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Flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are routinely offered in organizational policy, yet employee access to FWAs is highly dependent upon support from their immediate supervisor. There is little empirical research that specifically investigates the role of the human resource function (HR) in supporting managers to implement FWA policy. Through the lens of HR systems theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine how HR supports managers to implement FWAs.

Using a case study in the Australian Insurance industry, this paper analyzes corporate documents and interviews with 47 managers, supervisors and HR staff across four diverse business units.

This study identifies supervisors’ perceived ability to implement FWAs as a potential barrier to utilization. Five mechanisms of HR support to overcome perceived barriers are identified in the data. An HR system that enables managers to support FWAs requires alignment of HR policies; the provision of supportive technology; an HR structure that facilitates proactive advice and support; HR business partners with influence; and managerial training on FWAs.

This paper provides HR practitioners with insights into the mechanisms that can support managers to implement FWAs or other devolved HR policies.

Applying HR systems theory, this case study utilizes the perspectives of senior managers, supervisors and HR staff to explain how the HR function supports or constrains managers in the effective implementation of FWAs.

This study analyses whether human resource management (HRM), through the use of four sets of high-performance work policies (HPWPs) (i.e. selection, training, motivation and opportunity policies), mediates the relationship between socioemotional wealth (SEW)—defined as a unique set of nonfinancial family goals—and firm financial performance when family firms face a high-risk context.

Hypotheses were statistically tested using a structural equation modeling (SEM) methodology with a cross-sectional sample of 196 medium-sized and private family firms in a high-risk context in Spain.

The results indicate that the relationship between SEW and financial performance in family firms is fully mediated by the use of HPWPs, especially by training and motivation HR policies. The importance given to preserving SEW influences the use of four sets of HPWPs when family firms show clear evidence of being confronted by a financial decline (i.e. a high-risk context). However, to improve their financial results to avoid the firm's failure and thus the loss of their SEW, only those HR policies that focus on training and motivation made a significant and positive contribution to the firm financial performance.

This study contributes to the literature on family firms and HRM by adopting an alternative theoretical framework to understand how the importance of nonfinancial family goals may affect employee structures and management policies, thereby improving financial performance in family firms.

To compare in a fruitful way the human resources (HR) policies that exist in the European Union (EU) and in the United States of America (USA). Nowadays, the world is evolving to a situation in which big economic spaces like Brazil, Russia, India, China, Japan, the EU and the USA are becoming dominant. Those spaces can learn from one another on how to guide their HR policies. The comparison between the EU and the USA is further justifiable because the EU seeks to become the world leader by 2010, and is facing a strong “neo‐liberal” ideological trend.

Having in mind the known theories on HR, the various types of welfare states that may underlie HR policies and also some basic questions regarding the practical organization of those policies are analyzed.

The EU comprises five different types of welfare states, the USA one. Regarding specific aspects of HR policies, for example, the role of the Federal authority, redistribution, eligibility and policy priorities and the evaluation procedures, the USA has the edge over the EU.

This is an initial work. Further analysis could be made both enlarging the analysis to another cases (Brazil, Russia, India, China, Japan) and trying to find more specific and actual data on all the questions addressed.

Much caution should be taken in comparing HR practices, and transferring them, because E&T systems have historic roots and depend on the economic characteristics of the country in question. The EU should increase and improve its role in the command of HR policies in Europe.

An original study on the way of looking at the EU's HR policy framework and on the way of dealing with the question of the “Americanization” of the world, namely in the HR field.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a national policy on sickness absence management is translated by HR managers into local human resource management (HRM) practices by developing and applying an analytical framework with three dimensions: individual preferences, strategic reframing, and local grounding.

The paper is based on policy documents and interviews with HR managers in Dutch law firms. The theoretical scope is the debate on HRM and institutional contexts.

The paper uncovers a variety of individual preferences among HR managers' interpretations of the national policy. However, in strategically reframing the policy, the organizations act upon it from a mainly “managerialist” perspective: they focus on reducing absence through increased control of employees, rather than reforming organizational practices that may adversely affect the health of workers. The local groundings reinforce unequal power relations between different categories of employees: HR managers/line managers; professionals/administrative personnel; men/women. The paper contributes to the understanding of how changes in institutional contexts are translated into organizations and the role of HR managers within this process.

The paper explores the translation process in a particular setting. It would be fruitful to broaden the scope to other institutional contexts and organizations and to include a diverse range of actors to develop additional knowledge of the interaction in the translation process.

The paper develops both empirical and theoretical conclusions on the translation, that is, the sense making of HRM in an uncertain environment of changing national institutions.

This article aims to examine the effects of the best value policy initiative on the human resource function in Scottish local government. The article examines whether best value provides the human resource function with the opportunity and ability to perform strategically, rather than in a reactive and opportune manner. In addition, it will examine whether the policy will enable the human resource (HR) function to move from the mechanistic, repetitive activities HR specialists report consume their time, towards the “softer”, more consultative tasks associated with the HR function.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between human resource (HR) policies, management accounting and organisational performance in Canada, Japan and the UK.

A cross case analysis of the observations emerging from each of six case studies (two in Canada, two in Japan and two in the UK) result in a set of 13 findings.

The seven main HR policies emerging from this study are the “job for life” (in one British and two Japanese cases), recruitment, training, performance‐related bonus scheme, teamwork, organisational culture and pensions. Important communication links between HR managers and management accountants are budgets, strategic plans, performance‐related bonus scheme and decision making. The “job for life” policy, employee recruitment decisions, viewing employees as assets (rather than costs), training, performance‐related bonus scheme, teamwork, organisational culture and a good pension scheme all had an impact on organisational performance.

It is very difficult to link specific HR policies with changes in organisational performance because of the number of other variables affecting organisational performance and the time lags involved.

Several of the case studies are making real progress in establishing links between specific HR policies and changes in organisational performance by using benchmarking or employee opinion surveys or a combination of the results of both external benchmarking and employee opinion surveys over a number of years.

Examines the human resource (HR) policies adopted by two Japanese retail stores in Hong Kong. Finds that the two Japanese retail stores employ different HR policies in terms of recruitment and selection, remuneration and welfare, and training and development for different groups of employees within the same Hong Kong operation. The implementation of the different HR policies for different groups of employees is attributable, first, to the influence of the parent company’s environment ‐ socio‐economic conditions, characteristics of the top management, corporate strategy and use of technology in the parent company; and, second, to the different types of employee in the two stores in Hong Kong ‐ the male and female expatriates among the parent‐country nationals (PCNs), and the professionals with high levels of skill, full‐time managers and employees with lower level skills, and part‐time employees among the home‐country nationals (HCNs).

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the perceptions of senior managers in companies in the Sunday Times list of UK best employers on the practice of HRM in their organisations.

The approach taken was to conduct semi‐structured interviews with senior line and HR directors/ managers.

In the organisations investigated, HRM is afforded high‐level organisational support at chief executive, if not always senior operational manager, level. It is generally recognised by senior managers as contributing to business effectiveness when it centres on business needs. It is integrated with business strategy processes at both strategic and operational levels. Indeed HRM is elemental to business strategic planning processes, which has the effect of reducing the potential gap between strategic rhetoric on HRM and practical implementation of HRM. Leadership and performance management are current HR policy priorities.

The generative primary data represent senior managers' perceptions of how HRM operates in their organisation therefore cannot be generalised.

Senior manager support of HRM means focusing HRM efforts in organisations on business needs and integration between HRM and business strategy processes. The corollary is that HRM policy priorities are derived from the strategic business direction and that they are perceived to support business operations and, consequently, business performance.

Senior line managers and HR specialists inform the research which contributes to understanding of current, best practice HRM from an evidence base; a model of contemporary best practice is proposed.

The contradiction of construction land in economically developed regions is becoming more prominent, and the scale of construction land in some large cities is close to the ceiling. Therefore, China implemented the policy of construction land reduction in 2014. The main objective is to optimize the stock of homesteads and then help to realize rural revitalization by transferring land indexes across regions. Shanghai took the lead in implementing the reduction policy in 2014, for which reduction acceptance data are available. Thus, this paper evaluates the impact of homestead reduction on rural economic development based on data from towns in Shanghai.

This paper uses the difference-in-difference (DID) model to analyze the policy effects of homestead reduction on rural residents' income and industrial integration development. Using economic agglomeration (EA) as a mediating variable, the authors explore how homestead reduction (HR) promotes EA to drive rural economic development and analyze the impact of geographic location and government investment.

HR significantly promotes rural economic development and shows a significant cumulative effect. In the long run, HR can improve rural residents' income and promote industrial integration by promoting EA. The positive effect of HR and EA in suburban regions on industrial integration development is gradually increasing. However, the incentive effect on rural residents' income is weakening. The positive mediating effect of EA is significantly higher in regions with low government investment than in regions with high government investment.

This paper contributes to testing the impact of HR policy on rural economic development and can provide a reference for other regions aiming to implement reduction policy.

It has been argued that, within Europe, different models of management are discernible: the Latin, the Central and the Scandinavian. Focusing on the Latin model, analyses the concept of such a model through an examination of the data and by comparison with the other areas of Europe. Concludes that whilst there is no definite answer to the question of whether there is a Latin model there is evidence for the existence of such a model and its features are outlined.