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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of high-performance human resource management practices (HPHRMPs) on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) and the influences of national culture (NC) and organisational culture (OC) on this relationship.

Using a self-administered survey, data were collected from a sample of 420 public sector employees. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression analysis.

The findings of this study offer new insights into the ability to improve OCB through greater consideration of NC and OC in the design of HPHRMP. The results indicated that NC fully mediates the relationship between HPHRMP and OCB, whilst OC has a partial mediating influence.

HPHRMP includes a wide variety of functional areas; however, this study has only examined three (reward management, performance appraisal and promotion practices) and contributes to understanding the importance of institutional theory in HRM.

This study highlights the need for HR professionals to ensure that they consider the impact of cultural differences (national and organisational) on how these HR practices will be perceived by employees.

The present study seeks to extend research into the link between cultural context and HPHRMP and posits that culture plays a crucial role in this relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of employee assistance programs (EAP) as a form of perceived organisational support (POS) to address workplace bullying (WB), from the perspective of employees who have been the victims of bullying.

Using an on-line survey, data were collected from 397 employees across a range of positions and industry sectors in Australia, who indicated they had been subjected to bullying.

The results of the study indicate that WB is rife, and although anti-bullying policies were in existence participants felt that these were mere tokenism. The level of POS and use of EAPs were considered to be inadequate and, interestingly, in some cases offered more support to the bully than the victim.

With the increased rate of WB, organisations are seeking different ways to address this. This study highlights that the ability of EAPs to provide support to employees in these circumstances appears to be limited. The findings suggest that if management wish to use EAPs to support employees in cases of WB, they must invest more in them.

This study seeks to extend research into the management of WB through EAPs and POS and posits that there is a high level of dissatisfaction with management’s response and support with regard to bullying incidents.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perception of skills shortages, namely, skills scarcity and skills deficiencies among managers, and its relationship with organizational characteristics.

The study used a quantitative approach and data were collected from 243 managers working in China. Multivariate analysis of variance and box plots were employed for data analysis.

The results revealed that organizational characteristics were found to have a significant positive impact on managers’ skill levels, and hard-to-fill vacancies caused by skills shortages were found in all types of organizations. Existing and deficient skills were also identified as affecting all organizations.

The results suggest that organizations would benefit from the adoption of a system supporting internal retention, training and development and external recruitment to close the skills gaps.

This is an empirical study that provides an insight into the skills shortages from a multi-organizational context. It highlights the effects of organizational characteristics in relation to skills shortages and provides a foundation to support the skills needed in the context of national and global organizations.

The aim of this paper is to examine the determinants of organizational performance (OP) of business enterprises located in China and to explore how individual demographic and organizational characteristics affect OP.

This study applies quantitative methods to examine the OP. Data were collected from 405 managers across 306 organizations in China.

The study finds that, overall, OP is related to five factors, namely, finance and customer, internal business, work satisfaction, pay and benefits and innovation and technology (INT). The results from this study provide new perspectives and support the overall validity of the nomological network of OP factors. The findings also provide guidelines on which perspectives of performance organizations should be enhanced.

The five-factor model of OP provides benefit to any organization or individual who intends to examine OP in China. In addition, the findings suggest that organizations should explore ways to enforce their performance. The findings also inform organizational decision makers about practices for performance improvement.

The present study was undertaken to advance understanding of OP in China in several ways. The most significant element of this study was the five-factor performance model generated from the structural equation modeling analysis. The results from MANOVA highlight the potential impact of organization theory on how demographic and organizational variables influence OP in China.

William Blackwood, the founder of the firm of the name, saw service in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and London before opening in 1804 as a bookseller at 64 South Bridge, Edinburgh. Blackwood continued in his bookselling capacity for a number of years, and his shop became a haunt of the literati, rivalling Constable's in reputation and in popularity. His first success as a publisher was in 1811, when he brought out Kerr's Voyages, an ambitious item, and followed shortly after by The Life of Knox by McCrie. About this time he became agent in Edinburgh for John Murray, and the two firms did some useful collaborating. Blackwood was responsible for suggesting alterations in The Black Dwarf, which drew from Scott that vigorous letter addressed to James Ballantyne which reads: “Dear James,—I have received Blackwood's impudent letter. G ‐ d ‐ his soul, tell him and his coadjutor that I belong to the Black Hussars of Literature, who neither give nor receive criticism. I'll be cursed but this is the most impudent proposal that was ever made”. Regarding this story Messrs. Blackwood say: “This gives a slightly wrong impression. Scott was still incognito. William Blackwood was within his rights. He was always most loyal to Scott.” There has been some controversy as to the exact style of this letter, and it has been alleged that Lockhart did not print it in the same terms as Sir Walter wrote it. Blackwood came into the limelight as a publisher when he started the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine in 1817, which was to be a sort of Tory counterblast to the Whiggish Edinburgh Review. He appointed as editors James Cleghorn and Thomas Pringle, who later said that they realised very soon that Blackwood was much too overbearing a man to serve in harness, and after a time they retired to edit Constable's Scots Magazine, which came out under the new name of The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany. [Messrs. Blackwood report as follows: “No. They were sacked—for incompetence and general dulness. (See the Chaldee Manuscript.) They were in office for six months only.”] Blackwood changed the name of The Edinburgh Magazine to Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, and became his own editor, with able henchmen in John Wilson, Christopher North, John Gibson Lockhart, and James Hogg as contributors. It was a swashbuckling magazine, sometimes foul in attack, as when it told John Keats to get “back to the shop, back to plaster, pills, and ointment boxes”. Lockhart had a vigour of invective such as was quite in keeping with the age of Leigh Hunt, an age of hard‐hitting. The history of Blackwood in those days is largely the history of the magazine, though Blackwood was at the same time doing useful publishing work. He lost the Murray connexion, however, owing to the scandalous nature of some of the contributions published in Maga; these but expressed the spirit of the times. John Murray was scared of Blackwood's Scottish independence! Among the book publications of Blackwood at the period we find Schlegel's History of Literature, and his firm, as we know, became publisher for John Galt, George Eliot, D. M. Moir, Lockhart, Aytoun, Christopher North, Pollok, Hogg, De Quincey, Michael Scott, Alison, Bulwer Lytton, Andrew Lang, Charles Lever, Saintsbury, Charles Whibley, John Buchan, Joseph Conrad, Neil Munro—a distinguished gallery. In 1942 the firm presented to the National Library of Scotland all the letters that had been addressed to the firm from its foundation from 1804 to the end of 1900, and these have now been indexed and arranged, and have been on display at the National Library where they have served to indicate the considerable service the firm has given to authorship. The collection is valuable and wide‐ranging.

This chapter includes a citation analysis of the first 16 volumes of Advances in Accounting Education: Teaching and Curriculum Innovations (henceforth, Advances in Accounting Education). Using this analysis, we identified the top 20 articles of the 195 articles published. This analysis provides an understanding of the relative contribution and impact of the papers published in Advances in Accounting Education, and the information provides past authors with a measure of how their contributions compare with the contributions of other authors. Also, this analysis may be valuable for potential contributors who are developing a research topic in that it will enable them to identify the types of articles that have traditionally had the greatest impact.

We also identify the top 30 authors of the 383 who have published in the journal. This analysis not only gives feedback to the authors listed, but also helps accounting education researchers identify authors whose work may be relevant to their interests.

We report the research categories (issues) and methodologies used for all articles published from 1998 to 2015 in Advances in Accounting Education. We also compare the research issues and research methodologies used in Advances in Accounting Education to those in the Journal of Accounting Education and Issues in Accounting Education for the period 2006–2015. Authors considering submitting a manuscript to one of these journals can use this information to determine which journal might be the best fit for their work.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the basis of the complaints against banks which sold private label securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the financial crisis. The examination shows that all but one of the cases was settled out of court. Nomura and RBS went to court, but the case against them was based on dubious evidence and on strict liability which only enabled the judge to set aside relevant evidence. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s evidence against senior executives of Fannie and Freddie shows that they deliberately purchased PLSs based on subprime loans to meet the government’s housing targets.

The research was based on publicly available documents, including details of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) complaints against the banks in question, the settlement agreements published by the DoJ, FHFA and SEC. Furthermore, it includes documentary evidence from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Committee and Senate Committees, the full transcript of the trial, opinions of the judge for the trial and the judgement.

The findings are that many have concluded that settlements out of court fail to satisfy the demand for justice. They have been criticised as a trade-off between the prosecutor and the bank, with a view that the imposition of large fines is to pay back taxpayers’ money spent on rescuing the banks, rather than punishing those responsible. Such fines do little, if anything, to change the behaviour of banks. As a result, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum on 9 September to focus on individual accountability for corporate wrongdoing. It remains to be seen how many cases against senior executives will result from the change in direction.

The implications of the research are that it is important even in the aftermath of such a serious if not devastating financial crisis to ensure that the laws are properly applied and can stand up to any challenge that it has been stretched to obtain the results the administration of the day wants to see. In addition, care must be taken over both the imposition of large fines and the use to which the monies should be put. All the parties involved in bringing about the crisis should be held to account. The major cases against the banks have almost all been “resolved”. A change in direction has now taken place.

The practical implications of holding individuals to account should now be tackled. It requires a careful examination of the laws and regulations already in place to ensure that it is clear within a bank as to who is responsible for what. It will only be possible to hold senior individuals to account if the laws are clear and if all the evidence is not hidden. It may also require a review of the contracts under which senior executives are employed, because to remove a person from his post and then find that he still has a large pension pot and bonuses due may not result in justice either. A delicate balancing act is required because banks require highly competent and motivated individuals to run them.

If a very large fine is imposed on a bank, the shareholders and customers pay. The shareholders will mostly own the shares through their pensions and their savings in mutual funds.

There have been few studies of all the cases against the banks brought by the DoJ and FHFA and still fewer have recognized the fact that government housing policy was the source of the extent of the subprime mortgages.

THE centenary celebration is that of the apparently prosaic public library acts ; it is not the centenary of libraries which are as old as civilization. That is a circumstance which some may have overlooked in their pride and enthusiasm for the public library. But no real librarian of any type will fail to rejoice in the progress to which the celebration is witness. For that has been immense. We are to have a centenary history of the Public Library Movement—that is not its title—from the Library Association. We do not know if it will be available in London this month; we fear it will not. We do know its author, Mr. W. A. Munford, has spent many months in research for it and that he is a writer with a lucid and individual Style. We contemplate his task with a certain nervousness. Could anyone less than a Carlyle impart into the dry bones of municipal library history that Strew these hundred years, the bones by the wayside that mark out the way, the breath of the spirit that will make them live ? For even Edward Edwards, whose name should be much in the minds and perhaps on the lips of library lovers this month, could scarcely have foreseen the contemporary position ; nor perhaps could Carlyle who asked before our genesis why there should not be in every county town a county library as well as a county gaol. How remote the days when such a question was cogent seem to be now! It behoves us, indeed it honours us, to recall the work of Edwards, of Ewart, Brotherton, Thomas Greenwood, Nicholson, Peter Cowell, Crestadoro, Francis Barrett, Thomas Lyster, J. Y. M. MacAlister, James Duff Brown and, in a later day without mentioning the living, John Ballinger, Ernest A. Baker, L. Stanley Jast, and Potter Briscoe—the list is long. All served the movement we celebrate and all faced a community which had to be convinced. It still has, of course, but our people do now allow libraries a place, more or less respected, in the life of the people. Librarians no longer face the corpse‐cold incredulity of the so‐called educated classes, the indifference of the masses and the actively vicious hostility of local legislators. Except the illuminated few that existed. These were the men who had the faith that an informed people was a happier, more efficient one and that books in widest commonalty spread were the best means of producing such a people. These, with a succession of believing, enduring librarians, persisted in their Struggle with cynic and opponent and brought about the system and the technique we use, modified of course and extended to meet a changing world, but essentially the same. Three names we may especially honour this September, Edward Edwards, who was the sower of the seed; MacAlister, who gained us our Royal Charter ; and John Ballinger, who was the person who most influenced the introduction of the liberating Libraries Act of 1919.