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Action research which considers performance indicators within an English polytechnic is outlined, with emphasis on the analysis of course monitoring, review and validation documentation. Extracts from an interim research report are presented, together with related conclusions and recommendations.

This ethnographic investigation of a general hospital aims to critically analyse a much lauded corporate culture. Rather than accepting the managerial and academic claims concerning the mobilisation of corporate culture at face value, this study builds upon a labour process analysis and takes a close look at how it actually seems to work.

The paper explores and describes how executive managers seek to design and impose corporate culture change and how it affects the nursing employees of this organisation. This was achieved by means of a six month field study of day‐to‐day life in the hospital's nursing division.

The results lend little support to the official claims that, if managerial objectives are realised, they are achieved through some combination of shared values and employee participation. The evidence lends more support to the critical view in labour process writing that modern cultural strategies lead to increased corporate control, greater employee subjection and extensive effort intensification. The contradiction this brings into the working lives of the employees leads to the conclusion that the rhetoric of corporate culture change does not affect the pre‐existing attitudes and value orientations of nursing employees. However, there were considerable variations in how employees received the managerial message and thus, by their degree of misbehaviour and adaptation, affected the organisation itself as well as using the cultural rhetoric against the management for their own ends.

The paper concludes that an extended labour process analysis is necessary to challenge the way in which corporate culture change is explored and described by management academics and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the challenges in undertaking occupational pay comparisons and why this matters for evidence-based reward management, union bargaining strategies and perceptions of pay equity.

The paper draws on the extant literature on pay and undertakes detailed quantitative analysis of teachers pay in Scotland relative to teachers elsewhere in the UK, graduates and other professional occupations in the private and public sectors.

The key finding of this paper is that alternative ways of analysing pay comparability produce significantly different outcomes – occupational pay comparisons require the identification of an appropriate comparator and appropriate measures of pay and hours, yet this is not straightforward. Different approaches to comparability may lead to key stakeholders holding widely differing views about pay equity, with employment relations implications.

Quantitative analyses of pay using large-scale survey data are crucial to understanding relative occupational pay. However, quantitative analyses cannot provide in-depth and nuanced understanding of the nature of particular occupations. Moreover, the paper focuses at the occupational level and does not assess individual employee characteristics that may influence pay.

These findings should inform employers (especially HR managers), employees and unions on pay policy, pay settlements and bargaining strategies.

There is relatively little contemporary literature on the importance of, and challenges in undertaking, occupational pay comparisons.

Early stages of research concerning the implementation and evaluation of performance indicators within academic quality‐control procedures of an English polytechnic are described. The related perceptions of one distinctive group participating in validation/review processes – the course “Rapporteurs” – are considered before possible further developments of this qualitative illuminative enquiry are outlined.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how community aged care workers evaluate job quality using a job quality framework.

The study uses a qualitative approach. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and focus groups from a large aged care organisation.

Perceptions of job quality are influenced by individual motivations, match between life-stage and work flexibility, as well as broader community views of the value of this type of work. Intrinsic factors (e.g. autonomy, job content) moderate the impact of extrinsic factors such as pay and job security.

The sample is relatively small and the study is based on data from one aged care organisation which may not reflect employment conditions in other organisations.

Attraction and retention of community care workers can be improved by addressing factors associated with remuneration (including employment contracts and hours of work) and career structures. Skill and experience-based career structures would help build organisational capacity as well as making these jobs more attractive.

The demand for community care will continue to increase. Attracting, retaining and managing this workforce will be critical to meeting society’s expectations regarding the future care needs of older people.

This research explores an under-researched workforce group in a critical area of aged care management. It highlights two key areas with the potential to improve employee perceptions of job quality and therefore address issues related to attraction, retention, job satisfaction and ultimately organisational performance.

There appear to be many paradoxes within the management of the growing call centre sector. The purpose of this paper is to consider one of these paradoxes, the extensive recruitment and training regimes in workplaces that are faced with very high levels of turnover.

This research is of a single worksite, a call centre of a public utilities company. The research method was non‐participant observation over a seven‐month period coupled with ten interviews with key personnel.

It was found that the organisation was able to offset the costs of training and recruitment through internal transfers within the larger organisation.

It is a single site study, hence, while of substantial depth the findings are not generalisable. More broad based research is required in the area.

A useful source of information for practitioners in call centres, as well as researchers in the area of recruitment, training and call centres.

This paper provides a valuable insight into an area of call centres that has not been adequately investigated; that of recruitment and training employees for emotional labour.

This ethnographic revisit of a general hospital aims to critically explore and describe the mechanisms of corporate culture change and how institutional excellence is facilitated and constrained by everyday management practices between 1996/1997 and 2014/2015.

A five-month field study of day-to-day life in the hospital's nursing division was conducted by means of an ethnographic revisit, using participant-observation, semi-structured interviews, free conversations and documentary material.

Using labour process analysis with ethnographic data from a general hospital, the corporate culture is represented as faceted, complex and sophisticated, lending little support to the managerial claims that if corporate objectives are realised, they are achieved through some combination of shared values, beliefs and managerial practices. The findings tend to support the critical view in labour process writing that modern managerial initiatives lead to tightened corporate control, advanced employee subjection and extensive effort intensification. The findings demonstrate the way in which the nursing employees enthusiastically embrace many aspects of the managerial message and yet, at the same time, still remain suspicious and distance themselves from it through misbehaviour and adaptation, and, in some cases, use the rhetoric against management for their own ends.

What are the implications for clinical and managerial practitioners? The recommendations are to (1) develop managerial practitioners who are capable of managing change combined with the professional autonomy of clinical practitioners, (2) take care to practise what you preach in clinical and managerial reality, as commitment, consent, compliance and difference of opinion are signs of a healthy corporate culture and (3) consider the implications between social structures and human actions with different work behaviours on different levels involved.

This ethnographic revisit considers data from a labour process analysis of corporate culture change in a general hospital and revisits the ways in which contradictory expectations and pressures are experienced by nursing employees and management practitioners spread 17 years apart.

Prevailing concepts of corporate governance that are based on external shareholder interests have been challenged by a number of authors over the last three decades. The purpose of this paper is to outline the core assumptions of communitarian philosophy and values, together with the way writers imagine these might be enacted in a social enterprise context. These assumptions are then explored using two case studies.

The paper was conducted using participatory action research which involves parties examining current actions together and seeking to improve on them. The value of this approach is based on the plausible, authentic and critical insights it generates into management practice.

Case evidence suggests that companies are able to adopt and operate effectively while deploying communitarian values and that these values lead to alternative business objectives expressed through new forms of corporate governance. Nevertheless, the adopting of common language does not necessarily mean that social enterprises share a common philosophy.

The key contribution of this paper is to evaluate the institutionalisation of governance and consider the relationship between the form and substance of practice. By considering the link between words and actions, the paper concludes that the adoption of a governance framework, or particular language, matters less than the capacity of company members to participate in the development of governance norms that enable them to act congruently with their own beliefs and values.

The spread of economic global integration in the last 50 years has resulted in the recent emergence of global labour markets. Ageing populations and skill shortages have placed significant pressure upon Australia's economic sustainability and survival in a global economy. The global race for talent has seen the emergence of skilled migration as a key element in Australia's strategy to address major human capital trends and issues and to source pools of talent considered highly skilled or in demand. This paper seeks to address these issues.

This paper draws together research on skilled migration in the Australian context and the factors that explain use of Australia's 457 visa scheme by organisations for attracting and recruiting talent. Data from a survey of members of the Australian Human Resources Institute (n=1,045) is analysed using logistic regression.

The results show that larger, goods producing, organisations with skills shortages are more likely to employ skilled migrants, while not‐for‐profit and regional organisations are less likely. Sponsorship of 457 visa workers for permanent residency is more likely in larger, regional organisations willing to pay above market rates to fill long‐term vacancies and seeking to attract international skills and knowledge but less likely in public organisations.

The study has limitations related to the fact that the sample is limited to Australian members of a human resource professional body.

There is very little literature on the use of temporary skilled migration by organisations from a HRM perspective. The findings shed light upon the extent of employer‐sponsored temporary skilled migration as a talent sourcing strategy in a range of industries and organisations across Australia.

This paper seeks to examine the discourses that influence policy and practice in social enterprises. In institutional circles, arguments are shaped by the desire to protect assets for the community, while entrepreneurial discourses favour a mixture of investment sources, surplus sharing and inclusive systems of governance. A critique is outlined that challenges policy‐makers and academics to move beyond the heated debate on “business‐like” activity through a deeper understanding of the social relations entered into (and created by) different social entrepreneurial activities.

The paper is wholly theoretical. First, contradictions are exposed through a review of practitioner and scholarly literature. Thereafter, empirically grounded studies are used to develop a theoretical model that accommodates and accounts for diverse practices.

A broader perspective, that views human behaviour as a product of, and support system for, our socio‐sexual choices, is deployed to extend understanding of social capital. By integrating this into governance theory, workplaces come to be seen as complex centres of community‐building, replete with economic and social goals. The concept of “social rationality” is elaborated as an alternative way to understand the legitimacy of social entrepreneurial activity and management practice.

The paper concludes by developing a framework and typology that theorises social enterprise as a heterogeneous business movement. Each form of social enterprise integrates socially rational thinking into its policies and practices. This suggests a different educational agenda for social entrepreneurs oriented towards the equitable distribution, and not accumulation, of social and economic capital.