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The purpose of this article is to provide a framework for any organization to follow in designing training programs by describing a hypothetical sales training model linked to an organization’s strategic focus. Training strategy shapes the type of training programs provided by organizations. What influences an organization’s training strategy is important to understand if we are to grasp the valuable role training plays in the long-term performance of the organization. Strategic focus provides a framework for organizations to follow when creating specialized training programs. This paper represents an initiative to help put in a broader and clearer context an organization’s strategic focus from which training program initiatives originate. Furthermore, the paper examines how strategic focus influences an organization’s decisions regarding the specific purposes, content and frequency of training. The paper identifies and describes several important dimensions of the conceptual model, as well as the interconnectedness among the dimensions.

This paper describes the link between sales training and an organization’s strategic focus. The use of a conceptual model linking strategic focus with a training program provides a “big picture” perspective showing the link between an organization’s vision and the role training plays in helping to realize this vision. The conceptual model shows the cause and effect link between the strategic focus and the development of training programs.

The model demonstrates how practitioners can move from a strategic, conceptual focus to deliver a training program that represents the ability to implement strategic intent.

The conceptual model shows the cause and effect link between the strategic focus and the development of training programs.

The value of this conceptual model is to demonstrate the ability to link strategy to specific business activities associated with the implementation of strategy.

Revisits the literature on strategic human resource development (SHRD) in the context of Garavan’s work on the characteristics of SHRD. A conceptual framework is constructed that redefines SHRD stressing a shaping rather than supporting role for HRD in relation to corporate strategy. The concept of strategic maturity in HRD is examined linking the work of Garavan; Lee and McCracken; and Wallace. The resulting model of strategic maturity is then analysed empirically using data from a major questionnaire and interview survey. A new model of strategic partnerships in HRD is then proposed.

The present project concerned the assessment of senior and middle level managers′ training needs by self‐report questionnaire, and the link between such identified needs and managers′ preferences for training strategies. It was found that senior‐and middle‐level managers rated the degree of training they needed as less than their supervisors rated for their positions. Self‐reported training needs could be described by an overall general management dimension, whereas managers′ preferred training strategies were separate and specific. Managers′ preferred training strategies and attitudes towards training were not related to their training needs.

The paper aims to test whether a firm's provision of training depends on the intake quality of trainees. While a firm may just treat each trainee equally, independent of his or her intake quality, firms may alternatively also provide more training to less able individuals or focus on the most able ones. The authors develop a theoretical framework that illustrates under what circumstances a firm chooses a particular training strategy.

The paper uses representative administrative survey data for more than 1,400 Swiss establishments. To test their theoretical predictions about a firm's training strategy, the authors apply multivariate and instrumental variable (IV) regression models. In addition, they use case study evidence from a large Swiss retailer, allowing them to analyze how different instructors in a specific firm react when confronted with apprentices of different intake qualities.

The authors find that a firm's training strategy depends on a trainee's intake quality and the expected net costs of a particular training occupation. Although firms generally provide less training to less qualified trainees, the authors find that a firm is willing to compensate low‐ability trainees with additional training when training is on average profitable in the short run.

When training regulations force firms to follow an investment‐oriented training strategy (net costs in the short run), then low‐ability trainees will not receive additional instruction time and the dropout risk increases.

Generating a regulatory framework that allows firms to achieve a net benefit from work‐based training is crucial for low‐ability trainees to have the opportunity to receive additional training investments that compensate for a lack of competences when training commences.

This paper provides novel and direct empirical evidence on how firms adjust their training provision when faced with heterogeneity in the ability of their trainees.

This study aims to investigate the impact of job rotation on employee performance and explores the mediating role of human resources (HR) strategy and training effectiveness on this relationship, within the petrochemical industry, which represents a highly specialist and hazardous industrial context.

Data was collected through a questionnaire which was distributed among the experts working in an Iranian petrochemical organization. Previously validated scales were used to measure job rotation, employee performance, HR strategy and training effectiveness, and partial least squares structural equation modeling was used for hypothesis testing.

The research findings indicated that job rotation had a negative effect on employee performance, while training effectiveness and HR strategy positively mediated the relationship between job rotation and employee performance. This highlights the importance of ensuring effective training and a HR strategy to support job rotation of skilled and specialist employees.

Managers of employees in specialist and hazardous industries, such as petrochemical workers, interested in job rotation to support employee career development, should be mindful of potential negative implications on employee performance. To support and improve employee performance, job rotation should be considered alongside HR strategy and training.

Previous research has largely focused on the value of job rotation to develop managers’ organizational understanding and to reduce injury within blue-collar work, which has led to a paucity of research into job rotation within highly skilled and specialist industrial roles. It is highlighted within the literature that it remains unclear what supports effective job rotation. This study addresses this lacuna by investigating how job rotation affects employee performance in a highly skilled and specialized industry and how strategy and training effectiveness mediate this effect.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The aim of this scoping review was to identify key characteristics related to strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable training and professional development (PD) of graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), teaching assistants (TAs), and tutors. While the continuous, coherent and responsive programmes for such training and PD may address needs that are congruent with the needs of other sessional teachers, the literature has not focussed on GTA training and PD that support the longer-term retention of GTAs as sessional teachers.

In this scoping review, we devised a search strategy to identify literature relating to the key characteristics of strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable GTA training and professional development in higher education settings. We were guided by the frameworks for such reviews developed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005), Levac et al. (2010) and Westphaln et al. (2021). We used PRISMA guidelines to guide our reporting processes, and used thematic analysis practice (Braun and Clarke, 2022) as our analytical approach in order to identify and discuss the key themes.

We identified that strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable GTA training and PD frame GTAs as future academics and leaders in teaching; provide institutional support and investment in teaching; deliver departmental training; facilitate peer support; provide pedagogical training; implement training strategies; and support the teacher identity of GTAs.

These findings add to the body of research that explores how strategies and approaches for delivering sustainable GTA training and PD address and meet the needs common to all sessional teachers constrained by the precarity of the part-time faculty/academia. While our findings indicate such training and PD enhance the quality of teaching available to university students, this effect is dependent on institutional support and facilitation of peer and faculty networks.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Argues that a human resource development (HRD) strategy, in alliance with a global‐arching human resource management (HRM) strategy, is the most effective way to link training policy and practice to organizational goals. Both manufacturing and service organizations require a critical mass of positive factors related to the effective management of human resources to successfully accomplish organizational goals. This involves the analysis of a myriad internal and external environmental factors contingent to the organization, followed by a strategic approach to influencing key stakeholders, and the formulation of strategic HRD policies and plans in parallel with and sometimes influencing business strategy. This links to a broad range of systems covering all areas of the human resource cycle ‐ selection, appraisal, rewards and development ‐ related to individual/team and organizational performance. Concludes that the HRD function must become more strategic in focus.

The adult training schemes being introduced by the MSC in line with the New Training Initiative can only be a small part of the effort required to make adult training (and retraining) a force for economic improvement. The success or failure of this strategy and its implications for the country depend on how employers, individuals and organisations concerned with training act on the messages underlying the strategy.