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The purpose of this paper is to explore how human resource (HR) managers in garment factories in a Sri Lankan export processing zone (EPZ) navigated the tension between their role as stewards of employee welfare and their role to maximise firm productivity in response to time and production pressures imposed by international buyers. Relatively little attention has been paid to the role of HR managers as liaisons between firms and labour. This omission is significant, given the importance of human resource management in the recruitment and retention of labour and the role of HR managers in organisational performance and regulatory compliance.

A qualitative approach was used based on interviews with 18 HR managers, factory managers and other key informants, and 63 factory workers from 12 firms in the Katunayake EPZ. The interviews and focus groups in English were transcribed and coded into themes arising from the literature and further developed from the transcripts. Initial codes were analysed to identify common themes across the data set.

HR managers were acutely aware of the competitive pressures facing the EPZ garment factories. While examples of company welfarism were evident, HR practices such as incentive payment systems and the management of employee absences reinforced a workplace environment of long hours, work intensification and occupational injury.

This paper goes some way towards filling the gap in our understanding of the roles played by HR managers in garment factories in the Global South, raising theoretical debates regarding the potential for HR managers in developing countries to distance themselves from the negative consequences of HR practices such as individual and team reward systems.

July 26, 1967 Building and construction — Safety Regulations — Breach — Causation — Failure to provide suitable scaffold — Whether workman would have used scaffold if provided — Whether failure to provide cause of fall — Construction (General Provisions) Regulations, 1961 (S.I. 1961, No. 1580), reg.7(2).

The purpose of this article is to explore the export of new public management (NPM) to developing countries and to describe and evaluate the introduction of these initiatives in very different environments from their origins.

The article traces the introduction of performance agreements into the public service of Vanuatu. Performance agreements are identified as an initiative typically promoted by NPM. The Vanuatu case is set within a review of the origin, use and record of performance agreements in countries such as Australia, the UK and the USA.

The adoption of performance agreements has been slow and has enjoyed limited success. Among the difficulties encountered are suspicion, lack of incentives, an unreceptive environment, and possible identification as being donor‐driven. It is difficult to see performance agreements in their current form making an impact on performance improvement in the Vanuatu public service.

NPM initiatives must be carefully considered before being transferred to other countries. They may offer benefits but what has worked in one environment will often need considerable modification, certain preconditions and lengthy lead‐in time to be effective in another environment.

There are few case studies of attempts to transfer NPM‐style reforms to developing countries and none on performance agreements, yet many countries in the Pacific and elsewhere are becoming interested in this mode of performance management. This case study helps to fill this gap through description and analysis of the Vanuatu experience and provides practical lessons for others considering policy transfer of NPM initiatives such as performance agreements.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to explain frontline employee absence as a form of concerted resistance in a public service welfare environment.

Conflicts over absenteeism can be interpreted as a mix of formal and informal struggles over the effort bargain. Centrelink workers' use of “unplanned leave” between 2005 and 2007 involved the quasi‐collective use of a formal entitlement in a form of misbehaviour that defied management control.

Whereas absenteeism is normally assumed to be a form of unorganised individual time‐theft, in this study it became a tacitly‐agreed form of collective resistance and a way of affirming collectively negotiated rights.

This paper explores how the toll of cost cutting and implementation of tighter welfare eligibility rules elicited collective resistance through leave taking and highlights how absenteeism can be more than an individual response of passive disengagement.

Using theories of resistance, the authors highlight how the case study both conforms to and departs from the received wisdom about absenteeism as an individual oppositional strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the potential role that performance management could play in enabling employees’ adaptability to change and, therefore, successful change implementation.

This research adopted a qualitative case study research design, focussed on seven case studies within the Australian Public Service (APS). This study utilized documentary analysis, semi-structured individual and group interviews.

The findings of this research demonstrate that adaptability to change is integral for high performance; however, the constant change faced by many public servants is disruptive. The authors posit that applying a performance framework developed by Blackman et al. (2013a, b) to change implementation will help overcome, or at least mitigate, these issues. The authors argue that applying this framework will: enable adaptability to change; and provide an ongoing management function that enables change to occur.

This research has been limited to seven organizations within the APS, yet it does reveal interesting implications in terms of the apparent role of performance management in both developing change capacity and supporting espoused outcomes.

This research identifies the potential role that performance management can play in supporting effective change implementation through enabling employees to cope better with the change through enabling clarity, purpose and alignment with the organizational direction.

The originality of this paper stems from the synthesis of different strands of literature, specifically high performance, performance management and change management, and empirical research in the public sector to provide a new way of looking at performance management as a change enabler.

The article aims to investigate implementation problems arising from the introduction of a new computer system in a public agency.

Two analytical lenses were employed: a prescriptive model of technology‐based implementation and planned and emergent models of change.

Unintended consequences tested the organisation's resilience. It was found that those parts of the organisation with enhanced resilience exhibited localised leadership.

Successful implementation of change involving new technology requires a balance between “top‐down” planning and distributed leadership. Adequate attention to organisational learning is also a significant factor.

Implementation involving new computer systems is a commonly‐encountered problem in the public sector, yet there are few empirically‐based studies that deal with organisational and management issues in this context.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of task interdependence and leader–member exchange, as social exchange variables, on affective commitment and turnover intent of new workers in an industry with high attrition rates. In addition, the paper examines the mediating effects of affective commitment.

The present study drew insights from the literature to formulate hypotheses that link the two social exchange variables on affective commitment and turnover intent. Through the utilization of the data collected from 441 call center agents working for eight call centers in the Philippines, the hypotheses were tested and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results reveal that task interdependence and leader–member exchange are positive antecedents of affective commitment and negative predictors of turnover intent. Further analysis reveals that affective commitment fully mediates the effects of the two social exchange variables on turnover intent.

The results imply that call centers can help improve new workers' affective commitment and reduce their turnover intent through job designs that can facilitate high task interdependence. Furthermore, training team leaders or supervisors to develop leadership styles that are more focused on people and relationships may also increase the agents' commitment and reduce their quit intention.

This paper is the first to demonstrate that social exchange variables can also impact the affective commitment and turnover intent of new workers in an industry known to have heavy supervisorial monitoring, high demands in terms of work quotas and high turnover rates.

The following annotated bibliography of materials on orienting users to the library and on instructing them in the use of reference and other resources covers publications from 1980. Several items from 1979 were included because information about them had not been available in time for the 1980 listing. Some entries were not annotated because the compiler was unable to secure a copy of the item.