Purpose – Aims to analyse the reactions of front‐line staff to the use of the “customer” label in Jobcentre Plus, the new agency charged with structural and cultural reform of benefit administration in the UK and to highlight some key challenges and possibilities faced by “new public...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual and empirical analysis of the rationale and enactment of consumer discourses in reformed British welfare administration, through a focus on consumption and the service interaction. The paper aims to explore how administrators use...

We evaluate a number of the claims made in the debate between the prescriptive and critical literature that surrounds `excellence', with a particular focus on human resource and quality management. The critical literature contains two positions, broadly a traditional control perspective and the...

TQM is generally seen as depending on employees having a high awareness of quality issues and a willingness to engage in continuous improvement. Many total quality programmes have, implicitly or explicitly, attitudinal change as one of their initial objectives. Reports the results of a study...

Purpose Addressing the continuing productivity challenge, the purpose of this paper is to analyze data from the National Health Service on employee involvement (EI) in order to gain critical insights into how employees’ shared perception of EI in organizational decision making (i.e. EI...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine antecedents of employee quality commitment at two Korean auto firms. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 644 employees at two auto plants; 331 at the high lean plant and 313 at the low lean plant. Hierarchical regression...

Purpose – This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of resistance to change (RTC) by examining the role played by organisational commitment (OC) as a potential predictor and moderator in the analysis of RTC. Design/methodology/approach – First, alternative models of OC were...

In this paper, we argue that discussion of worker participation in decision‐making is very limited in its usefulness unless the analysis looks at the structure of decision‐making, particularly in terms of centralization, in the organization concerned. The issues of worker participation are...