Purpose – Focuses on the strategic role that human‐resource management should play to help to ensure organizational success. Design/methodology/approach – Warns managers against abdicating responsibility for leading their people, and HR specialists against empire building. Highlights how...

Siemens, once noted for its bureaucratic and hierarchical approach to business, has adopted a grass‐roots and “bottom up” approach to knowledge management, which has transformed the company over the last three years. Without any suggestion or provocation from above, middle‐level...

Purpose – This paper aims to describe the main human resource management policies at Ethan Power Private Ltd, an Indian design, sales and manufacturing company, and the specific circumstances that led it to become a learning organization. Design/methodology/approach – This paper outlines the...

Purpose This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies. Design/methodology/approach This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places...

The most important element of successful change is never to let your people get offside, says Marie Gill, head of organizational development at UK supermarket Asda, which recently merged with Wal‐Mart, one of the world’s largest retailers. She was speaking at a forum organized by Brathay, a...

Throughout the turbulent recent history of UK carmaker Rover, culminating in parent BMW’s sale of the company for £10 to the Phoenix consortium in May 2000, internal communications with the workforce were never far from the top of the agenda.

Reinsurance and financial‐services organization Swiss Re has repositioned its alternative risk resources after a radical reorganization. Strategic imperatives included establishing a new performance culture among its 500 associates, who mostly work in virtual teams as part of the new Swiss Re...

Action learning – often seen as only a tool for personal development – was the way chosen to open up the culture, sharpen up service provision, increase revenue and reduce costs in the UK Publishing Services division of Oxford University Press.

In this age of management consultants, change and uncertainty – it is often the employee who feels left out. In the past few years, organizational restructuring has been widespread in UK local government. At the same time, staff are being increasingly consulted on their views and options...

If our hospital did not exist, how would we create it? This was the question asked by doctors and managers at Leicester Royal Infirmary, one of two English pilot sites to evaluate the use of business process re‐engineering (BPR) in a healthcare environment.