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Briefly outlines the development of empowerment and what organizations typically hope to gain from empowering their workforce. Goes on to discuss the main reasons why these objectives are frequently not achieved and what is needed if empowerment is to work. These general factors are related to the business development strategies of mid‐tier accountancy firms and their attempts to develop business by empowering staff below partner level to be more active in this area. The data used come from in‐depth, structured interviews carried out with marketing managers or partners of 12 mid‐sized accountancy firms. Key conclusions are presented about the nature of barriers facing firms trying to empower people for business development and what firms need to do if these barriers are to be overcome.

Reports research into whether the commonly agreed dimensions of effective coaching actually relate to success and performance improvement. The research was carried out by Helen Ballard for Huthwaite Research Group during an on‐the‐job SPIN coaching programme Huthwaite ran for a large computer company in 1991. The programme was concerned with improving sales skills. Reports evidence showing that these dimensions do relate to effective coaching and performance improvement. Measures used were questionnaires and interviews with the managers and sellers, group discussions and some live observations with managers. Explores management competence, working relationships, leadership style, coaching style and learning style. Discusses why coaching does not happen, even when managers and the company culture appear to favour it. Highlights six key factors which organizations must consider if coaching initiatives are to produce the benefits frequently expected.

The authors describe the use of an action research approach in designing a management development scheme which successfully commands the support of line management. The client was a large company, which had previously operated management development on an ad hoc basis, but had come to see a more planned approach as crucial to a total strategy aimed at business turnaround.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Through a survey of 200 employees working in five of the thirty establishments analysed in previous research about the microeconomic effects of reducing the working time (Cahier 25), the consequences on employees of such a reduction can be assessed; and relevant attitudes and aspirations better known.

The purpose of this paper is to examine gender identities of Chinese male and female middle leaders in secondary schools and how gender dynamics play in the leadership process and impact on career aspirations and career development.

This paper draws on the data of a larger qualitative study conducted using the life history approach. Cases of four male and female middle leaders, which are able to demonstrate the “efficacy” of life stories to enhancing our appreciation of the process of gender negotiation and the impact of gender dynamics on leadership behaviour, are reported.

Evidence suggests that traditional Chinese gender identities played out in the leader‐follower relationships although signs of hybrid gender identities were also evident in some cases. Gender identities and the family role perception of the middle leaders have impact on their career aspirations and development.

Findings yield implications for the professional development needs of Chinese middle leaders not only regarding their professional role but also their personal understanding of how gender identities and family role perception impact on their career development. Further study with overlapping and complementary methods to a larger sample could be more illuminating to this complex and multifaceted issue.

In the context of global concerns about the shortage of leader talent, the present study illuminates gender identities and the dynamics of the interactions between Chinese superiors and subordinates of different sexes and adds perspective to the leadership development literature.

Following the UK Study of Abuse and Neglect of Older People, (O'Keeffe et al, 2007) Comic Relief funded 15 projects across England and Wales to enable them to trial different methods to combat elder abuse. In 2007, Daybreak received three years funding to pilot the use of family group conferences for this age group across Hampshire, Southampton and Portsmouth. This trial is now nearing the end, and is being evaluated for effectiveness and value. Hampshire County Council are currently working with Daybreak to expand the provision of family group conferences to all vulnerable adults where there are safguarding concerns, particularly within the context of personalisation and self‐directed support.

Since the global financial crisis of 2007-2009 academic research has paid considerable attention to understanding the nature of the crisis, its causes and consequences. This is not surprising given the scale and scope of the crisis. Much of this research has been undertaken within social science disciplines. At the same time, the crisis has also been the subject of fiction – novels, poetry and drama, and there is also a small body of academic scholarship on fiction relating to the crisis (and on finance in fiction more generally). The purpose of this paper is to suggest that fiction can offer a new perspective on the global financial crisis and thereby enhance our understanding of it.

This exploration draws upon three works of post-crisis fiction: the 2009 play by David Hare, The Power of Yes: A Dramatist Seeks to Understand the Financial Crisis (hereafter The Power of Yes); Other People’s Money, a novel by Justin Cartwright (2011); and Robert Harris’s novel The Fear Index also published in 2011. Its approach is based on close readings of the three texts in question.

Finance fiction stimulates a reconceptualization of the global financial crisis as a crisis of innovation and technological change.

This paper is a viewpoint article. The originality lies in the author’s interpretation of reading the global financial crisis through fiction.

Human Resource Management

Postgraduate business students, particularly MBA students.

This case examines the working environment of Fritz Publishing, a small independent South African publishing company. Fritz Publishing was established in 1960 by Nick Fritz. After his retirement, ownership passed to his son, Martin. In 2011, Martin Fritz decided to sell the company to the Prys Group, an international publishing house headquartered in Germany. February 2011 saw the arrival of a newly appointed CEO for Fritz Publishing, Vadim Arshavin, who had already experienced excellent financial results as the head of another publishing house. In the wake of his arrival, the company experienced several changes. The case highlights the challenges at Fritz Publishing that have resulted in a growing sense of dissatisfaction. After Martin Fritz sold Fritz Publishing, the organisational culture shifted quite drastically which created challenges for managers, employees and customers alike. Employees, including some members of management, are de-motivated, disengaged and frustrated because of the leadership style and behaviour of the new CEO Vadim Arshavin and consider their psychological contracts to have been breached. The case explores factors that have helped create this situation. It considers challenges to the sustainability of the organisation given recent events including an internal employee engagement survey and feedback from key customers. The case further examines the potential dangers that toxic leadership creates within organisations and encourages discussion on ways this form of destructive leadership can be handled.

The learning objectives to be drawn from the case are: to assess the impact of leadership on organisational culture; to analyse how leadership impacts the psychological contract; to identify the cross-cultural factors at play in an emerging market organisation and to understand the way a toxic leadership style can detrimentally affect a high-performance workplace. In addition, there are further learning objectives that can be explored. These are: to examine the change process and associated challenges with the introduction of new leadership into a family-type organisational culture; to understand how breach can be avoided and/or how the psychological contract can be reconstructed.

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CSS 6: Human Resource Management.