of innovative HRM techniques to diffuse across the economy, despite heightened external pressures, highlights organizational inertia, including the continued reliance of many firms on low‐paid and low‐skilled workers, and on autocratic paternalism. It remains uncertain whether a more “high value” added path is viable in a context of cut‐throat competition from abroad.

The Mozambique experience underscores the importance of an institutional context which encourages firms to buy into mutually advantageous sets of rules governing fair play and limits the rewards accruing to bad practice. Whilst the more efficient enforcement of legislation may encourage the broader adoption of “high road” practices, their sustainability is, at least in part, contingent on the diffusion and reconstitution of supportive conventions; regrettably, this makes it extremely difficult to depart from the low value added path.

How do you rate yourself as a selection interviewer? Most people who have to interview job applicants from time to time are usually pretty confident in their ability to spot the ‘right person’. So, if you reckon you are ‘fair to good’, you have a lot of company! Perhaps you are a little suspicious of the ‘I can pick 'em as soon as they walk through the door’ school, but nevertheless, given half an hour's cha with the applicant, you have usually got his measure.

Make a contribution on company business models and typical reactions to economic crises.

Media-analysis-based case study.

Crisis is handled through drawing on a strategy deriving from the typical features of the company; through the crisis these features are even intensified.

Multinational companies are complex and only transparent to a small degree; the empirical data therefore rests on a database with articles.

Social implications can be seen at the BMW as a functioning example for social partnership as a form of economic embeddedness at the societal level.

The name of Cope Allman International may not mean anything to you but amongst other things the company is the world's largest lipstick container manufacturer, and manufactures engineering products ranging from high quality steel to do‐it‐yourself clamps; it sells fifty thousand dresses a week; is the largest manufacturer of amusement with prizes machines in the UK and has subsidiaries in a dozen overseas countries. How has this company, with sales of over £100 million, developed and how can effective financial planning and control be exercised in the light of such diversity ? Let us first look at the way the Group has evolved in order to appreciate the background to the present control system.

The purpose of this paper is to theorise on the nature of property management broadly understood as resource management and demonstrate the actual and potential contribution of innovative property management to sustainable development.

The approach is analytical and backed by real life examples, using concepts of property rights informed by Coasian neo‐institutional economics and Yu's ideas on the Schumpeterian process in innovation.

There is a fast spread of gated communities in the Pearl River Delta and some private shopping centres provide public facilities and entertainment as a public relation method.

The transformation of negative externalities into positive ones is the crux to achieve win‐win solutions to property management for sustainable development.

A good property manager does not simply perform the role of a passive housekeeper or management fee collector. S/he is, above all, an innovator who applies updated technology and concepts with great sensitivity to the externalities generated by or affecting the resource s/he manages.

This is the first paper that defines for property management a research agenda anchored in Coasian economics and demonstrate the actual and potential contribution of property management.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of bank advisor/customer relationships and customer saving behavior.

The research is a theoretical review and model development of savings behavior and bank advisor/customer relationships. The review is used for the development of a model of bank advisor/customer relationships, and their effect on savings behavior.

Findings are a model that distinguishes three kinds of exchange (relational, interimistic, and transaction) in between bank advisor and customer. The three kinds of exchange then influence customer savings behavior.

The implications of this research is that it points to that relationship marketing theory can be used in the analysis of how bank advisors influence customer savings behavior.

For regulators and financial services firms, these findings point to how the role of bank advisors for consumer savings behavior can be analyzed. This is important, as much policy work presumes that advisors influence customer savings behavior, but the knowledge base for that presumption needs to be better understood.

The paper contributes toward a better understanding of the social exchange between bank employees and customers as regards savings products.

This paper is original because it includes many theoretical research fields, and because it connects the bank advisor and customer relationship with the customer's savings behavior.