Human Relations

Successive UK governments have encouraged small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to pursue Investors in People (IiP) recognition in order to increase levels of employer-provided training in the sector. Using data from the 1998 and 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Surveys, this article reports the extent of change in the proportion of workplaces in small, medium and large firms with IiP recognition and assesses the relationship between IiP and training activity. The analysis reveals an increase in the proportion of workplaces in medium-sized firms with recognition but no increase in the proportion of workplaces in small or large firms with recognition. With regard to the relationship between IiP and training activity, a positive association is found in large firms where both managers/ professionals and non-managers are concerned. In medium-sized firms, however, IiP is only associated with higher levels of non-management training, and in small firms, it is only associated with higher levels of management/professional training.

This study tests a refined materialism—postmaterialism scale, concomitant with a measure of hope, toward the end of predicting ethics and social responsibility concerns in individuals. Results indicate that this interactive model including hope, materialism and postmaterialism successfully predicted ethical and social responsibility orientations. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for the interdisciplinary research on materialism—postmaterialism, the relationship of materialism to ethics and social responsibility and on understanding individual ethics and social responsibility concerns.

This article reviews the use of the later Foucault in organization and management studies. Offering an evaluation of readings of the later writing, we comment on arguments for re-focusing on genealogical criticism, for an alternative Foucauldian politics of the workplace and a form of practical criticism sometimes derived from the later writing. A key aim is to attempt to open up new directions for critical inquiry drawing on other ways of reading Foucault. If genealogy is to be installed as a vital resource for critique, there appears to be a need for renewal. On the question of political alternatives, we comment on the ambiguities and silences — especially the historical silences — of the later Foucault's interpreters. A style of practical criticism inferred from readings of the later writing should not, we suggest, be accepted without qualification.

Our study responds to a call for research to integrate institutional, organizational and individual levels of analysis in examining the implications for work and employment relations of new organizational forms. We empirically examine the implementation of network forms of genetics healthcare delivery that cross organizational and professional boundaries. We highlight that less powerful professional groups may find difficulty in enacting boundary-spanning roles associated with new organizational forms. This is due, first, to inconsistency of government policy, which fragments organizations. Second, professional institutions sustain professional hierarchy and power differentials.

This article identifies an essential research area where a strategy-as-practice approach can make important contributions to the strategic management field: the dynamic process through which organizational assets are developed. It compares strategy-as-practice and dynamic capabilities perspectives and demonstrates how the former may complement the latter in analyzing activities that underpin and may create and modify organizational assets. Several distinct features of the practice approach are identified as fertile ground for examining the micro-foundations of strategy dynamics. It is demonstrated how activity configurations, socio-cultural embeddedness, co-evolution, social interactions, the inclusion of multiple strategists and an awareness of the importance of imagination can complement the dynamic capabilities perspective and may provide suggestions for a dynamic view more generally.