Luchien Karsten

Employee reactions to human resource management and performance in a developing country

Purpose – This paper seeks to examine employee reactions to human resource management (HRM) and performance. It placed employees on a centre stage in analysing HRM to provide theoretical insights.Design/methodology/approach – To explore the theme, a survey of 252 employees drawn from eight organisations was conducted. Furthermore, on‐site interviews were carried out with managers, thereby contributing to the generalisability of the findings.Findings – The findings from the study indicate a positive attitude of employees to HRM practices, such as promotion from within, staffing, equal employment opportunity, quality of training, reasonable compensation and paid vacation and sick days. Moreover, the evidence also shows that productivity has been increasing while employee turnover, absenteeism, and grievances are low. However, the evidence also reveals that training was not integrated in a planned way to employee career development.Research limitations/implications – The present study adds to a growing liter...

Human resource management practices in Eritrea: challenges and prospects

Purpose – This article seeks to examine the challenges and prospects of human resource management (HRM) in a developing‐country context. It focuses on contextual factors and employee involvement in analysing HRM to provide theoretical insights.Design/methodology/approach – To explore the above theme, on‐site interviews were carried out with general managers, human resource professionals, line managers and union leaders in eight firms. Furthermore, a sample of 252 employees was included, thereby contributing to the generalisability of the findings.Findings – This article provides substantial and current information on HRM knowledge and practices in Eritrea. The paper argues that some contextual variables impose certain challenges to HRM practices. However, evidence also reveals that the concept and knowledge of HRM practices, such as training, recruitment, compensation, employee participation, performance appraisal and reward systems, are in place with some indicators of local influence.Research limitation...

Leadership style and entrepreneurial change: The Centurion operation at Philips Electronics

Purpose – This paper aims to look at the role of the top and middle management of the Philips organization during the transition from one type of organizational change to another in the 1990s and the role the history of the organisation played in this process. Design/methodology/approach – The paper analysis is based on historical records, literature and interviews with former Philips top managers. Findings – The paper shows that Philips’ leaders used different styles of leadership to create a deliberate atmosphere and willingness to change. The final emergent transformation, however, could only sufficiently materialise while it rejuvenated existing management concepts like Quality Management. The success was partly based on the fact that these concepts played a historical role in the Philips organisation. Originality/value – The paper adds the historical style approach to leadership research and pays attention to the important role of the organization’s history during processes of organizational change.

The evolution of management as an interdisciplinary field

Purpose – This paper aims to provide insights into the evolution of the concept of interdisciplinarity in management science and management education.Design/methodology/approach – A range of recently published (1993‐2002) works, which aim to provide practical advice rather than theoretical books on pedagogy or educational administration, are critiqued to aid the individual make the transition into academia. The sources are sorted into sections: finding an academic job, general advice, teaching, research and publishing, tenure and organizations.Findings – The paper finds that in the evolution of management education and management science interdisciplinarity took different forms: synoptic and instrumental. Both forms resulted from different knowledge strategies of competing and cooperating disciplines. It concludes that in The Netherlands instrumental versions of interdisciplinarity in management research and education prevailed.Research limitations/implications – The paper studies the evolution of interdi...

From Gods to goddesses: Horai management as an approach to coordinating working hours

Flexibility in working time arrangements may lead to heterogeneity of working-time patterns. Drawing on the societal perspective, we consider three interrelated spheres of: professional relations, organizational, and domestic space. Greek mythology assists us to contrast chrono management and Horai management. Case analyses of France, the UK, and the Netherlands are presented within the context of EU Directives. By introducing Horai management we try to find an expression for the dialectical interplay between the temporalities of the home and the workplace, while including developments in the wider societal context. Horai management helps us reach beyond the logic of time-economy to improve the coordination of multiple temporalities.

The social shaping of the early business schools in The Netherlands: Professions and the power of abstraction

– This paper aims to provide an alternative explanation for the rise of modern management schools at the turn of the twentieth century. It is to be argued that these schools were not just responses of the higher education system to the demand of industrializing companies for a new class of professional managers, like Chandler suggests., – The historical‐actor approach is applied to explain the rise of academic management schools, prior to the Second World War. Data were collected from the archives of different management schools and professional organizations of the engineers and accountants., – To legitimize their position in the higher education system, abstraction appeared to be the dominant strategy of the professions. By abstraction they could distinguish themselves from the lay public and other professional groups in the domain of management. At the moment the new professions had a foot in the higher education system the engineers and the accountants contested for the new management domain. Abstraction appeared also the successful strategy of the accountants to distinguish themselves from the engineers and to establish a sound base for the development of the Dutch variant of business economics., – The paper presents a full account of the Dutch situation but the findings cannot be generalized to other countries. More comparative research is needed. The rise of management schools is mostly explained as an educational response to an economic demand., – The history of the Dutch business schools may provide researchers and administrators of universities insight into the dynamics of disciplines and into setting up professional schools., – This research is based on original documents from the archives of schools and professional organizations. The main contribution of the paper is that it shows how emancipatory and social status motives mediated between the demand and supply side.

Time and management: the need for hora management

Working time patterns are moving away from the traditional pattern of regularity, standardisation and co‐ordination to a new triptych of individualism, heterogeneity and irregularity. Seeks to make sense of these changes through the concept of hora management as an approach to manage the interface between temporally asymmetric domains of organisational and domestic space mediated through the space of professional relations. Drawing on the societal approach, defines the three spaces – professional relations, organisational and domestic – and builds a model of their inter‐relationship that incorporates the supranational impact of the European Union. Organisational citizenship will require managers to pursue family‐friendly policies and recognise that time spent in one domain cannot be equated with time spent in another. Hora management offers a way of managing these tensions and contradictions.

Management concepts: Their transfer and implementation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to claim that Habermass pragmatic speech act theory helps us to extend our understanding of how management concepts are actually applied. First, the relevant features of management concepts are examined, to indicate how the diffusion of knowledge about management practices and organizational structuring takes place. Subsequently, the paper focuses on the adoption of management concepts in companies, looking at the different ways management concepts are implemented. Some implementation is based on strategic actions, others on communicative action. This issue is further explored in the final section.Design/methodology/approach – Compares Lervik and Lunnars categorization of management concept implementation to Habermass epistemology.Findings – Identifies aspects of language as conversation as determinant of new management concept implementation.Practical implications – Shows how role discourse analysis coupled with Habermas can give an understanding of implementatio...

What Happened to the Popularity of the Polder Model? Emergence and Disappearance of a Political Fashion

This article studies the rise and fall of the popular Polder Model concept from a fashion perspective. By applying both the epistemological and methodological tools developed to study management fashions, the authors focus on the events connected to this political fashion. First, a description of the content of the Polder Model is provided in which it is suggested that the concept contains two different meanings, one rooted in the Dutch decision-making style (neocorporatism) and one in a specific policy mix (i.e. problem solving) concerning labour and social welfare policies. Second, an analysis is given of the genesis of the concept and its popularity over time. Third, attention paid in other countries to the model is discussed and also criticism of the model. The article concludes with a discussion on the similarities and differences between fashions in the discourses of management and of politics.

An awkward partner? Britain's implementation of the Working Time Directive

The dominance of member states in the field of social policy has been traditionally depicted as one of the main hurdles facing the development of a European social policy. Resistance by national government to the transfer of influence and control over social policy to the European level has been particularly true for Britain. Opposition to various initiatives, such as the Social Charter and Social Chapter has demonstrated this. It is in this context that this article examines Britains implementation of the Working Time Directive, this being demonstrative of the distinction between member states and the EU in the social policy arena. In this sense, the Working Time Directive is significant not just because of the provisions it brings to British employees, but because it demonstrates the changing nature of the relationship between member states and the EU in the realm of social policy.