Journal of General Management

This paper investigates the determinants of success of the client-consultant relationship from the consultant's point of view. Ten consultants from various fields (e.g. change management, information technology, etc.) based in the province of Quebec in Canada were interviewed. They were asked to comment on issues relating to their roles in the consultancy project, expectations, and the determinants of success of the client–consultant relationship. Interview data were analysed using an interpretive frame. The research findings reveal that consultants perceive their contribution and role positively and perceive themselves as change agents and knowledge transmitters. Trust, active communication, and shared feedback were identified as the major determinants of success of the client–consultant relationship. The results support and help advance earlier research findings in the management consulting field. Consultants are conscious that a long-term relationship built on trust, active communication, and shared feedback, identified as major determinants of success in the client–consultant relationship, is essential. The qualitative findings of the study add to, and help support, earlier research findings on consultants' perception of their roles and contributions within client organisations.

This paper examines the role of institutional and cultural differences in the link between employees' satisfaction with HR practices and their affective commitment by focusing on counter clerks in financial services workplaces in the UK and Thailand. The results show that while the connection between satisfaction and commitment is of similar magnitude in the UK and Thailand, that level of commitment is linked with different HR practices. The results are consistent with cultural and institutional differences between the two countries and serve as a reminder that managers should consider the specific conditions in which they operate rather than simply adopting a best-practice approach to HRM.

Given the dearth of research on management innovation in Africa, this paper explores the factors influencing the adoption of workplace policies in African companies. The paper used a random sample of 152 private sector companies in Malawi to investigate the factors influencing the adoption of HIV/AIDS workplace policies. The hierarchical regression results indicate that organisational factors are the better predictors of the adoption of HIV/AIDS workplace policies in Malawi. Specifically, top management support and organisational size have been found to be the main predictors. However, the study also found significant correlations between the adoption of HIV/AIDS workplace policies and institutional factors. One of the main implications of the findings is that organisational factors might provide improved explanatory power in predicting the adoption of HIV/AIDS workplace policies in African companies.

This article analyses the HRM systems of three of the best-known global Chinese MNCS – namely, Haier, Huawei and Lenovo – with a view to exploring their HRM practices, and understanding whether they demonstrate global convergence or divergence, and whether their rhetoric matches the reality of these practices. A qualitative comparative case study research design was used based upon an analysis of company documents, scholarly articles and internet sources. It concludes that the HRM systems of these companies are both similar and different from each other; that they represent both partial convergence and partial divergence depending on the activities studied, compared with Western HRM models, and that the rhetoric of such systems is sometimes at odds with the reality of their practices.