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The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes, including those around Employee Development Planning (EDP) made by training company Options 2, to modernise performance appraisals, optimise employee performance, and enable the company to expand its skills base in order to meet current and future contractual obligations.

Under the guidance of outsourced HR firm, HR Solutions, Options 2 was introduced to an “always available, anywhere” cloud-based EDP and employee performance management tool, Dinamiks.

Benefits around upskilling through training, employee performance improvement, and meeting contractual specifications have accrued. The tool also helped Options 2 be accepted by the National Career Service as a provider of training.

A need was identified to link, more effectively, input (into Dinamiks) by some employees to company objectives. This is viewed as a cultural hangover from the days of paper-based appraisals and is being addressed.

Options 2 makes more effective use of its employees, who are better trained; is better placed to meet current and future contractual obligations; has been accepted by the National Career Service as a provider of training.

Options 2 encourages staff to have interests outside the business and to detail these within Dinamiks in order to build up a picture of the wider social aspects of employees, to their betterment as individuals inside and outside the company.

The “always available, anywhere” aspects, and the comprehensive capabilities of EDP are original for, and of lasting business value to, Options 2.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the current state of play for workplace diversity disclosures, specifically disability by investigating the recently revised Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations.

Case study methodology using documentary analysis techniques.

With gender diversity recommendations introduced in 2010 based on the business case perspective, the process of revising the ASX Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations provided an opportunity for the ASX to expand its diversity focus, with disability diversity specifically identified in the draft third edition. However, the key amendments were subsequently removed when the approved edition was released in 2014 with justification provided on the grounds that disability is a social issue, not a corporate governance issue. Through a widening of the corporate governance lens beyond the business case perspective, this paper calls for a re-imagining of corporate governance to incorporate an ethical viewpoint on diversity.

Disability diversity disclosure is merely the first step towards reform in helping to bring about deep change within organisations. Without both administrative reform and institutional reform, any future revisitation of the disability disclosure recommendations may become little more than a “tick the box” approach.

The paper is unique in reviewing the ASX Corporate Governance developmental processes towards workplace disability in its recently revised edition.

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

This chapter outlines the potential of phenomenology to illuminate how individuals experience the emotions replete within organizations. It employs one particular type of phenomenological approach known as Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). The chapter considers how the hermeneutic and phenomenological foundations of this approach lend themselves to the study of affect. The chapter then clarifies and develops established IPA guidelines to render them more appropriate for research on emotions. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates how IPA can produce contextualized accounts that explore the role of emotions in individuals’ experiences of organizational events and processes.

After briefly reviewing the past history of Bayesian econometrics and Alan Greenspan's (2004) recent description of his use of Bayesian methods in managing policy-making risk, some of the issues and needs that he mentions are discussed and linked to past and present Bayesian econometric research. Then a review of some recent Bayesian econometric research and needs is presented. Finally, some thoughts are presented that relate to the future of Bayesian econometrics.

The Bureau of Economics in the Federal Trade Commission has a three-part role in the Agency and the strength of its functions changed over time depending on the preferences and ideology of the FTC’s leaders, developments in the field of economics, and the tenor of the times. The over-riding current role is to provide well considered, unbiased economic advice regarding antitrust and consumer protection law enforcement cases to the legal staff and the Commission. The second role, which long ago was primary, is to provide reports on investigations of various industries to the public and public officials. This role was more recently called research or “policy R&D”. A third role is to advocate for competition and markets both domestically and internationally. As a practical matter, the provision of economic advice to the FTC and to the legal staff has required that the economists wear “two hats,” helping the legal staff investigate cases and provide evidence to support law enforcement cases while also providing advice to the legal bureaus and to the Commission on which cases to pursue (thus providing “a second set of eyes” to evaluate cases). There is sometimes a tension in those functions because building a case is not the same as evaluating a case. Economists and the Bureau of Economics have provided such services to the FTC for over 100 years proving that a sub-organization can survive while playing roles that sometimes conflict. Such a life is not, however, always easy or fun.

Surveys some of the important contributions of information theory (IT) to the understanding of systems science and cybernetics. Presents a short background on the main definitions of IT, and examines in which way IT could be thought of as a unified approach to general systems. Analyses the topics: syntax and semantics in information, information and self‐organization, entropy of forms (entropy of non‐random functions), and information in dynamical systems. Enumerates some suggestions for further research and takes this opportunity to describe new points of view, mainly by using entropy of non‐random functions.

The learning organisation is a concept and, as with any complex concept, embodies sets of values, goals and beliefs. As consensus grows about these values, goals and beliefs, the probability increases that the concept will be translated from representational status to action and behavioural change. This paper argues that the organisation that attaches its strategic development to the highest level of conceptual framework will be the organisation best suited to manage adaptation to change and challenge in the future. It is suggested that the learning organisation concept can be thought of as the lowest of a three‐stage conceptual hierarchy of learning‐wisdom‐enlightenment. The paper explores the characteristics of the wise organisation and enlightened organisation and suggests that this sequence of development is not accidental but intimately related to the evolution of the human mind (that gives rise to the conceptual frameworks in the first place), from prepersonal to personal to transpersonal.