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Membership decline, marginalization of union influence in a range of businesses and loss of political influence have raised major questions about the survival of the union movement in the UK in anything like its present form. However, such pressures have been in operation for at least a decade and trade unions have responded both by effecting major internal organisational changes (Willman, Morris and Aston, 1993) and by further mergers (Buchanan, 1992).

Outlines the aim, methods and content of the London Business School Sloan Fellowships Programme. Looks at who are the participants and the effect the programme can have on their long‐term careers.

This paper focuses on the policy context that led to the development of the New Ways of Working in child and adolescent mental health services (NWW CAMHS) project and the future direction of change that is its legacy. NWW CAMHS represents a merging of policy and practice across what is sometimes a divide between adult and child services. In some aspects, CAMHS had already adopted what became known as a NWW in adult mental health with multidisciplinary teams characterised by dispersed patterns of responsibility and leadership. In other areas, particularly the involvement of service users and carers, CAMHS has been less forward‐thinking. There continues to be a significant workforce challenge for children's services and a risk that innovation and development will not be fully inclusive of the full range of service users' needs. It is important that the lessons learned from the national workforce programme are kept while the usual boundaries to development across services are broken down.

The aim of this study is to better understand service supply chain management by analysing the professional service supply chain in professional service firms (PSFs) and exploring how the high performance work systems (HPWS) influence professional service supply chain performance. In addition, this study seeks to examine the relationship between professional service supply chain performance and the overall organizational performance.

Analysis of PSF suggests a three‐step of professional service supply chain as the clients' requests, partners forming working teams or so‐called team formation and utilization, and delivering of solutions or services to clients. Based on extensive literature review, the authors hypothesize that HPWS have a positive impact on the professional service supply chain performance and the team formation and utilization mediates the link. They also hypothesize the positive link between the professional service supply chain performance and the overall organisational firm performance. Employing survey method, data was collected from 93 accounting firms at two time points. In May 2010 (Time 1), a survey including questions on HPWS, team formation and utilization and professional service supply chain performance were sent out to the managing partners and HR directors in accounting firms based in Ireland. Around one year later (Time 2), another survey measuring firm performance was sent out. This data allowed the authors to establish causal pattern in their results. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to analyse data to test hypotheses.

The results indicate the positive link between HPWS and the professional service supply chain performance. The team formation and utilization mediates the above relationship. In addition, professional service supply chain performance was found to be positively linked to the firm performance.

The present study is limited in terms of sample size, single industry and self‐report data. Future research also needs to examine more mediators or moderators – the mechanisms through which HPWS work on the professional service supply chain.

Firms using higher level of HPWS experience better professional service supply chain performance. Human resource management practices that promote employees' ability, motivation and opportunities which allow teams to be formed more effectively to work with clients enhance organizational performance and higher profit levels. Managers able to effectively adopt and implement these teamwork‐based HR practices and encourage and support employees' collaboration through such practices enhance the firm's professional service supply chain effectiveness and its organisational performance.

The authors' study focuses on the service supply chain management operations within the professional service firms. In doing so, their research answers the call by Ellram et al. for more supply chain management research with respect to the service sector. It addresses a significant research gap identified by Rahman and Wu, namely, “relatively little attention has been given to the service suppliers' perspective”. By linking service supply chain management and human resource management, this study also answers a few calls for more research on the interaction of human resource management and supply chain management, service supply chain and human resource management in professional service firms.

This is one of the few studies to analyse the professional service supply chain management and assess the human resource management and supply chain management link. Moreover, it is the first study which empirically establishes the link between human resource management and professional service supply chain performance in PSFs.

Whilst there has been quite a lot of research and speculation about the ability of the unions to adapt to the changed environmental circumstances of the 1980s, there has been no consideration of the impact of such changes on the financial status and performance of trade unions. It is suggested that, contrary to popular opinion, the unions have fared reasonably well during the period of membership decline, in part because they did not benefit very much during the growth phase of the 1970s. Increased membership will not necessarily solve financial problems.

The National Workforce Programme (DoH, 2004a), supported by the National Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service Workforce sub‐group, commissioned a project to look at New Ways of Working (NWW) in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS). This article provides an overview of the NWW CAMHS project using two of the 10 early implementer sites as examples. General lessons from the project are explored.

Presents and discusses findings from a major study of changing employment practices in UK banking. Uses case studies to explore different patterns of reaction to a fast and radically changing business environment. Addresses important questions including the nature of the changes to human resource management practices, the extent and depth of these changes and, most importantly, the degree to which the different banks are following similar or divergent paths. Offers explanations for the findings under each of these headings.

Reports the results of a repeat survey on the financial performance and management of TUC affiliated unions. Data are available for 1989 and 1993, covering income, expenditure, the management of investments and wealth. Unions remain in a precarious financial position, dependent on subscription revenue and, moreover, on the threatened check‐off mechanism to deliver it. The management of expenditure remains a critical issue, since the net worth of many unions remains small. Financial management is becoming more important and more sophisticated. Unions continue to centralize resource management, but many of these changes remain constrained by the political nature of financial management within voluntary organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a system of human resource management (HRM) practices, labelled high-performance work systems (HPWS), influences organizational innovation in professional service firms (PSFs). In this study, innovation in PSFs is seen as an indicator of firm performance and is calculated as the revenue per person generated from new clients and new services, respectively.

Quantitative data were collected from 195 managing partners, HR managers or experienced Partners in 120 Irish accounting firms. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The analysis results indicate strong support for the mediating role of employees’ innovative work behaviours in the relationship between HPWS and two types of PSFs’ innovation performance.

Managers need to effectively adopt and implement innovation-based HRM practices to encourage and support employees’ creative thinking and innovation. Through the adoption and utilization of these practices managers can enhance the firm’s innovation and its performance.

This study contributes to our understanding of the link between HRM and firm innovation by explicating a pathway between these variables. This study also generalizes consistent findings on the HRM-firm innovation relationship to a different context, i.e. PSFs.