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The influence of traditional individually oriented Organization Development (OD), with its focus on psychological dispositions, on self-development and growth, is currently waning. I argue here that individually oriented OD would be well served by a new focus on habitus and social position that expand our understanding of human behavior. Using Bourdieu's concept of social position in the form of “habitus-oriented approach,” as I do here using my consulting experience, allows individually oriented OD to become a scholarly and professional site that understands human behavior in terms of both the social and the personal.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss contrasting perceptions regarding “leadership and mentoring” among leaders of Norwegian early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres in their mentoring practices with newly qualified early childhood teachers (NQTs).

Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with eight leaders in Norwegian ECEC centres.

Leaders in dual roles as leaders and mentors have varying orientations in mentoring NQTs. The paper presents the findings as two main orientations: an individual and an organizational orientation. Individually oriented leaders as mentors focus on individual needs and support of the NQT. Organizationally oriented leaders as mentors emphasize collective reflection and learning in the staff group and include NQTs in various learning processes in the ECEC centre.

The study is a qualitative research inquiry in a specific context and may not be representative for larger groups. Further studies could include larger samples of leaders and NQTs. Such studies could focus on the balance between NQTs’ individual needs and organizational needs, and how NQTs are included in the organization’s collective reflection and action.

The study provides insights into how leaders as mentors in their dual roles try to meet both the needs of the individual NQT and the needs of the organization. It also identifies and highlights some of the challenges that leaders must cope with in their dual roles. The paper benefits those working in such dual roles and in the education of mentors and leaders.

The study contributes to increased knowledge on how leaders’ views on leadership and organization influence their mentoring with NQTs. The study is relevant for leaders in other educational settings such as schools. In ECEC centres, the leader is responsible for mentoring NQTs and other staff members. This study shows different ways of conceptualizing mentoring with NQTs in the role as leader.

The present study examined the effects of rewarding contextual performance with career development activities on perceptions of justice. Participants (264) read vignettes which gave information regarding two colleagues in a large retail store who applied for a career development activity. Type of career development activity, level of contextual performance, and the development activity recipient was varied across the vignettes. Results indicated that participants believed there was greater justice when they themselves received the development activity, irrespective of whose performance was higher. Participants were also more satisfied and had greater interest in pursuing a career in the organization when they themselves received the development opportunity, especially for organizationally‐oriented activities. Happiness completely mediated the relationship between who received the career development activity and both procedural and distributive justice. Implications of these findings for organizational justice and careers research, as well as for managers, are discussed.

The Nature of Business Policy Business policy — or general management — is concerned with the following six major functions:

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.

On many occasions, organizational science research has been referred to as fragmented and disjointed, resulting in a literature that is, in the opinion of many, difficult to navigate and comprehend. One potential explanation is that scholars have failed to comprehend that organizations are complex and intricate systems. In order to move us past this morass, we recommend that researchers extend beyond traditional rational, mechanistic, and variable-centered approaches to research and integrate a more advantageous pattern-oriented approach within their research program. Pattern-oriented methods approximate real-life phenomena by adopting a holistic, integrative approach to research wherein individual- and organizational-systems are viewed as non-decomposable organized wholes. We argue that the pattern-oriented approach has the potential to overcome a number of breakdowns faced by alternate approaches, while offering a novel and more representative lens from which to view organizational- and HRM-related issues. The proposed incorporation of the pattern-oriented approach is framed within a review and evaluation of current approaches to organizational research and is supplemented with a discussion of methodological and theoretical implications as well as potential applications of the pattern-oriented approach.

To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how organisational learning (OL) can occur through process improvement (PI) activities, leading to sustained improvements over time in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The authors study PI practices in six engineering-oriented SMEs via interview-based case studies. The authors draw from a range of literature and use an OL conceptual framework informed by Crossan et al.’s (1999) 4I framework as an analytical lens.

The OL perspective provides new insights to conceptualise the nature of PI as a multi-level practice in SMEs. Effective PI practices within SMEs are shown to be consistent with OL concepts, enabling firms to translate individually identified improvement opportunities into organisational-level changes that result in sustained benefits. A new conceptual model is presented that explains how SMEs can learn through improvement activities. The key role of management support, both operational and strategic, is highlighted. It is necessary for management to provide sufficient PI opportunities to enable and sustain beneficial learning.

The study is based on a sample of engineering-oriented SMEs located in the UK. Further case-based, longitudinal, and survey-based research studies with firms of different types will enhance the generalisability of the findings, allowing the confirmation and extension of the new conceptual model.

The findings provide a theoretically underpinned framework for achieving OL in engineering-oriented SMEs through PI activities. The new model highlights the key mechanisms that enable learning from improvement activities. The findings highlight the key role played by management in introducing additional learning opportunities in the form of new business that requires exploratory learning. Without this, the reduction in improvement opportunities reduces the benefits that can be realised from PI.

OL provides a multi-level perspective to understanding how smaller firms are able to undergo systematic improvements and the support required to continually improve.

This chapter highlights a study showing that knowledge sharing and envisioning processes can have positive effects on human and social capital growth within a network. The chapter begins by arguing that a responsible development perspective can be more proactive approach than a sustainability perspective. Some actors (non-profit, public, and private) have achieved responsible development goals by integrating values, purposes, and visions. More specifically, we conducted a study testing a methodology that can guide a process of building a strategic vision within a network with the goal of improving their responsible development orientation. The chosen methodology is “Participatory Action Research.” The implementation of the envisioning process was studied via quantitative/qualitative research tools. The methodology was tested in an official cross-country project funded by the European Commission. The project was selected as a best practice by the same European Union Commission. The study highlights the importance of envisioning processes in building social and human capital at the inter-organizational level and, in particular, in highly complex sectors such as those oriented toward improving social responsibility. In fact, work on the envisioning process itself represents an essential instrument for developing strategic objectives to be shared among actors within networks that intend to promote responsible development and improve their human and social capital. This bottom-up process of envisioning can also facilitate cultural interaction among community members, even in a cross-country context. This relevant “learning-by-interacting” experience can create a growth process for the human and social capital of entire communities. The creation of social capital also promotes the development of shared knowledge and advances, leading to the general understanding of common core objectives and appropriate ways of acting within the social system. The chapter ends with recommendations for future research.

This paper analyzes how organizations may use different knowledge management styles according to higher or lower emphasis on (1) techno‐structural initiatives for information processing, and (2) behavioral solutions for knowledge sharing by organizational members. As a consequence, the effects of these styles on learning capacity are also different. The empirical analysis of the present study found that knowledge management practices can be categorized into four styles: (1) passive, (2) behavioral, (3) techno‐structural, and (4) active. The active style, which implies superior management of both techno‐structural and behavioral tools of knowledge management has been the most effective in the development of learning capacity. In contrast, the passive style, which implies weak management of both kinds of knowledge management initiatives, results in lower learning capacity. Hence, this work focuses on suggesting and empirically testing a characteristic framework for how a set of knowledge management initiatives interact and influence learning capacity in organizations.