Explores the impact of marketisation and enterprise restructuring processes on a Polish case study organisation. “Polskie” illustrates that certain western HRM practices are informing the process of restructuring organisations. These new approaches signal managers’ intentions to change...

Discusses how downsizing has been associated with the move towards lean working in organisations and with having negative consequences for employees. Considers the extent to which downsizing is lean and mean drawing on an extensive review of the available literature. Concludes that downsizing is...

Explores redundancy as a significant and pervasive outcome of organisational change. Argues that the need to manage the redundancy transition has provoked the development of new HRM policies and practices. Highlights that interventions such as outplacement are often used by companies with little...

Explores the implications arising from the complete devolvement of human resource responsibilities within an organization to line managers. Reviews the changing role for line managers through the literature related to the adoption of HRM. Uses theories by Guest and by Storey as a framework to...

New empirical research is presented on the human resource management implications of introducing a service excellence programme into an Australian optometry company. The case study is used to demonstrate the difficulties of changing employee behaviour and illustrates how the rhetorical hype...

In recent years, the term empowerment has become part of everyday management language. It has also been associated with popular management movements of the times such as human resource management (HRM) and total quality management (TQM). Empowerment is regarded as providing a solution to the...

Service organisations are striving to increase the quality of the services they offer. They are also using a wide variety of people management techniques. These two activities can sometimes come into conflict. This article examines a variety of management practices, particularly from human...

Evidence to date shows a divergence in the methods and approaches used by companies to introduce empowerment and indeed a wide debate as to the meaning and appropriateness of the term itself. The popularity of the concept has led many organisations to “dive in at the deep end”, wanting to...

This paper reports on a case study of an internationalized‐industry Engineering Process Plant Contracting (EPPC). The study examines how a leading engineering contracting project management firm has responded to heightened competitive pressures through a process or organizational change. A key...

This paper is concerned with recent attempts to appropriate normative ethics as a medium for engaging critically with the practice and theory of human resource management (HRM). Focusing particularly on arguments for justice and rights in the workplace, the limits of foundationalist critiques of...