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Aims to analyse the reactions of front‐line staff to the use of the “customer” label in Jobcentre Plus, the new agency charged with structural and cultural reform of benefit administration in the UK and to highlight some key challenges and possibilities faced by “new public management” reformers in attempts to re‐present recipients of public services as customers.

Data are drawn from semi‐structured interviews with 39 front‐line workers in 14 public offices, conducted as part of the second phase of a study on staff perceptions of the Jobcentre Plus reform.

The majority of those interviewed reported awareness of and agreement with the customer label. More substantive views point to the ambiguous and shifting meanings applied by public sector workers to the customer role per se, and to its complex and multifaceted application to the Jobcentre Plus context.

Provides a systematic account of front‐line workers' attitudinal reactions to the incursion of the customer concept. However, the impact on users of the system is a question for further research.

Identifies a set of possibilities and challenges inherent in attempts to manage relevant cultural change amongst the front‐line of public service provision.

Provides a systematic account of the views of front‐line workers to the customerisation of public service provision, an issue of interest both to researchers and to practitioners.

Focuses on the issue of self‐confidence among women managers and on the psychological processes which may constrain it. One potentially relevant process is how we perceive the causes of our success and failure. Evidence from psychological laboratories suggests that women show a comparative tendency to “explain away” their success and take more personal responsibility for failure. Describes a research study investigating whether these gender differences occur among managers in organizations. The sample consisted of 158 managers in three organizations who accounted for incidents of their own and their direct subordinates′ successful and unsuccessful performance. The results indicated significant differences in how women and men account for their own success. Compared with their male counterparts, women managers tended to attribute their achievement of work goals less to their ability and more to hard work. Women also made more “generous” attributions for the success of subordinates. Finally, women managers (unlike men) tended to believe that ability had more to do with their subordinates′ successful performance than their own. Discusses various interpretations and practical implications of these results.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual and empirical analysis of the rationale and enactment of consumer discourses in reformed British welfare administration, through a focus on consumption and the service interaction. The paper aims to explore how administrators use these discourses to manage consumption in particular ways in order to promote individual enterprise and employability, and analyse the pivotal role of front‐line workers in these efforts.

The paper draws from range of data sources collected in a case study of Jobcentre Plus, including analysis of public and internal documents, observation of six public offices and interviews with 13 front‐line staff.

Images of customer sovereignty are used alongside heightened control to try to shape claimants' motivation and capacity for work. Front‐line staff, mainly endorse reformed structures, but their view of claimants is complex, departing from the images fostered by administrators.

The paper highlights the importance of context‐specific understanding of deployment of consumer discourses in public sector, but interview data are exploratory and further research is needed.

The paper highlights complexities inherent in customer orientation in welfare administration and the pivotal role of front‐line in reforms.

The paper provides a distinctive approach to analysis of customer concept in public sector reform, through focus on consumption and the service interaction.

To explore key legal issues surrounding sexual harassment claims made to employment tribunals and the courts.

This entails qualitative legal analysis of case decisions. This will involve an exposition of the reasoning behind legal decisions and a critical examination of the courts' or tribunals' interpretation of the law.

The research provides information about features and trends in sexual harassment litigation in Britain.

This paper outlines a set of preliminary results from an analysis of some sexual harassment cases heard in Britain.

Highlights key implications of legal decisions for human resource policy and practice in organizations. It will also identify deficiencies in management practice that lead to instances of sexual harassment taking place.

Scholars and policymakers in organizations should be interested in an integrated analysis of legal and organizational issues with respect to sexual harassment. The wider potential of the research is supported by the interest of the Equal Opportunities Commission and the willingness of the Commission to be named as an end user of the study.

The purpose of this paper is to present research conducted with legal cases of sexual harassment (SH) in Great Britain over the past ten years. The paper contributes to the equal opportunities literature since it offers a rare interpretation of longitudinal case data with important implications for law, policy, social science and, indeed, for the management of equal opportunities within organizations. The paper approaches SH both as an evolving legal issue and as a type of organizational conflict, with particular power influences and effects.

The population of individual case records with a SH component was accessed via the BALII database for the period 1995‐2005. These case records were content‐analyzed using a framework of variables developed for the study. Variables of interest initially were identified from a review of the social science, law and policy‐related literatures

The vast majority (96 per cent) of workers bringing appeals of SH were female. The data suggest that claimants were more likely to be single than married. In many ways, the profile of respondents appears a mirror image of claimants. This is true in terms of gender (92 per cent are men) and also in terms of organizational power; the large majority of individuals named as respondents in SH cases are managers or professional employees. It is evident from the analysis that there is low reporting and high attrition rates of cases relating to claims of SH.

Given this paper examines appellate cases, it is important that the findings are set in context. The appellate cases tend to deal with questions of law, which may make these cases particularly unique from the run of the mill harassment cases. Whilst dealing with important legal issues it should be acknowledged that appellate cases are not necessarily representative of SH litigation in general.

The paper contributes to the equal opportunities literature since it offers a rare interpretation of longitudinal case data with important implications for law, policy, social science and, indeed, for the management of equal opportunities within organizations.

The paper concludes that management of risk relating to SH could be improved via knowledge of the litigation record. This means looking not just at cases that make law, but at the wider body of claims tested by tribunals. Analysis of these could open a window on SH in workplaces – illuminating how it operates, how individuals and organisations react to its experience and how employment tribunals assess claims overall.

EEO and the management of diversity Volume 8 Number 5 of the Journal of Organizational Change Management contains an article by Maria Humphries and Shayne Grice entitled “Equal employment opportunity and the management of diversity: a global discourse of assimilation?”

Discrimination matters Volume 22 Number 2 of Health Manpower Management contains an article with this title by Catherine M. Prest, which outlines the changes in legal restrictions on the eligibility of dismissed employees to pursue unfair dismissal claims. Includes a discussion of recent decisions in this area and assesses the impact of these decisions on personnel practice and disciplinary procedures.

We investigated how an institutional settlement concerning Native Indian gaming (the operation of gambling establishments such as casinos or bingo halls by Native Indian tribes) was preserved over time in spite of three significant challenges. Building on previous literature on settlements and institutional logics, we see settlements as institutional arrangements that manage power dynamics and competing institutional logics. Based on our analyses of the settlement and three challenges in the Native gaming field, we suggest that even seemingly volatile institutional settlements can be maintained when powerful actors balance each other’s ability to modify the settlement and different actors invoke alternative institutional logic(s). We also find that these processes can be facilitated by the embeddedness and formality of the settlement. We contribute to the settlement literature by showing how settlements can be maintained when actors draw on equally strong sources of power and different logics to counter the actions of other actors. Furthermore, we shed light on “how institutions matter” by demonstrating how institutional settlements can facilitate field stability.

This chapter combines quantitative studies of the connections between stressors and performance in accounting settings and identifies the mediators and moderators of stressors–performance relationships. Using meta-analyses and path analyses, this research compiles 72 studies to investigate the relationships of stressors with accountant and auditor performance. As hypothesized, bivariate meta-analyses results indicate that work-related stressors negatively affect performance, and burnout and stress are negatively related to performance, whereas motivation is positively related to performance. Moreover, a meta-analytical structural equation modeling indicates that role stressors have significant direct and indirect effects (through burnout and stress) on job performance. Accumulation of multiple samples through meta-analysis bolsters statistical power compared to single-sample studies and thus reveals the sign of residual direct effects of role stressors on job performance in accounting settings.