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Addressing the continuing productivity challenge, the purpose of this paper is to analyze data from the National Health Service on employee involvement (EI) in order to gain critical insights into how employees’ shared perception of EI in organizational decision making (i.e. EI climate) might address two persistent issues: how to enhance positive staff attitudes and improve organizational performance. In doing so, the authors respond to recent calls for more multilevel research and extend previous research on EI climate by attending to both EI climate level and EI climate strength.

Data from 4,702 employees nested in 33 UK hospitals were used to test the moderating role of EI climate strength in the cross-level EI climate level employee level-attitudes relationship and in the organizational-level EI climate-organizational effectiveness relationship.

The results of the multilevel analyses showed that EI climate level was positively associated with individual-level employee attitudes (i.e. job satisfaction, organizational commitment). Further the results of the hierarchical regression analysis and the ordinal logistic regression analysis showed that EI climate level was also related to organizational effectiveness (i.e. lower outpatient waiting times, higher performance quality). In addition, both analyses demonstrated the moderating role of EI climate strength, in that the positive impact of EI climate level on employee attitudes and organizational effectiveness was more marked in the presence of a strong climate compared to a weak EI climate.

By creating and maintaining a positive and strong climate for involvement, hospital managers can tackle the productivity challenge that UK hospitals and health care institutions more generally are currently facing while improving the attitudes of their employees who are critical in the transformative process and ultimately underpin the organizational success.

This is the first study which provides evidence that favorable and consistent collective recognition of EI opportunities by staff contributes to enhance both employee attitudes and hospital performance. Results highlight the role of EI climate strength and underscore its importance in future research and practice.

This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of resistance to change (RTC) by examining the role played by organisational commitment (OC) as a potential predictor and moderator in the analysis of RTC.

First, alternative models of OC were developed, first as a co‐predictor of RTC, and then as a moderator of the relationship between key established antecedents of RTC and resistance itself. The main established antecedents of RTC examined included employees' perceptions of the benefits of change (PBC), their involvement in the change process (IIC), and their overall attitudes towards the change (ATC). The alternative OC models were tested using data from a sample of over 300 middle managers from an Italian public sector service provider company undergoing a radical process of change.

Results showed that OC, along with PBC and IIC, had a significant negative direct and indirect effect on RTC. The indirect effect was mediated by employee attitudes to the change. Contrary to expectations, however, commitment did not moderate any of the antecedents‐RTC relationships.

Although based on self‐report cross‐sectional data, this paper suggests that, while OC has a main significant effect on RTC, it does not have a moderator effect in relation to RTC.

The results suggest that OC is not a substitute for the effective management of change, but rather that management would be well advised to give due consideration to both factors when planning and implementing change.

The implications outlined above apply to a wide range of change initiatives, including the implementation of major social and economic programmes.

This paper adds to existing knowledge in the area of RTC, showing that employee attitudes towards the change is a key mediating mechanism through which OC may help to reduce resistance.

Increased product and labour market pressures arising from the Single European Market (SEM) are far more im‐portant to Personnel Managers than the Social Charter or any pan‐European legislation.

In this paper, we argue that discussion of worker participation in decision‐making is very limited in its usefulness unless the analysis looks at the structure of decision‐making, particularly in terms of centralization, in the organization concerned. The issues of worker participation are not instructive per se. If there is decentralization, it may assist the effectiveness of participation structures at lower levels, but the problem remains of the degree to which the costs of some decentralization are traded‐off by the ‘dominant‐coalition’ in the corporation against the benefits of centralization of decision‐making in the areas of finance and senior personnel.

Aims to develop and validate a qualitative measure of personnel management effectiveness among NHS personnel for the Department of Health. Explores the influences of index scores and associations between qualitative and quantitative indicators. Qualitatively, the results of the analysis suggest that personnel effectiveness is related primarily to process rather than to input variables. Pinpoints three variables as key predictors of effectiveness: extent of policy formalization, efficiency of personnel, and degree of influence of the personnel department over major organizational decisions. Generally finds that improvements in personnel management effectiveness are likely to depend less on increased professionalization and resourcing of personnel than on the development of a closer partnership between personnel and line management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine antecedents of employee quality commitment at two Korean auto firms.

Data were collected from 644 employees at two auto plants; 331 at the high lean plant and 313 at the low lean plant. Hierarchical regression analyses were employed.

This research showed that intrinsic rewards factors were significant determinants of quality commitment in the high lean plant sample, whereas those relating to extrinsic rewards were major antecedents in the low lean plant sample. The study finds that the tested antecedents to quality commitment differ in relative importance at different stages of lean production implementation.

Since data were collected from 644 employees at two Korean firms, the results may need to be modified before being generalized for other national contexts.

The results suggest that the relative importance of the antecedent variables of employee quality commitment changes as lean implementation progresses, shifting in the general direction of rewards intrinsic to the job itself. Managers sensitive to the dynamic nature of the antecedents to employee quality commitment will be the most effective in fostering it.

This paper examines antecedents of employee quality commitment at two Korean auto plants, and offers practical implications for managers starting for the effective fostering of employee quality commitment in terms of different stages of lean production implementation.

TQM is generally seen as depending on employees having a high awareness of quality issues and a willingness to engage in continuous improvement. Many total quality programmes have, implicitly or explicitly, attitudinal change as one of their initial objectives. Reports the results of a study which aims to assess the effects of a TQM programme in a medium‐sized factory in the North of England. TQM initiatives are invariably multidimensional and there is here a specific concentration on assessing the relative impact on employees′ quality consciousness of the programme′s various components. The results show that those individuals whose attitudes changed most were more likely to have been involved in certain aspects of the programme than were others. In particular they were more likely to have been appraised, made a suggestion under the revamped suggestion scheme, and to have attended specific briefing sessions about the aspects of the programme. They were also more likely to view the regular monthly departmental briefings in a positive light. This suggests that appraisal, suggestion schemes, and team briefings in particular, can impact on employees′ attitudes towards quality, though in the case of the departmental briefings only if they are done well and viewed favourably by employees.

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.

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.

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.