Purpose – Highlights the importance of top people in an organization having both hard and soft skills. Design/methodology/approach – Connects hard and soft skills with left and right-brain respectively. Distinguishes between book-smart and street-smart. Findings – Argues that leaders with...

Purpose – The paper aims to examine BP’s communications response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which caused 11 deaths and a huge oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico. Design/methodology/approach – It draws on such secondary sources as newspapers, audiovisual material and social-network...

The UK’s ninth‐largest law firm has changed over the last five years from being regarded in legal circles as the “rottweilers from the north”, with a “revolving‐door culture”, to being a great place to work. DLA was 35th in the 2004 Sunday Times Great Place to Work table – its...

Fiscal experts point out that no individual nation, no matter how apparently buoyant its economy, can be impervious to the world financial climate. By the same token, major corporations have to be aware that they ignore changing international economic forces at their peril. Gazing into its...

The Chubb Group of insurance companies and Bear Stearns security company are among the large corporations that have, over the last decade, been gradually liberating their internal labor markets. The traditional system of management determining the employee’s career path has been replaced by a...

Lawyers, coming from a culture where admitting lack of knowledge and making necessary “mistakes” are not seen as correct behavior, may not be the easiest group of people to train. In general terms, they may not always respect people from professional disciplines other than their own. They...

Mentoring can help an organization to win in today’s escalating “war for talent” – but will achieve this most effectively if the mentoring program is aligned with the organization’s strategic positioning and long‐term objectives. Mentoring can support career‐development...

A learning and development program proved a cost‐effective way to attract, develop and retain graduates within AIB, Ireland’s largest financial‐services organization. Graduate retention increased by 12 percent during the two‐year program, which coincided with the height of the Celtic...