Career management practices in India:an empirical study

This paper examines and discusses the developments in the field of career management, bringing in the international perspective. In particular, the paper explores career management practices in 108 Indian organizations. A factor analysis procedure suggested five groups of practices: formal planning, formal active management, developmental, career stages and assessment. These are found to be associated with certain organizational and cultural characteristics. The research has both theoretical and practical implications.

Human resource development in the Sultanate of Oman

This study explores the scenario of human resource development (HRD) in the Sultanate of Oman. The investigation was conducted with the help of a questionnaire survey in stateowned enterprises (SOEs). The research findings highlight an increased emphasis on HRD initiatives at a national level in Omani firms. There is a significant degree of awareness among the top managers regarding the benefits of a strategic approach to HRD. Despite all this, the implementation of HRD programmes has not been particularly successful. This is because the state has not been able to develop the skills and competencies of the Omani workforce to the levels required under the sixth national five–year plan. The article makes a number of recommendations in this regard. It also highlights key research areas for further examination.

Facility closure management:the case of Vauxhall Motors Luton

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to present the findings of a study of factory closure management. It details the sequence and the results of the key strategic manufacturing management decisions made from the time of the announcement of the plant closure to the cessation of operations. The paper also includes an analysis of the human resource management (HRM) actions taken during this same time period and their consequences upon all those involved in the closure management process. Design/methodology/approach – The case study methodology consisted of two initial site visits to monitor closure management effectiveness (adherence to plan and the types and frequency of closure management communications). During these visits, documentary evidence of the impact of the closure decision upon production performance was also collected (manufacturing output and quality performance data). Following plant closure, interviews were held with senior business, production and HRM managers and production personnel. A total of 12 interviews were carried out. Findings – The case study findings have informed the development of a conceptual model of facility closure management. Information obtained from the interviews suggests that the facility closure management process consists of five key management activities. The unexpected announcement of a factory closure can cause behavioural changes similar to those of bereavement, particularly by those employees who are its survivors. In addition, similar reactions to the closure announcement may be displayed by those who choose to remain employed by the factory owner throughout the phased closure of the plant. Originality/value – Facility closure management is an insufficiently researched strategic operations management activity. This paper details a recommended procedure for its management. A conceptual model has also been developed to illustrate the links between the key facility closure management tasks and the range of employee changes of behaviour that can be induced by their execution.

Benchmarking project management practices of Caribbean organizations using analytic hierarchy process

Effective management of projects is becoming increasingly important for any type of organization to remain competitive in today’s dynamic business environment due to pressure of globalization. The use of benchmarking is widening as a technique for supporting project management. Benchmarking can be described as the search for the best practices, leading to the superior performance of an organization. However, effectiveness of benchmarking depends on the use of tools for collecting and analyzing information and deriving subsequent improvement projects. This study demonstrates how analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a multiple attribute decision-making technique, can be used for benchmarking project management practices. The entire methodology has been applied to benchmark project management practice of Caribbean public sector organizations with organizations in the Indian petroleum sector, organizations in the infrastructure sector of Thailand and the UK. This study demonstrates the effectiveness of a proposed benchmarking model using AHP, determines problems and issues of Caribbean project management in the public sector and suggests improvement measures for effective project management.

Innovation in project management practices:a case of Indian organization in the petroleum industry

The Indian petroleum industry is passing through a very dynamic business environment due to the liberalisation of many government policies, vertical integration among organisations and the presence of multinational companies. This caused a competitive environment among the organisations in the Indian petroleum industry in the public sector. Effective project management for developing new infrastructures and maintaining the existing facilities has been considered one of the means for remaining competitive in this business environment. However, present project management practices suffer from many shortcomings, as time, cost and quality non-achievements are part and parcel of almost every project. This study focuses on identifying the issues in managing projects of the organisation in the Indian petroleum sector with the involvement of the executives in a workshop environment. This also suggests some remedial measures for resolving those issues through identifying critical success factors and enablers. The enablers not only resolve the present issues but also ensure superior performance. These are analysed in a quantitative framework to derive improvement measures in project management practices.

The UK productivity gap in the service sector: do management practices matter?

Purpose – This paper aims to contribute to the debate on the drivers of the productivity gap that exists between the UK and its major international competitors. Design/methodology/approach – From the macro perspective the paper explores the quantitative evidence on the productivity differentials and how they are measured. From the micro perspective, the article explores the quantitative evidence on the role of management practices claimed to be a key determinant in promoting firm competitiveness and in bridging the UK gap. Findings – This study suggests that management practices are an ambiguous driver of firm productivity and higher firm performance. On the methodological side, qualitative and subjective measures of either management practices or firm performance are often used. This makes the results not comparable across studies, across firms or even within firms over time. Productivity and profitability are often and erroneously interchangeably used while productivity is only one element of firm performance. On the other hand, management practices are multi-dimensional constructs that generally do not demonstrate a straightforward relationship with productivity variables. To assume that they are the only driver of higher productivity may be misleading. Moreover, there is evidence of an inverse causal relationship between management practices and firm performance. This calls into question most empirical results of the extant literature based on the unidirectional assumption of direct causality between management practices and firm performance. Research limitations/implications – These and other issues suggest that more research is needed to deepen the understanding of the UK productivity gap and more quantitative evidence should be provided on the way in which management practices contribute to the UK competitiveness. Their impact is not easily measurable due to their complexity and their complementary nature and this is a fertile ground for further research. Originality/value – This paper brings together the evidence on the UK productivity gap and its main drivers, provided by the economics, management and performance measurement literature. This issue scores very highly in the agenda of policy makers and academics and has important implications for practitioners interested in evaluating the impact of managerial best practices.

HRM as a predictor of innovation

There is growing evidence available to suggest that HR practice is an important predictor of organisational performance. In this article, we argue that HR practices also have the potential to promote organisational innovation. We describe a longitudinal study of 22 UK manufacturing companies and examine the relationship between such practices and product and technological innovation. Results reveal that training, induction, team working, appraisal and exploratory learning focus are all predictors of innovation. Contingent reward, applied in conjunction with an exploratory learning focus, is positively associated with innovation in technical systems. Furthermore, training, appraisal and induction, combined with exploratory learning focus, explain variation between companies in product and technological innovation above and beyond the main effects observed. © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Employability and the psychological contract in European ICT sector SMEs

This article explores the employability of information and communication technology (ICT) professionals from the perspective of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The first stage of analysis, based on over 100 interviews with managers of ICT supplier companies in seven European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the UK), showed most SMEs to have a generally ad hoc approach to managing the employability of their ICT professionals. Assessment and development plans were used primarily to keep skills current to business needs; however, the more developed northern European markets showed greater awareness of the ‘high commitment’ benefits of a more sophisticated approach towards career management (e.g. through mentoring or career planning). A second stage of analysis based only on UK interviews builds on this to propose a model of positive employer influence on psychological contracts through career and employability management practices.

On the adoption decision and the intensity of use of complementary innovations: The intra firm diffusion of management practices across UK establishments

This paper contributes to the literature on the intra-firm diffusion of innovations by investigating the factors that affect the firm’s decision to adopt and use sets of complementary innovations. We define complementary innovations those innovations whose joint use generates super additive gains, i.e. the gain from the joint adoption is higher than the sum of the gains derived from the adoption of each innovation in isolation. From a theoretical perspective, we present a simple decision model, whereby the firm decides ‘whether’ and ‘how much’ to invest in each of the innovations under investigation based upon the expected profit gain from each possible combination of adoption and use. The model shows how the extent of complementarity among the innovations can affect the firm’s profit gains and therefore the likelihood that the firm will adopt these innovations jointly, rather than individually. From an empirical perspective, we focus on four sets of management practices, namely operating (OMP), monitoring (MMP), targets (TMP) and incentives (IMP) management practices. We show that these sets of practices, although to a different extent, are complementary to each other. Then, we construct a synthetic indicator of the depth of their use. The resulting intra-firm index is built to reflect not only the number of practices adopted but also the depth of their individual use and the extent of their complementarity. The empirical testing of the decision model is carried out using the evidence from the adoption behaviour of a sample of 1,238 UK establishments present in the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS). Our empirical results show that the intra-firm profitability based model is a good model in that it can explain more of the variability of joint adoption than models based upon the variability of adoption and use of individual practices. We also investigate whether a number of firm specific and market characteristics by affecting the size of the gains (which the joint adoption of innovations can generate) may drive the intensity of use of the four innovations. We find that establishment size, whether foreign owned, whether exposed to an international market and the degree of homogeneity of the final product are important determinants of the intensity of the joint adoption of the four innovations. Most importantly, our results point out that the factors that the economics of innovation literature has been showing to affect the intensity of use of a technological innovation do also affect the intensity of use of sets of innovative management practices. However, they can explain only a small part of the diversity of their joint adoption use by the firms in the sample.

The intra-firm diffusion of complementary innovations: Evidence from the adoption of management practices by British establishments

This paper presents a simple profitability-based decision model to show how synergistic gains generated by the joint adoption of complementary innovations may influence the firm's adoption decision. For this purpose a weighted index of intra-firm diffusion is built to investigate empirically the drivers of the intensity of joint use of a set of complementary innovations. The findings indicate that establishment size, ownership structure and product market concentration are important determinants of the intensity of use. Interestingly, the factors that affect the extent of use of technological innovations do also affect that of clusters of management practices. However, they can explain only part of the heterogeneity of the benefits from joint use.