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This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the International Journal of Manpower is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Human Resource Management; Career Planning & Recruitment; Women/Dependant Care; Health & Safety ; Education & Training ; Industrial Relations & Participation ; Redundancy.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Leadership & Organization Development Journal is split into four sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Culture, Change and Intervention; Management Styles and Techniques; Leadership and Decision; Communications.

Challenges the assumption implicit in much of the literature on women managers that their failure to progress can be explained solely in terms of the individual behaviour of women and their employers. Examines the characteristics of organizations in which women make their careers which are potent factors impeding female advancement. Draws attention to the effects of radical organizational change, and explores some of the consequences of this change for women managers through the in‐depth analysis of a “typical” case. Explores the complex process by which restructuring and managerial policy and practice eventually combined to undermine the organization’s stated intent to expand significantly the number of women in management. Suggests that in‐depth analysis over time is required to understand the complex processes of change and its often unanticipated consequences for management careers.

Proposes that women will not make significant advances in American businesses unless the focus shifts from a preoccupation on gender awareness to one of multicultural awareness. Discusses the whitewash dilemma and dominant assumptions about women in management to help explain the current management development paradigm that fails to recognize diversity among women. Makes a case for increasing organizational education about racial and gender similarities and differences which are crucial for establishing a successful multicultural organization where a new, all‐inclusive paradigm can prevail and the voices of all women can be heard. An analysis and critique of the women in management field precedes by an emerging model of individual and organizational stages of awareness. Finally proposes recommendations for interventions to shift existing management development practices towards the new paradigm.

Research on women's leadership development over the past two decades has seen a move away from feminist theory that embeds action at a structural level as the objective of consciousness raising realised during the programme. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of the stalling of collective action needed to challenge the continued under-representation of women in leadership roles.

The paper is conceptual. Gender reflexivity – as the basis for claims within women's leadership development programmes (WLDPs) that are based on identity work to enable wider transformation of organisations in respect of structural barriers – is examined and critiqued.

Women's leadership development is unlikely to be able to used as a vehicle for structural change whilst it remains focused on self-acceptance, self-management and self-development of the individual participants. Gender reflexivity, as the warrant for change and transformation, is not used in a way that can deliver organisational change. Part of this is the way in which it is misapplied within human resource development and part of this is the continued lack of framing WLDP as a historical practice in support of the current logic of leadership.

This paper contributes to the development of a critical approach to women's leadership development from a feminist theory perspective.

This study aims to explore the nature of women's career experiences over the life course by examining career patterns, career locus, career contexts, and career beliefs.

A qualitative, inductive approach to data gathering and analysis was employed, using life story surveys, semi‐structured interviewing, thematic analysis, grounded theory, code development and descriptive statistics.

The data revealed distinct patterns of how women's careers develop over time, particularly with regard to the impact of career contexts (societal, organizational, and relational) and women's own changing images of their careers and career success. A three‐phase, age‐linked model of women's career development is proposed: the idealistic achievement phase; the pragmatic endurance phase; and the reinventive contribution phase.

Future studies should test replicability of these findings to determine whether this three‐phase model is embedded in the particular socio‐historical context of the times in which the particular women in this sample have lived or is universally applicable across different eras and changing realities.

Better organizational efforts are needed to ensure that women receive ongoing coaching and mentoring, work for managers who support their development, have access to organizational resources and opportunities to develop their skills, are given challenging assignments, are acknowledged for their unique talents, and are recognized for aptitude learned through life experiences and “non‐traditional” work histories.

This is a rare, women‐only study that looks at the career dynamics of women over the life course.

This paper aims to analyse the influence of workforce diversity on the firm’s likelihood to develop organisational innovations. Operationalising human resources diversity is not straightforward, and its effect has been rather overlooked in the context of non-technological innovations. This study analyses the impact of task-related diversity among research and development (R&D) unit workers and women R&D workers, in particular.

To estimate the impact of task-related diversity on firm propensity to undertake organisational innovation, this study uses a generalised linear model (GLM) – with a binomial family and log–log extension. GLMs are used to control problems of over-dispersion, which, in models with binary response variables, could generate inaccurate standard error estimates and provide inconsistent results.

This paper provides three important results. Firstly, employee diversity increases the firm’s propensity to engage in organisational innovations. Secondly, the influence of each facet of task-related diversity varies depending on the type of organisational innovation considered. Thirdly, gender has an effect on the innovation process; this study shows that women play a different role in the production of non-technological innovations.

This paper makes several contributions to the literature. Firstly, it makes a theoretical contribution to research on innovation management by considering the influence of human resources diversity on the development of non-technological innovations. Secondly, this study analyses the role of workforce diversity in an R&D department context to clarify the contribution made by women R&D workers.

To consider Simone De Beauvoir's account of woman as Other, and particularly the appropriation of sexual difference, with reference to the gendered bifurcation and hierarchical organization of change management.

Through a review of relevant managerial texts, as well as a discussion of De Beauvoir's The Second Sex and related scholarship, the paper explores some of the ways in which men and women are “situated” within change management discourse.

Argues that within managerial discourse men are constructed as “effective” managers of change, whereas women are relegated to an “affective” support function, and that this can be understood as an appropriation of women's ascribed Otherness.

The paper contributes to the ongoing development of a critical, feminist approach to the study of management. While acknowledging the many limitations of her work, it makes the case for a reappraisal of De Beauvoir's thinking in this respect.