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The purpose of this paper is to examine what organisational and management practices used in connection with open space flexible offices create business value. It seeks to identify what consequences this may have for successful real estate practices.

This paper utilises an inductive case study approach. The international telecom company Telenor has implemented open space flexible offices from top to bottom amongst their 35,000 employees. The case description and analysis is based on secondary data, user evaluations and 20 interviews with middle- and top-level managers across levels and functional departments.

The case of Telenor reveals that leadership and organizing issues are important, together with work modes and communication technology, for a productive use of work place design. The paper highlights specifically how the open, transparent, flexible office solution creates business value when used with centralised and standardised organisational management systems and a participative, informal leadership culture.

The study is based on one case, so the findings need to be tested across a representative sample of companies.

Managers need to take both organisational and management issues into consideration when implementing new office space design. This challenges also the existing real estate strategies to include the organisational and management issues in their planning.

The originality and value of the paper lies in the analysis and findings of the Telenor case introducing organizational and management perspectives to real estate issues.

The major reason for the success of Japanese decision making is the understanding, acceptance and support of techniques by managers and employees, the various stages of the decision‐making process being utilised, alongside the unofficial politics, in direction, subtlety and patience which are intrinsic to the consensual decision process. By contrast US managers register scepticism and suspicion towards participative decision processes; when such a process is used it is primarily for the purpose of improving decision quality, as against the Japanese aim to achieve unanimous consent (not approval). The Japanese process allows decision implementation with little conflict; however the prerequisites for this form of participation may be largely unfilled in other cultures' work places.

Although many studies contend that there are few advantages to using participation among organisation members, consideration should be given to the contingency approach to participation. The management practitioner should address such issues as value attributed to participation by employees, skill level, the practitioner's willingness to relinquish some power, time required for a decision to be reached, and nature of the task being performed. The manager can thus discriminate between situations in which participation has a motivating potential, and those in which it would be detrimental.

The purpose of this paper is to briefly summarise a successfully completed doctoral thesis which longitudinally and intimately explored the social dynamics of learning activity within a project team.

This research was pursued through participative action research applied to a case study project team.

The key findings of this study included the identification and analysis of five sociological elements which moderate the situated learning behaviour of participants while they are on‐the‐job. Combined, these elements form a model of project situated learning behaviour.

The findings generated focus attention on the complex social and practical issues involved in learning within projects and provide a framework that aids practitioners' systematic reflection and action on their learning activities.

This study provides deep and original insights into the learning phenomenon within the practice of project management. There has already been numerous journal publications generated from it, and in late 2007, the author of this thesis published a book largely based on this doctoral work entitled Cultivating Learning within Projects, by Andrew Sense, Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN: 0230006914 ISBN‐13: 9780230006911. This book can be sourced directly from Palgrave Macmillan at: www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?PID = 276502

Three manufacturing facilities of an international consumer products company were studied to determine cross‐cultural differences in how managers address employee participation. Despite nearly identical products, a common company culture, and other similarities, European managers demonstrated a very different perspective on employee participation than American managers. Implications for American managers are developed from these contrasts.

the problem of where and how to start In my first two articles I have made the point that the management trainer has to provide learning experiences in several distinct fields. I identified four such fields. One field I referred to as the KNOWLEDGE module and this knowledge related largely to management techniques and systems although some elements of management principle might be included. Then I identified an EXPERIENCE module or OPPORTUNITY TO APPLY IN PRACTICE module; this requires a different type of learning experience. After this came the third area which concerns the development of advanced MENTAL SKILLS such as decision‐making and problem‐solving. Then I treated that aspect of management which involves MANAGING THE HUMAN RESOURCE.

Worker participation has been broadly defined as “any process designed to increase the ability of a worker to make decisions, or influence the making of decisions, which relate either to a specific job within an organisation, or more broadly to the overall functioning of that organisation”. As this definition suggests, worker participation can take many forms. One of these is joint consultation. Joint consultation has been described as “the means whereby management and employees may together consider, and where appropriate determine, matters affecting their joint or respective interests”. Thus joint consultation may allow for the following different degrees of participation:

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relevant sayings and stories of the ancient Chinese sages in relation to the style of Chinese human resource management (HRM).

Related texts generated from the quotations and stories from four Chinese sages, Guanzi, Hanfeizi, Xunzi and Yanzi, were translated and analyzed and their thinking regarding ruling the state and managing the people was discussed in line with the thoughts from the mainstream and modern Western management gurus such as Warren Bennis, Peter Drucker, Mary Parker Follett, Douglas McGregor, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Elton Mayo and Jeffrey Pfeffer.

It was found that there were striking similarities in thoughts and call for actions to address key issues in HRM by both old and contemporary, east and west thinkers across 2,500 years. The main concerns are to select the right leaders and managers and recruit the right people; create attractive organisational culture and environments that promote a participative management approach to encourage, empower and engage employees to achieve desirable outcomes; uphold the people‐centred management principles; and focus on designing reward schemes that emphasise service and contribution instead of position and profits.

There is much to be learned from the past to address the present people management issues among modern organisations both inside China and perhaps from other parts of the world. It was as difficult to take seriously the principles‐based ruling and management approaches in ancient times as it is today. However, if these principles had been put into practice, the world would have had fewer of the corporate corruption scandals and less of the mischievous behaviour in the state that are manifested in today's society, but more productive population, effective organisations, ethical governments and harmonious environment; hence less global human suffering.

Studies have shown that teachers' perceptions and expectations of their working environment shape their perceived stress. The present study draws upon implicit leadership theory and builds on the job demands-control (JD-C) model to investigate whether there are differences in the implications of participative decision-making and paternalistic leadership for teachers' perceived stress in the Israeli Arab education system.

Data were collected through validated questionnaires returned by a two-stage cluster random sampling of 350 teachers randomly chosen from 70 Israeli Arab elementary schools. Paternalistic leadership and participative decision-making were considered as group-level variables to lower the risk of common method variance. The proposed model was tested through hierarchical regression analysis. Finally, to test the hypothesis that paternalistic leadership and participative decision-making standardized beta weights were statistically significantly different from each other, their corresponding 95% confidence intervals were estimated via bias corrected bootstrap (1000 re-samples).

The findings indicated differences in the levels of the principal's paternalistic leadership and participative decision-making as perceived by the Israeli Arab teachers. Also, the results indicated that participative decision-making was negatively correlated with teachers' perceived stress beyond the influence of paternalistic leadership.

Examining teachers' working conditions and resources can be important since they affect teachers' perceived stress, which may in turn affects school results in the Arab education system in Israel. This study can contribute to the development of training programs for teachers to improve and adapt principals' leadership practices to the sociocultural context of the Arab education system in Israel.

This article discusses the relationship between management style within a firm and the procedures used to determine internal wage and salary differentials. At a time when management styles are apparently becoming less authoritarian and paternalistic in favour of greater worker participation there is obviously a danger of firms using payment techniques which are inappropriate to the current management/worker relationship. Some simple models of workers and organization are used to identify four broad styles of management. These styles are then related to the job evaluation and performance rating techniques in common use in British industry today. Some general conclusions are drawn concerning future trends in payment to suit management style.