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The paper examines ways that Knowledge Management (KM) can demonstrate practical value for organizations. It begins by reviewing the claims made about KM, i.e. the benefits KM can provide to organizations. These claims are compared with traditional firm performance metrics to derive a criterion to measure the value of KM. Seven practical outcomes of KM are then presented as methods to persuade managers to invest in KM. These practical outcomes are then evaluated against the value criterion. The paper is based on empirical evidence from a five year longitudinal study.

This paper is based on a longitudinal change project for a large Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project grant in the period 2008-2013. The Project was a transformational change program which aimed to help make the partner organisation a learning organisation. The partner organisation was a large Australian Government Department, which faced the threat of knowledge loss caused by its ageing workforce. The sample was 118 respondents, mainly engineering and technical workers. A total of 150 respondents were invited to participate in the study which involved an annual survey and attendance at regular training workshops and related activities, with a participation rate of 79 per cent.

This paper provides a checklist from which to evaluate KM in terms of financial and non-financial measures and seven practical outcomes from which to identify the organisational problem which may be addressed by KM. Lead and lag indicators – what needs to be done and what will result – are also provided. Managers may use this framework to identify the value proposition in any KM investment.

The research is based on a single case study in a public sector organization. While the longitudinal nature of the study and the rich data collected offsets this issue, it also presents good opportunities for researchers and practitioners to test the ideas presented in this paper in other industry contexts. The seven practical outcomes also vary in the maturity of the empirical evidence supporting KM ' s impact. Strategic alignment, value management, and psychological contract, in particular, are still under-developed and could be areas for specific further research testing the ideas presented here.

This paper argues that investment decisions regarding KM may benefit from focusing on significant and on-going organisational problems, which will connect KM with firm performance and demonstrate financial and non-financial impact. The seven practical outcomes were evaluated against measurement criteria and against KM ' s claims. Overall, common themes were time and cost, as well as capability growth and performance improvements. Financial impact was mainly found in cost savings. Non-financial impact was found across the seven practical outcomes. It provides management with a checklist to make investment decisions regarding KM.

The decision whether to invest in KM begins with methods used to evaluate any organisational project. Managers must determine first whether necessary funds are available; and then whether the project is worthwhile. The standard method for evaluating a project ' s worth is return on investment (ROI). However, calculating ROI for KM investment is problematic. Unless KM can be proven to directly improve performance in financial terms, managers may struggle to see its ROI. The paper begins by reviewing the claims made about KM, i.e. the benefits KM can provide to organizations. These claims are compared with traditional firm performance metrics to derive a criterion to measure the value of KM.

Does staffing contribute to organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantage, or are many of staffing’s implications merely cross-level fallacies? This article provides a critical examination of staffing research and practice, and proposes a multilevel model of staffing that ties together micro (e.g. personnel selection), meso (e.g. team staffing), and macro (e.g. organizational strategy, Human Resources practices) theory, research, and practice. The model is both integrative and prescriptive, providing a basic organizing structure for examining staffing research within and across levels. The article begins with a review of multilevel theory, followed by a review and critique of the dominant staffing paradigms from a multilevel perspective. It is shown these single level paradigms cannot answer many of the primary questions of interest to staffing specialists. In contrast, the multilevel staffing model not only addresses these limitations, but also prompts a variety of new predictions that oftentimes run counter to prevailing wisdom. Staffing specialists are challenged to show how our science and practice contribute to better functioning organizations.

Past researches have not explored the roles of staff's hotel identification on customer‐related behaviors and the relationship between hotel identification inducing factors (trust in supervisor, job satisfaction, perceived external prestige) and hotel identification. The purpose of this paper is to examine the roles of staff's hotel identification as a mediator of the relationship between hotel identification inducing factors and customer‐related behaviors. Through reviewing the existing literature concerned, the authors propose a research model involving staff's trust in the supervisor, job satisfaction, perceived external prestige, hotel identification, organization citizenship behavior, and customer satisfaction behavior and test it.

Hotel samples were from the south‐west area of Korea. Questionnaires were given to 250 staff of the hotels and 224 were returned with no problems. The sample was used to purify the measures and test their convergent and discriminant validity. The final measurement model includes 24 items across six constructs. The authors conducted exploratory factor analysis to show that there are convergent validities of measurement items related to each construct, and explored correlations between the constructs and calculated average variance extracted to verify that there are discriminant validities between constructs. LISREL 8.30 was used to verify the hypotheses.

The results provided evidence that hotel identification plays important mediating roles between them. Identification with the hotel will be strengthened when job satisfaction and trust in the supervisor becomes strong. Trust in the supervisor plays a more important role in forming hotel identification than job satisfaction does. The role of organization citizenship behavior on the customer satisfaction behavior is also explored. Hotel identification affects organization citizenship behavior which in turn positively affects customer satisfaction behavior. But the results do not provide support for a central role of perceived external prestige.

The study gives information to hotel managers who want to encourage customer‐related behaviors that they should induce staff's identification with the hotel by improving the level of trust in the supervisor and job satisfaction.

Little past literature has explored the role of hotel identification as the substance of staff action. This study explored the influence of hotel identification on staff behavior that results in contributing to theoretical development and hotel management.

The central concern of this monograph is to generate an understanding of the processes of control in industrial relations. Traditionally, the literature has tended to merely reflect the instrumental interests of management and has thus been preoccupied with the problem of improving the techniques, rather than penetrating the social processes of control. The authors contend that this preoccupation has resulted in a neglect of examining the conditions and consequences of control for production.

This study documents the role of relational trust in an afterschool organization and its influences on young people’s experiences.

Through a 10-month ethnographic study of one afterschool program that teaches teens how to make documentaries, I demonstrate that the confluence of blurred organizational goals; weak relational trust among staff; and funding pressures may have the unintended consequence of exploiting students for their work products and life stories.

The study finds that, while not all organizations function with student work at its center, many afterschool organizations are under increasing pressures to document student gains through tangible measures.

Implications from these findings reveal the need for developing strong relationships among staff members as well as establishing transparency in funding afterschool programs from within the organization and from foundations in order to provide quality programming for young people.

This study informs organizational theory, specifically in terms of measures of variation in relational trust within an organization and its influence on young people. This chapter includes student accounts of experiences with staff to enhance the significance of relational trust.

Findings are presented from an investigation of customer care in major UK organisations in the financial services sector, to include banks, building societies and insurance companies. Attention was focused on the need for customer care and service quality, and the development, implementation and evaluation of customer care/service programmes, as well as associated staff and management training activities.

Lack of individual awareness of knowledge sharing practices to prevent identity theft is a significant issue for online retail organisations (OROs). Agile learning processes and sharing of knowledge is essential, but the lack of relevant training inhibits these processes within the online industry. This study aims to identify the inhibiting factors in agile learning and knowledge sharing process with recommendations for best practice for organisations and staff to effectively share knowledge on identity theft prevention.

Three qualitative case studies were undertaken in OROs in the UK. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, internal documents and related external material. The data were analysed using a thematic analysis method.

The findings identified that individual staff members within OROs from the information security and fraud prevention departments often share their knowledge as a community. However, there is no formal knowledge sharing process or any related training facilitating this exchange. There is a need for agile learning environment in OROs of the UK.

The study offers both theoretical and practical contributions to the extant literature of agile learning of knowledge sharing to prevent identity theft in OROs. Existing learning opportunities are not being used to enhance the knowledge of individuals, and OROs need to increase the skills and trust of their staff to share knowledge efficiently. This study identifies the systemic weaknesses inherent in the process of knowledge sharing and existing training provision within OROs. It provides ORO managers with practical guidelines in facilitating trust between individuals and developing appropriate training systems to educate staff on sharing organisational knowledge. This study contributes by extending the knowledge sharing framework proposed by Chong et al. (2011) for enhanced individual knowledge sharing processes to prevent identity theft within OROs. It also identifies OROs’ weaknesses in knowledge sharing learning processes for theft prevention and offers prevention guidelines and recommendations for developing effective agile learning environments.

Examines the history of the Commission on Industrial Relations (CIR) 1969‐74 ‐ its origins, organization and policies ‐ and then evaluates its contribution as an agent of reform in the context of the perceived problems of the 1960s and 1970s. Considers whether there are any lessons to be learnt for the future given the possibility of a Labour Government, developments in Europe and the 1995 TUC policy document Your Voice at Work. Despite the drastic changes in industrial relations and in the economic, political and social environment, the answer is in the affirmative. In particular, the importance of a new third‐party agency having an independent governing body like the CIR and not a representative body like the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS); in its workflow not being controlled by government; and in its decisions on recognition being legally enforceable.

To research involvement of healthcare staff in the UK and identify practical organisational and policy solutions to improve and boost capacity of the existing workforce to conduct research.

A mixed-method study presenting three work packages here: secondary analysis of levels of staff research activity, funding, academic outputs and workforce among healthcare organisations in the United Kingdom; 39 Research and Development lead and funder interviews; an online survey of 11 healthcare organisations across the UK, with 1,016 responses from healthcare staff included for analysis; and 51 interviews of healthcare staff in different roles from six UK healthcare organisations.

Interest in research involvement is strong and widespread but hampered by a lack of systematic organisational support despite national policies and strategies to increase staff engagement in research. While useful, these external strategies have limited universal success due to lack of organisational support. Healthcare organisations should embed research within organisational and human resources policies and increase the visibility of research through strategic organisational goals and governance processes. A systems-based approach is needed.

The research gathered data from a limited number of NHS trusts but these were purposively sampled to provide a range of different acute/community health service organisations in different areas. But data was therefore more detailed and nuanced due to a more in-depth approach.

The findings are relevant for developing policies and practice within healthcare organisations to support research engagement. The findings also set out key policy and strategic recommendations that will support greater research engagement.

Increased research activity and engagement in healthcare providers improves healthcare outcomes for patients.

This is a large scale (UK-wide) study involving a broad range of healthcare staff, with good engagement of nurses, midwives and Allied Healthcare Professionals who have not been previously achieved. This allowed valuable analysis of under-researched groups and comparisons by professional groups. The findings highlight the need for tailored action to embed research reporting, skills, professional development and infrastructure into organisational policies, strategies and systems, along with broader system-wide development.

The production of a good or service requires that the supplier performs a wide range of activities. Many companies are trying to fit outsourcing with the dimensions of their organization. Outsourcing is increasingly being used among Iranian companies in the field of the electric power industry. Human resources are among the factors that consider outsourcing as an obstacle for their growth because staffs declare that the development of outsourcing is a serious threat for unemployment of them and ultimately expulsion from work. Thus, this study surveys the dynamic effects of human resources and work experience on outsourcing decisions. This paper aims to propose a model for dynamic strategic outsourcing focusing on human resource and work experience.

Presenting a model for strategic outsourcing can help organizations to resolve their outsourcing problems. The data needed for examining the dynamic impact of human resources and work experience on outsourcing have been compiled using library and field studies. The method used in this study is an integrated approach, so the model could consider the general effects of manpower and present a systematic view. After interviewing with experts in power industry, the causal relationships of the variables were determined, and a dynamic model based on the applications of the dynamic system was developed in VENSIM software. The research model will be completed in a three-year period (2016-2019) in the power industry of Iran.

For completing projects in an organization, cooperation between internal employees and external contractors is needed; thus, results based on both external contractors and internal staff have shown that outsourcing through working of a number of contractors will be more effective than frequent use of one contractor. On the other hand, improving the quality of projects could be done by training new employees using skilled and expert employees.

Existence of one-dimensional models (only with qualitative factors or only with quantitative factors) in the context of outsourcing in the past studies has prompted to study different types of factors together as a dynamic model. This paper presents a quantitative and qualitative model in the field of strategic outsourcing with emphasis on human resources and work experience. In the past studies, there was no way to formulate the qualitative factors, and they simply used the data from the organization, and the only formulation in their works was based on quantitative factors. But in this study, both factors with dynamic modeling have been formulated.