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The Manpower Consultative Group for the Hotel and Catering Industry has for the last 18 months shown a serious concern for the critical manpower situation faced by that industry. The Group's Chairman, in a recent statement entitled ‘Manpower weaknesses hamper industry's efficiency and restrict its growth’ drew attention to the achievements of the Group and to a number of important studies due to be reported this year:

The pursuit and attainment of alternative job opportunities within labor markets can have a significant impact on work relations in organizations. This search and turnover syndrome is explored here by reexamining the impact that internal and external labor market opportunities have on this process. The individual, organizational and market characteristics of a sample of over 700 employees from medical centers in Israel were used to show that job search modes have no direct effect on turnover behavior. The type and intensity of a job search did, however, depend on employees' perception of various labor market opportunities. Search modes themselves are affected by individual and organizational level characteristics and the employees' intention to leave. This suggests that while negative perceptions of opportunities in the internal labor market matched by positive perceptions of external market opportunities directly affect the turnover decision‐making process, job search behaviors do not necessarily affect the turnover decision.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the international construction sector from a macroeconomic point of view through production functions. The aim is to contribute additional knowledge on the European construction sector, highlighting differences in the industry among European countries

In order to analyse the sector panel, data from 1996‐2005 for nine European countries were used. Raw data were obtained from Eurostat (Bach Project). Variables for the production functions were chosen after a correlation analysis. Annual turnover was taken as the dependent variable, whereas total assets and personnel costs were the independent variables. The econometric regression models considered were linear (bivariate and multivariate) and logarithmic (Cobb‐Douglas).

In spite of the limitations stated, there are some factors that can explain the results obtained, such as the diverse preponderance of small and medium enterprises and the different roles played by informal economy, migration and subcontracting in each of the countries.

Data collected by Eurostat are provided by the enterprises voluntarily. This implies a bias in the representativeness of the data. Thus, the discrepancies and inconsistencies in the results obtained are a direct consequence of the data limitations. Furthermore, the regression models obtained should be tested using future data to predict the behaviour of the construction industry in each one of the countries.

The use of production functions in the construction industry is a novel approach that should be further developed to gather more precise information on the behaviour of the sector.

Total quality management programmes have produced an impressive list of claimed benefits and continue to accumulate converts to this philosophy. Many of the basic requirements for successful TQM implementation deal with changes in company personnel, including: the need for teamwork and participative management, employee creativity and innovativeness, an appropriate reward structure, a nurturing organizational climate with management commitment at all levels, customer feedback, employee/management trust, employee involvement and empowerment for improved communications and quicker decision making. What is the impact of these requirements on employee turnover intentions? The major purpose of this study was empirically to test several hypotheses which compare employee turnover intentions and its antecedents before and after the implementation of a TQM programme. A one‐company field test using 113 employees before TQM and a subset of 73 employees after TQM implementation was used to study the differences. The results indicate significant improvements in role ambiguity, job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment, and employee turnover intentions, but no significant changes in role conflict, task characteristics, and career satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how information technology (IT) firms are different from non-IT firms in terms of corporate social responsibility and financial variables for attracting and retaining employees.

Through logit regression models, the authors used corporate social responsibility and financial variables to examine the differences between 512 Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For and a random sample of 512 Non-Best Companies peer firms.

The analysis results show that IT firms are stronger in terms of research and development spending, return on assets, Tobin’s q and leverage conditions, as well as employee relations and environmental performance in corporate social responsibility. Moreover, for IT firms, innovativeness (characterized by high research and development expenditures) is by far the strongest predictor of whether a company is selected to be on the Best Companies to Work For list.

This research demonstrated a hybrid, multifaceted research design using different analysis tools to explore new factors of a research topic. The results confirm the associations among variables, which may not represent causal relationships.

The results shed light on the relationship between corporate social responsibility/finance and IT employee turnover, which provides another dimension for management’s consideration beyond the classic psychometric/fringe benefit analysis for examining employee turnover.

IT firms’ superior ability to attract and retain employees using their innovativeness may impact the general public’s career planning and training decisions.

This research project integrated data from four different sources and investigated the IT employee turnover issue from the organizational level rather than the individual employee level.

The outcome of this research is twofold. First of all, it gives the reader insight in the evolution of the main activities, and the growth pattern of two groups of surviving small and medium enterprise start‐ups: at the one hand “Vlerick”‐starters who have enjoyed management training at the Centre of SMEs at De Vlerick School voor Management (Belgium), and at the other hand a group of “Others” who have not. Second, some of the research findings reveal clear evidence for the relationship between entrepreneurial characteristics and managerial techniques, planning skills and the business growth pattern of the enterprises of both groups. Even so, certain combinations pointing towards the likely catalysing effect of management training on growth‐related entrepreneurial and managerial attitudes and towards the influence of those attitudinal differences on planning skills and the enterprise growth pattern were identified. Throughout the paper explanatory value of interrelations between : sets of entrepreneurial and managerial qualifications; planning attitudes; and business survival and growth rates of starting SMEs is sufficiently established.

Shows how a survey of 216 plant managers is used to develop and test an integrated model of their turnover intentions. The model incorporates role stressors, task characteristics, job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment as predictors of intention to stay in the organization. The results provide moderate support for the proposed model and show that organizational commitment had a direct and positive effect on plant managers’ intention to stay with their organization. Indirect effects on intention to stay were found for job satisfaction, job involvement, task characteristics and role stressors. Results show that job satisfaction is considered the most important factor directly affecting organizational commitment, while job involvement also had a direct effect on organizational commitment. Role stressors were found to be the most disfunctional variables affecting satisfaction of the plant managers. The results also indicated that task characteristics play an important role in predicting job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and intention to stay. Presents implications for top management to improve job satisfaction, organization commitment and retention of plant managers.

Relationships are socially constructed by companies in interaction. This study explains the dynamic character of business-to-business relationships with the aid of rules theory, a theory borrowed from the communications field. Two forms of rules are identified: constitutive rules guide the interpretation of the other's acts, and regulative rules guide the appropriate response to the interpreted act. Rules theory asserts that companies act as if applying these rules. Relationships provide not only the context in which the parties’ acts are performed but are also the result of such acts. Thus, relationships are potentially reshaped each time one party performs an act and the other party gives meaning to that act and reacts.

The purpose of this study is to use an international dataset to examine what determines employee training from an organisational perspective, and to what extent training investments enhance company performance.

Data from 5,824 private‐sector organisations are used to examine determinants of training and the connection between training and profitability. OLS regressions and Probit estimates are used in the statistical analyses.

The results indicate that the provision of company training is largely determined by firm‐specific factors, such as human resource management (HRM) practices. The results further show that two widely used measures of training – incidence and intensity – are largely determined by different factors. Staff turnover (mobility) does not appear to be a decisive factor in explaining the provision of training on a national or company level, although it is associated with lower profitability to some extent. However, the single most important factor associated with profitability is how much is invested in training (intensity), suggesting that the economic benefits of training outweigh the cost of staff turnover.

This study contributes to the existing training literature by offering extensive access to internal measures of training, profitability, HRM practices, workforce characteristics and staff turnover for companies in 26 countries worldwide.

This study aims to find how the turnover of host country nationals (HCNs) would be affected by the knowledge transfer from a headquarter to a subsidiary. Knowledge transfer in a multinational corporation (MNC) has been discussed as a critical factor in the MNC’s success. Because HCNs are essential to synergizing with a new knowledge inflow during this knowledge transfer process, their turnover entails negative consequences such as knowledge loss.

This paper empirically tests the unbalance between knowledge received (KR) and absorptive capacity (AC) as the most critical organizational predictor by using the secondary longitudinal records and survey data of 4,915 employees. Multilevel survival analysis is used to calculate the individuals’ turnover hazard.

While finding that the primary effect of transferred knowledge is to reduce turnover, the study demonstrates the unbalance between a subsidiary’s AC and KR increases the likelihood of HCNs’ turnover within the organization. The authors also recognize the possibility of nonlinear trends of KR and AC on the turnover hazard.

The authors answer how knowledge transfer shapes a subsidiary’s work environment to prevent or increase turnover, which has been barely examined for HCNs who comprise the crucial demographic group in knowledge transfer. To enhance the originality further, this study empirically observes the actual turnover of HCNs with a conceptually comprehensive view incorporating both learning and political approaches.