Search results

In recognising the weakness of trade unions and the lack of an institutional framework designed to enforce employee rights in an African context, the purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which human resource (HR) practitioners are perceived to play the role of employee advocate.

The quantitative data set is derived from a sample of 305 respondents (95 HR practitioners, 121 line managers and 89 employees) from Malawi.

Despite the challenges of the context, HR practitioners are perceived by key stakeholders (including line managers and employees) to be playing the role of employee advocate. Standard multiple regression results indicate that the main factor contributing to the perception that HR practitioners are playing this role is their contribution to “motivating employees”.

The study was conducted in Malawi. Further research is necessary to explore the generalisability of the findings to other contexts.

The findings provide an empirical base for future studies which explore perceptions of the employee advocacy role undertaken by HR practitioners in Africa.

The literature on knowledge management and organizational improvisation have emerged as important perspectives for organizing, while existing almost in parallel. Both have significant implications for, inter alia, innovation and creativity, adaptability, and management in turbulent times. Previous research has considered the role of improvisation in innovation. We build on this literature to examine the specific role of improvisation in knowledge creation. Our assessment of organizational improvisation indicates that it constitutes an important potential source of knowledge, thus opening up a new avenue for exploring the strategic as well as political significance of embedded, situated knowledge. We argue that the rapprochement of the two literatures brings about the notion of “improvisational knowledge”. We develop the significance of this form of knowledge, focusing in particular on the challenges of appreciating and appropriating it as opposed to seeking to codify it. We offer propositions and identify some avenues for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue which considers some of the contemporary debates in managing people in Africa.

The papers that constitute this special issue were selected from submissions to various events hosted by the Africa Research Group, a community of scholars committed to researching Africa, and from a more general call for submissions.

The papers highlight the changing picture of the African organisational landscape and provide both theoretical and empirical insights about the opportunities and challenges of managing people in a culturally complex continent.

Taken together, the papers make an important contribution by engaging current debates and demonstrating potential new areas for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to answer specific research questions by investigating two case studies which involve large global mining multinational enterprises (MNEs) and how they implement sustainable development programs across rural communities in Tanzania. The author specifically examines how MNEs use internal stakeholders that is employees, as intermediaries, to influence external stakeholders, the local communities, to address social problems.

The author uses an exploratory research method which involves MNEs and 18 communities in western Tanzania as the cases. Semi-structured interviews, observation and the use of relevant archival documents was used to collect data.

This study suggests that, if MNEs are to leverage sustainability initiatives in rural communities, they must consider implementing a locally oriented strategy in their overall business activities that incorporates meaningful engagement initiatives with their employees and with the communities.

Despite the study was limited to one country, the results point to the importance of incorporating the role of community institutional environments’ influence over MNEs sustainability activities which could be generalized to other developing countries such as the case study of Tanzania.

This paper contributes to the nascent but growing literature on the role of business in the community, how employees as intermediaries facilitate effective CSR in communities, and the overall impact of community institutional environment on businesses. The author provides some practical policy implications related to MNE-community relationships in developing countries.

Reveals that the public sector in Africa is increasingly coming under pressure to justify its very existence through calls for financial accountability, operational efficiency, improvements in product and service quality, and so forth. Takes the view that any attempt to achieve meaningful reform in public sector management will have to consider seriously the question of skill development and the management of expertise. Ultimately, the effectiveness of the public sector product and service delivery will depend not only on economic and financial parameters but also on the availability of sufficiently skilled personnel. Focuses, therefore, on skill management in the public sector and, in particular, on the creation of competences which are based on the organization’s core strategic activities. Introduces recent developments in the management of organizations to the public sector debate.

The review is based on "Employee advocacy in Africa: the role of HR practitioners in Malawi" by Aminu Mamman, Christopher J. Rees, Rhoda Bakuwa, Mohamed Branine, Ken Kamoche, (2019) published in Employee Relations. This paper aims to concentrate on the degree that HR practitioners are considered as employee advocates within an African context.

Data were gathered from a questionnaire survey given to 305 respondents (95 HR practitioners, 121 line managers and 89 employees) working in private sector companies Malawi.

The results suggest that HR practitioners in Malawi are viewed as carrying out an employee advocate role by line managers, HR managers, and employees. HR managers perceived themselves to be carrying out the role of employee advocate more than line managers and employees. In addition, the strongest perceived element was their contribution to motivating employees.

Therefore, analysis of the importance of the elements that make up the employee advocate role could inform decisions on which elements to include in in an HR model. This paper has contributed to the literature on HR roles in developing countries and supports the use of Ulrich’s model beyond the developed countries where it originated

This paper has contributed to the literature on HR roles in developing countries and supports the use of Ulrich’s model beyond the developed countries where it originated.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of improvisation in service recovery.

The paper is a conceptual discussion that considers the relevance of improvisation in service recovery. It contributes to the clarification of the possible role of improvisation in the transformation of service failures into positive moments of truth.

The paper argues that improvisation may be viewed as a relevant, albeit largely ignored, topic in service recovery, and recommends that its role should be the object of theoretical and empirical research.

Managers may consider the possibility of creating conditions for competent improvisation to occur, such as training in improvisational skills and the creation of organizational contexts that facilitate the convergence of planning and execution in order to better deal with the characteristics of the situation.

The study addresses the under‐researched role of improvisation in the process of service recovery.

The decade has witnessed unprecedented interest in what has been seen as a radically new direction in the management of people in organisations: human resource management (HRM). HRM has, however, been bedevilled by controversy and ambiguity to the extent of being regarded as just another “flavour of the month” management rhetoric. There is little consensus about what HRM means and what it entails in practice. Conceptual clarity is sought by adopting a multiparadigmatic approach to analyse HRM, which is classified into “hard” and “soft” variants. The use of paradigmatic “frames” or “lenses” enriches our understanding of them, and should enhance our appreciation of the implications of different approaches in the management of employees.