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Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

Transition by the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) from communism towards market economies has brought with it the introduction of Western management thinking. CEE since 1989 has been a kind of test‐bed for human resource management (HRM) – the concept that people management practice is central to the strategic direction and potential competitive advantage of the firm. This paper draws on 21 diverse company case‐study experiences in Croatia to review emerging HR practices and assess the relevance of Western management models. A matrix is designed, that categorises these organisations as “sleepers”, “doers”, “thinkers”, “strivers” or “leaders”, according to their strategic intent and their progress on policy implementation. The results suggest that subsidiaries of multinational corporations are leading the way towards HRM and other significant factors are industry sector and size of the company. There is evidence of “hijacking”of HRM amongst some Croatian companies by old style traditional forces to maintain the status quo. Young Croatian managers welcomed new HR progressive practices and identified with most of the philosophy of HRM, apart from suspicions associated with “mindset control” aspects that they saw underpinning HRM and associated with the previous regime.

The focus of lean has increasingly moved from a tools-based to a systems-based approach with particular emphasis on people. However, a conceptual framework for this is lacking. The people value stream concept provides a starting point for further discussion, research and practical application in this area.

In this conceptual paper, the author draws on their extensive experience with lean through 30 years of researching, leading and consulting in lean transformations.

The people value stream concept is presented together with a series of theoretical, practical and social implications for its application. These include: a rethinking of the role of executives in lean organisations; the importance of people and their experience of work; how the issue of wasted human potential might be addressed; how lean can further evolve; how, in addition to products, people can be made the focus in lean; and how pull and flow can be applied to the people value stream, including what competencies, learning and development, behaviours, accountability, social support and mental and physical wellbeing, are required or should be provided to employees throughout their careers.

This paper widens the existing discussion of people within lean. To the best of the author’s knowledge, for the first time in an academic paper, it discusses this within a lean context by proposing a conceptual people value stream model.

The purpose of the study is to establish the relationship between age, job involvement, job satisfaction and job performance of sub-county chiefs in the Ugandan local government.

A cross-sectional survey design was used to obtain a total sample of 320 sub-county chiefs who were selected to participate in the study using multi-stage stratified random sampling. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data that were entered into the computer using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, version 23 (IBM SPSS-AMOS). Path analysis results were used to test the hypotheses.

The results indicated significant positive relationships between: age and job involvement, job involvement and job satisfaction, and job involvement and job performance. Non-significant relationships were between age and job satisfaction, age and job performance, and job satisfaction and job performance. A reconstructed model was presented.

Employees’ participation in decisions that affect their work brings positive behavioral outcomes. Job involvement makes workers feel as part of the organization and contributes significantly to organizational effectiveness and morale of workers. Managers are encouraged to pay much attention to the requirements of their staff so as to increase their job involvement, which can ultimately lead to high levels of job satisfaction and improved job performance.

This study proposes that older employees who highly participate in organizational activities are likely to be satisfied and outstanding performers. Strategic recruitment agencies are very important in ensuring “quality at the gate” because they focus on the work attitudes and can attract and retain a satisfied and competent workforce.

Electronic monitoring and surveillance (EMS) practices provide new challenges in the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between EMS in the workplace on employees’ trust in management.

This paper is based upon data from the 2012 Australian Electronic Workplace Survey of 500 randomly sampled employees. Controlling for a range of personal, job and workplace characteristics, the data were analysed using OLS and ordered probit regression.

The regression analyses identified that EMS has, on average, a negative relationship with trust in management. The authors further differentiated the sample to examine the potential impact of EMS on trust between manual and non-manual employees. The study found the relationship between EMS and trust in management was only evident for manual workers.

Future research should investigate the extent to which employee attitudes, commitment and engagement are impacted, and the individual-level and organisational-level outcomes of EMS. Causal inferences are necessarily limited and the research does not address managers’ underlying motives. Although self-reported data on EMS reflect objectively measured characteristics of the organisation.

EMS can have negative effects on the employment relationship through the loss of trust in management, especially for manual workers. Tangible effects may flow from this through withdrawal behaviour such as employee exit from the organisation.

The findings of this study provide evidence to add to the debate on the extent and impact of EMS in the workplace and its impact on employees, the employment relationship and productivity.

Workplace surveillance is one of the most contentious issues facing employers, workers, unions, government and legal experts. However, little research has been undertaken on the effects of EMS on important job-related attitudes such as trust. The current paper remedies some of these deficits.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of HRM philosophy for HPWS formulation and implementation, as well as to investigate its role to improve employee perceptions of HPWS.

A qualitative study of 55 interviews was conducted with managers (senior, HR, frontline) and employees from three telecommunication organisations based in Pakistan.

The findings indicate that a clear, well-developed HRM philosophy ensures clarity in HPWS formulation not only for managers, but also for employees. However, lack of strong philosophical foundations for HPWS can result into distorted HRM messages and negative employee perceptions.

Whilst there remains debate over the positive and negative influence of HPWS for employee outcomes, this study presents HRM philosophy as important HRM component to understand HPWS implementation. The article highlights the fact that the purpose of HPWS practices and its effective communication to employees can make a substantial difference in how employees perceive these practices. In sum, an employee centred philosophy is likely to be pre-condition circumstances for improving employee outcomes.