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A big issue in research on leadership and organisation change is how, and how much, workers who will carry out the decisions should participate in the decision making process. An answer to this question has become more crucial now that several recent studies have shown that worker participation in the decision making process is by no means always successful: here the type of decision plays a large part. Certain conclusions from a study in three Dutch organisations are discussed below. This study is part of an international research project.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the commitment‐ and control‐approaches on the use of competency management, and to investigate whether attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control mediate these effects.

In Study 1, using a survey, employees indicated whether their organization adopted a commitment‐ or a control‐approach towards competency management. Moreover, they rated their own attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control, and behaviour. In Study 2 a scenario experiment was conducted in which the authors manipulated the commitment‐ and control‐approaches towards competency management in order to establish causal relations.

Results consistently showed that the use of competency management is higher within a commitment‐ than within a control‐approach. Furthermore, attitude and perceived behavioural control were found to mediate the relationship between the commitment‐approach and the use of competency management.

Future research should include other organizational members, for example (line) managers, to create future insight in the effects of commitment‐ and control‐approaches on the use of competency management.

The results of the studies highlight that a commitment‐oriented approach increases the use of competency management by employees and that a positive employee attitude and perceived behavioural control are of considerable importance when increasing the use of competency management is an organization's primary goal.

The paper gives insight in how to persuade and stimulate employees to use competency management more frequently.

This chapter summarizes a meta-analysis of 72 studies (N= 20,701) that link customer mistreatment (abusive, nasty, and rude behavior of customers toward employees) to psychological, attitudinal, and behavioral strains. Results showed that customer mistreatment related significantly to a variety of psychological and attitudinal strains (emotional exhaustion, emotional strain, job (dis)satisfaction, turnover intentions, perceived organizational support, and supervisor support) and behavioral strains (reduced customer service performance and counterproductive work behavior (CWB) directed toward organizations and customers). These results were similar to those found with general mistreatment, suggesting that mistreatment by organizational outsiders might have similar effects to mistreatment from organizational insiders. These results suggest a clear association of mistreatment with strains, but recent work is discussed that questions the typical assumption that mistreatment leads to CWB rather than the reverse.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

In this article two personnel management strategies are discussed: a control strategy and a commitment strategy. The main argument is that in most circumstances a balanced strategy has clear advantages over one of the two extreme options.