The management of workplace conflict: Contrasting pathways in the HRM literature.

This paper reviews the human resource management literature on the management of workplace conflict. It suggests that workplace conflict is commonly viewed in the literature as a symptom of management failure: the notion that conflict may be intrinsic to the nature of work because employees and managers have hard-to-reconcile competing interests is given short-shrift. At the same time, the paper identifies important differences in the literature, which the authors call ‘pathways’, about the best methods to manage problems at the workplace. It is argued that four contrasting pathways can be detected in the literature with regard to how organizations approach workplace conflict management practices. Each pathway is examined fully and their respective strengths and weaknesses are assessed.

Still Rising: The Career Politician in the British House of Commons, the Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet

There is a public perception that politicians in the United Kingdom are increasingly detached from the electorate due to the apparent increase in the number of ‘career politicians’ with a professional background in politics. This article examines the occupational backgrounds of successful candidates to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom between the 1997 and 2010 general elections, comparing the parliamentary compositions of the three main political parties (Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats) during this period, and the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet as of 2014. By evaluating original and secondary quantitative data, it is argued that professionalised politicians have increased in the House of Commons relative to other occupational backgrounds, and are even further disproportionately represented in the senior teams of each major party.