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In a turbulent economic climate, characterized by pressures to improve productivity and reduce costs, leadership and performance management have a more central role in helping to ensure competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to explore current demands on leaders; and endeavours to explore linkages between management education and agile leadership.

Taking a grounded theory approach, this paper uses the concepts of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) to investigate the impact on desired attributes of leaders and the extent to which this is underpinned by current management education programmes. It draws on the VUCA model of agile management to examine current practices and experiences and considers future trends. Empirical research includes case studies and analysis of management syllabuses.

Syllabuses do not reflect the attributes that organizations expect leaders to possess and are content driven rather than process focused. VUCA is not yet mainstream in academic thinking.

There is a disparity between the output of business schools and the expectations of organizations. This may affect productivity. It is suggested that the use of live consultancies may provide a more beneficial management development experience.

This research opens an international debate that seeks to assess the relevance of current management education to the needs of organizations for agile, high-performing leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between organizational strategy, performance management and training and development in the context of the Jordanian banking sector.

Models of strategic human resource management developed in the west are considered for their relevance in Jordan. A mixed methods approach is adopted employing interviews with senior managers and training and development managers, employee questionnaires and documentary analysis. It examines all banks in Jordan including foreign and Islamic banks.

Findings indicate that training and development is not driven by human resource strategy and that it is reactive rather than proactive. Training and development does improve skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors but there is little evidence that it increases commitment and satisfaction nor that it contributes to strategic aims in any significant way. The linkages between strategy and training and development are not explicit and strategies are not interpreted through performance management systems. Consequently there is a lack of integration in organizational HR systems and the measurable contribution of training and development to competitive advantage is minimal

The paper offers suggestions as to how greater integration between strategy, performance management and training and development might be achieved in the Jordanian context.

This paper is the first detailed empirical study of training and development in Jordan to include considerations of transferability of western models to an Arab culture.

In a changing economic climate, characterised by pressures to improve productivity and reduce costs, performance management has a more central role in helping to ensure competitive advantage. Appraisals have become an almost universal feature of modern organizations and it is essential that they are perceived as fair if they are to bring about commitment to discretionary effort, which is increasingly a key feature in gaining competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to examine the outcomes and processes of performance appraisal through the concept of organizational justice.

This paper uses the concept of organizational justice to explore the outcomes, procedures and implementation of appraisal in contemporary organizations. It draws on a range of theoretical frameworks from both philosophy and social science, examines current practices and experiences and looks at future trends. Empirical research includes a ten‐year longitudinal study of practising managers and ethnography, questionnaires and interviews.

The authors conclude that appraisal frequently creates both actual and perceived injustice in organizations and a tension between managing performance and encouraging engagement, which is dependent on perceptions of fairness. The authors place appraisal within a framework of organizational justice and encourage further research into areas of organizational effectiveness.

The research clearly indicates that both managers and employees see a potential for appraisal, which is rarely achieved in practice. It opens up a dialogue linking the performance agenda with issues of development, motivation and perceptions of justice in the search for models of competitive advantage. This research also confirms the findings of others, most significantly in terms of reinforcing perceptions of dishonesty, mistrust, inequity and managerialism.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the extent to which organizational learning is recognized through performance management systems as contributing to organizational effectiveness and competitive advantage.

It reviews several pieces of research, employing a wide range of methods, including: content analysis of managers’ reflections; questionnaires completed by managers and mentors; a large-scale survey involving ethnography, interviews and questionnaires; and analysis of documents from professional bodies and management delivery centres.

Genuine integration of individual and organizational goals or transfer of learning from the individual to the organization is not evident. Few qualitative measures of organizational performance are employed. The impact of metrics such as IIP or EFQM on organizational effectiveness is nor discernible. Management learning and development is rarely measured even when it is encouraged by the organization. There is a clear divide between research, teaching and learning and workplace practice. Performance management systems create perceptions of unreliability and inequity.

Espousing the value of learning and learning to learn, measuring them accurately and rewarding them with meaningful changes to working life can only improve organizational effectiveness. Research into the few organizations that have successfully embraced triple loop learning in their development of managers may offer a template for transformational learning to sustain competitive advantage.

Management development processes have been successful in developing individuals but less successful in achieving organizational development. This paper offers new insights into that gap and the omissions in the metrics by which performance is measured.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of appraisal systems to sustainable organizational effectiveness. It argues that competitive advantage is increasingly reliant on discretionary effort. As the emphasis of appraisal has shifted from a developmental to a performance focus, perceived unfairness in both procedures and outcomes threatens to undermine commitment and, therefore, sustainable performance.

Drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks, current practices and experiences are examined and future trends considered. Empirical research includes a ten-year study of practising managers and ethnography, questionnaires and interviews in two large organizations.

Appraisal frequently creates actual and perceived injustice in terms of both procedures and rewards. It also generates tensions between managing performance and encouraging engagement.

This study indicates that further research in other sectors will contribute to the development of greater understanding of sustainable strategic approaches to HRM.

Emphasis on performance in appraisal devalues developmental aspects and sometimes affects employee well-being. Separation of the two through mentorship schemes may help to address the paradox, whereby the performance management element of appraisal undermines rather than enhances organizational effectiveness.

The conventional wisdom of the appraisal culture is challenged. We argue it is essential to expand the discourse between performance, justice and ethical value systems if sustainable competitive advantage and well-being are to be achieved.

This paper seeks to explore the way in which professional management programmes are informed by research and workplace practice. The focus is on the areas of motivation, appraisal and the management of change.

The paper is a longitudinal study using a mixed methods approach. Middle and senior managers engaged on professional management programmes were surveyed on workplace practice. Literature reviewed included syllabus guidelines from professional bodies and selected core textbooks.

A content analysis revealed that there was a lack of congruence between what is taught to managers and workplace practice. However, research was found to have an impact on teaching and indirectly it influenced individual beliefs if not organisational practice.

Conclusions indicate that professional management programmes are still failing to bridge the gap between syllabus content current research and workplace practice. There is little to show that the needs of business are being satisfied compared with successful models embedded in other professions.

The paper suggests the value of adopting an integrated model that combines professional and academic teaching of management. It further supports the relevance of research to workplace practice.

Three hundred and sixty‐seven members of the general public were interviewed in Surrey and Greater London in an attempt to ascertain whether they employed the representativeness heuristic when interpreting the corporate personas of UK building societies and banks. The representativeness heuristic is a simple decision‐making rule whereby an individual draws inferences about an organisation according to how closely it is perceived to resemble other organisations regarded as typical of a particular group (‘banks’ for example). It emerged that many respondents did indeed apply the representativeness heuristic in this context, resulting in their ignoring or paying little attention to a specific item of objectively useful information. The findings of previous research which concluded that building societies have ‘warmer’ and friendlier images than conventional banks are generally supported. An important observation was that building societies which in recent years have converted themselves into banking PLCs are still regarded by large numbers of people as possessing the same image attributes as unconverted building societies.

Respondents in 86 UK companies known to engage in the sponsorship of schools and school activities participated in a survey designed to investigate the extent to which sample firms perceived and managed their schools sponsorship programmes as commercial investments rather than as philanthropic donations. The study also examined the reasons for schools sponsorship, how closely it was integrated with other forms of marketing communications, the location of responsibility for its administration, whether it was leveraged by other marketing communications instruments and how it was monitored and evaluated. Cluster and multiple group discriminant analyses were completed to identify the characteristics of the sample businesses which adopted materialistic as opposed to altruistic approaches towards the practice.

As announced in the May issue of Hybrid Circuits, ISHM‐Benelux is organising a one‐day conference on applications of hybrid circuit technology.

Chapter 18 closes the book with twelve principles relevant for doing case study research. The chapter includes brief discussions of specific must-read literature for each principle. The discussion also emphasizes that accuracy (validity) comes first, not generality. The chapter emphasizes that the dominant logic in seeking generality by using surveys whereby informants write-out answers, tick boxes, and never have the opportunity to answer questions that they themselves frame fails to deliver accuracy except possibly when informants are describing evaluating their own recent experiences (see Chapter 2 for further details). The following key thoughts signify the twelve principles:

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  Configural not net effects

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  Unconscious not conscious thinking

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  Dynamic not cross sectional designs

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  Multiple routes not one model only

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  Predictive validity not only a best fitting model

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  Context not context free

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  Conjunctive-disjunctive not compensatory decision-making

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  Systems thinking not independent versus dependent conditions

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  Multi-person not one-person

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  Satisfy not optimize decisions

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  Unobtrusive evidence not just obtrusive interviews or observations

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  Visual not just verbal data collection and interpretation.

Configural not net effects

Unconscious not conscious thinking

Dynamic not cross sectional designs

Multiple routes not one model only

Predictive validity not only a best fitting model

Context not context free

Conjunctive-disjunctive not compensatory decision-making

Systems thinking not independent versus dependent conditions

Multi-person not one-person

Satisfy not optimize decisions

Unobtrusive evidence not just obtrusive interviews or observations

Visual not just verbal data collection and interpretation.

If we are concerned about the imprecision of case studies as research data, we can console ourselves by noting that a man named Darwin was able to write about a study of the Galapagos Islands and a few other cases. To the best of my recollection, there are not statistics in Darwin's book (Simon, 1991, p. 128).