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This paper aims to examine the relationship between perceived investments in employees’ development (PIED) on work engagement and the moderating effects of psychological capital on this relationship for liquid knowledge workers, employed in the Indian cutting and polishing of diamond industry (CPD).

A questionnaire composed of established scales was administered to 134 liquid knowledge workers. Having established convergent and discriminant validity using structural equation modelling, the model was further analysed using the Process macro to check for direct and moderating effects.

The research findings suggest that the perceived investment in employee development and psychological contract enhancement (relational and transactional) made by CPD units for liquid knowledge workers positively influenced their work engagement level. The study also finds that relational contract (not transactional contract) positively moderates the relationship between perceived investment in employee development and work engagement.

This is a cross-sectional single source study; future studies could look at longitudinal and multisource perspective.

The study presents a “star matrix of engagement” that guides the application of the two strategies of perceived employee development and psychological contract enhancement for liquid knowledge workers. This has implications for design and implementation of human resource management practices and policies for employee management.

The study makes significant contributions to existing literature on antecedents of work engagement of liquid knowledge workers by examining the direct and moderating influences.

THERE WAS A TIME when any self‐respecting British housewife, while scorning the culinary prowess of the French (“Don't they smother everything with sauce so you can't see what it is?) took a modest pride on her ability to turn out good wholesome dishes for her family. She may have been a ‘plain’ cook, but she was eminently good at it.

AMONG all the anxious, complex and difficult problems which confront the United Kingdom and its people in these times of economic and social stress, there are none of more importance and significance for the future than those of British manufacturing in general and of the Aircraft — or “Aerospace” — Industry in particular.

Accounting historians continue to debate the development of cost accounting procedures in late nineteenth‐century US mass‐production industries. While conventional historians (economic rationalists) emphasize efficiency and co‐ordination, labour process and other “critical” scholars prioritize social, political, and ideological concerns. One neglected, but significant, aspect of this controversy is inside contracting. Clawson presented an important overview of inside contracting at several prominent US manufacturing establishments, including the Waltham Watch Company (WWC). Clawson’s work is significant because his most salient remarks have been cited by scholars who advocate the “new accounting history”. Discusses inside contracting in general terms within the socio‐political context of nineteenth‐century US mass‐production industries. Subsequently, evaluates specific WWC archival data from both the economic rationalist and labour process perspectives, the reasons for inside contracting’s abandonment, and the impact of inside contracting on cost accounting developments.

Many experts are predicting work force changes of massive proportions by the year 2000. Already, feminisation is transforming the way employers treat their employees. Companies are realising that nearly half of all workers today are women, up from 33% only 20 years ago. And two‐thirds of the 15 million new entrants into the job market through 1995 will be women according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: and in terms of sheer numbers, they will have more influence than ever before.

In the past couple of decades, higher education systems have been in transition in sub-Saharan Africa. The phenomenal growth of private, for-profit higher education institutions is almost universal. The global trends in higher education have affected the universities in sub-Saharan Africa as well. This chapter critically examines the rapid growth of private universities as a result of globalization and its impact on society. Although the research covers only Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa, the findings have broad implications for the whole of sub-Saharan Africa (Jokivirta, 2006). The chapter is divided into four major parts, namely globalization and the knowledge economy; the evolution of private higher education in the region, using two of the oldest universities as examples; the growth of private universities and the challenges facing them; and the linkages between foreign institutions and local ones. The empirical research on which this chapter is based is part of a longitudinal study, 2001–2006, of higher education in sub-Saharan Africa.

This paper essentially shows how a recently‐developed model called the alternative classification scheme (ACS) may be used in the context of the newly‐industrializing economies (NIEs) of the Asia‐Pacific region, possibly the most rapidly‐rising players in the world economy. After nearly a decade of research into Asian economic development strategies, the authors consider future development alternatives. Using the ACS, the authors broadly categorize the range of available strategic alternatives that will drive the NIEs’ development strategies, and discuss the results of such application.

Competitiveness is often confused with productivity. Productivity refers to the internal capability of an organization, while competitiveness refers to the relative position of an organization against its competitors. These two important concepts are often confused and interchangeably used. For example, in his famous book, The Competitive Advantage of Nations. Porter (1990, p. 6) says that the only meaningful concept of competitiveness at the national level is national productivity. Competitiveness may also have a distinctly different meaning at different levels of analysis — product, firm, industry, and nation. Porter (1990, p. 33) says that the basic unit of analysis for understanding competition is the “industry,” while the title of his book refers to “nations.” He also says that firms, not nations, compete in international markets.

Knowledge management (KM) has emerged in recent times as a phenomenon with wide‐ranging implications for organizational innovation and competitiveness. Supporters argue that as organizations understand the value of KM, they have the opportunity to establish long‐term internal strengths, which will lead to external competitive advantage. Further, we find the current literature advocates that KM can be implemented in every organizational discipline. KM is approached from several different perspectives, and a number of these are used to structure our paper and identify emerging factors in: strategy, human resources management (HRM), information technology (IT), total quality management (TQM), and marketing. This paper presents a summary of key responses to a recent survey of FTSE 100 companies conducted by the authors, which shows that KM is an extremely popular management topic, yet relatively few organizations have serious implementation programs in place. Also presented are findings from longitudinal studies of six case organizations, which have been approaching and deploying KM over the last three years. The academic arguments for organizations to be proactive in KM are strong and compelling. Our research identifies the critical factors that respondents feel are vital for successful KM implementation, and these provide a basis for a further stage of the study which considers how best to develop appropriate performance measurements.

This chapter investigates the relationship between product innovation and firm performance. We apply a logistic regression to predict product innovation using a number of explanatory variables of which firm growth is of principal interest. We study the relationship at two different time periods using two comparable questionnaire surveys. These are combined with accounting statistics and labor market data. We find that firms which are experiencing high growth rates also are more likely to have been product innovating. We also find support for the user-producer theorem and that Schumpeter may have been right in his hypotheses concerning firm size and innovative activities.