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PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the implementation of talent management interventions in UK public sector organisations.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws upon the findings of a qualitative study of talent management in two UK public sector case study organisations.FindingsImplementing talent management was found to present particular tensions for public sector managers, particularly in terms of its alignment with well‐embedded diversity and equality policies and their own perceptions of fair treatment in the workplace. Despite an acknowledgement that the sector needs to attract, develop and retain the most talented individuals to achieve its modernisation agenda, interventions which require singling out those individuals for special treatment challenges many of its established practices for recruitment and selection, employee development and career management.Practical implicationsPublic sector organisations need to invest both time and effort into developing appropriate and relevant approaches to talent management, which take proper account of line managers' perceptions of fair treatment and established organisational approaches to diversity and equality.Originality/valueTalent management is a topic of growing interest from employers concerned about their work force demographics, specific skills shortages and the retention of high potential employees but the concepts that inform talent interventions are often unclear or are an uneasy fit with the beliefs and understandings about fair treatment of those who have to implement them.

PurposeOriginating from the USA in the early 1990s, diversity management has been "imported" to Europe to become a fashionable practice in many business organizations. The aim of this paper is to provide further insight into whether and how the diversity management discourse challenges and replaces existing local discourses on equality and diversity, and how diversity management is given content and meaning in a specific local context.Design/methodology/approachStatements on diversity, diversity management and equality on both the Dutch and the international websites of ten leading companies in the Netherlands are analyzed.FindingsThe analysis shows that translations of diversity management may in fact not actually replace existing local discourses, but rather leave the existing local discourse more or less intact and alter the original diversity management discourse to fit into this local discourse.Originality/valueThis paper offers some important lessons for management practice.

The literature on organizational change and resistance to change is contradictory. Some scholars find resistance a hindrance to successful change (traditional paradigm), whereas others find it a valuable source (modern paradigm). The objective of this study is to enhance our understanding of how resistance affects organizational change by providing a coherent system dynamics perspective. Based on interviews, expert modelling and group modelling, this inductive case study develops a causal loop diagram that displays eight interacting feedback loops to explain resistance to change and the role that participatory strategies play in addressing this. The model contributes to the theoretical debate on how resistance affects change by providing propositions that integrate the traditional and modern paradigms. When managers face decisions about when to increase, stabilize or decrease the use of participatory strategies, our findings imply to base these decisions upon currently dominating feedback loops, such as the Stress Trap or Slow Trap. © 2018 The Authors. Systems Research and Behavioral Science published by International Federation for Systems Research and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to link previous research on diversity, social capital and strategic human resource management (SHRM), and propose a model to explain how an SHRM system can moderate the effects of diversity on cognitive and relational dimensions of social capital.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative methodologies were used to address the study's research questions and hypotheses drawing on aggregated data obtained from 53 groups (228 individuals).FindingsThe empirical evidence analyzed rejected a deterministic view of the consequences of diversity, assuming that the extent to which they benefit group social interaction depends on certain conditions that can be managed by SHRM. Adopting a configurational point of view, it is concluded that different SHRM configurations can be used, depending on the effects of diversity that the organization wishes to moderate.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research should consider the particularities of the sample.Practical implicationsTo define diversity‐oriented SHRM strategies, firms must start with a systematic analysis of their diversity profiles, studying the concrete relational and cognitive dynamics that heterogeneity causes.Originality/valueThis model considers the SHRM system as a construct that determines social interaction between employees and therefore moderates the effects of demographic and human capital diversity on group performance.

This text presents the foundations of organizing and managing diversities, offers multidisciplinary, intersectional and critical analyses on key issues, and opens up fresh perspectives in order to advance the diversity debate. The contributors are a team of leading diversity scholars from all over the world.

The purpose of the study is to test whether people make different estimations regarding the consequences of their decisions when a dynamic task is formulated as either a discrete delay or a continuous delay. We test the assumption that people have a tendency to treat continuous delays in real life situations as discrete delays. We created a dynamic task with two different conditions: hiring when personnel stay in an organisation for exactly 10 years (discrete delay condition) or when personnel stay on average for 10 years (continuous delay condition). The task was performed by 79 participants in an experiment. Findings show no differences regarding decisions being made, indicating that participants treat both discrete and continuous delays similarly. Because participants' estimations are substantially closer to the (simulated) system response when a discrete delay is involved, we assume that people have the tendency to treat all types of lags as discrete delays. The results were replicated with two additional experimental tasks that were (i) similar except with respect to task context and (ii) testing the understanding of the two delay types by additional control questions. Research implications are that perception of delay order and understanding consequences of different delay orders play a substantial role for controlling dynamic systems. Practical implications regard making delay order a salient characteristic in decision‐making tasks within organisations, for instance, in human resource management, and the training of managers to understand behavior of dynamic systems based on delay order in that system. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to two related contemporary debates on the changing views of the employment relation and on the adoption of telework as a new work practice by analyzing line managers' general telework‐attitude formation processes, and possible outcomes in concrete request situations, mirroring managers' views of the employment relationship.Design/methodology/approachThis multi‐method study among 65 managers in six financial‐sector organizations comprises two parts. The interview part focuses on managers' arguments for or against telework in their departments, and how these are weighed in the telework‐attitude formation process. In the vignette study, managers assess their attitudes towards specific, hypothetical, but realistic telework requests of fictive employees in their departments.FindingsCombining the results of both studies, it is shown that the governance view dominates. Some managers, however, consider telework an "idiosyncratic deal." Particularly in telework‐request situations, also the exchange view enters into the managers' perceptual frames. In order to decrease managers' ambivalence towards telework, the human resource management (HRM)‐system needs to be internally consistent and based on a view of the employment relationship which stresses commitment and trust as guiding principles, rather than control and coordination.Originality/valueEmploying a "configurational approach to strategic HRM," this paper focuses on the importance of the "embeddedness" of telework practices in larger HRM‐systems in general, and the role of cultural obstacles in particular. Telework arguments are considered the HR principles guiding the telework‐attitude formation process, and mirroring managers' views of the employment relationship as part of their workforce philosophies.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide insights into diversity management practices in the Baltic states and present experience of HRM practitioners' in initiating the integration of people with disability into the workforce at a multi national retail chain.Design/methodology/approachAn interview with HR managers of a retail chain on issues related to the integration of people with disability into the workforce, providing background for the relevance, motives, implementation difficulties and organisational benefits of such practices from a business perspective.FindingsMain challenges related with integration of people with disability into the workforce are as follows: attraction of people with disability, work adjustment to meet the abilities of employees with disability, and preparation of managers and co‐workers to work along with these people. Attraction of people with disability works best on the basis of references from their peers. These people make highly loyal employees. Besides they contribute to the development of a more positive climate in the organisation.Originality/valueThis paper presents a good practice case on the integration of people with disability, one of the most discriminated groups of employees, which is still a rare business practice in the Baltic countries. It also provides recommendations on integration issues for other practitioners.

Das Heft ist dem Thema geschlechtsspezifische Aspekte bei Tarifverhandlungen gewidmet. Es enthält folgende Einzelbeiträge: -Linda Dickens, Mia Latta and Anni Weiler: Introduction: equal opportunities and collective bargaining in Europe - a major research project; -Linda Dickens: Collective bargaining and the promotion of gender equality at work: opportunities and challenges for trade unions; -Anni Weiler: Innovative agreements on equal opportunities: new horizons of collective bargaining?; -Riitta Martikainen: Equal pay through collective bargaining?; -Myriam Bergamaschi: Tackling gender segregation in an Italian provincial administration; -Jaenne de Bruijn and Inge Bleijenbergh: Equal opportunities and collective bargaining in the Netherlands: a good case in contract catering; -Birgit Buchinger, Ulrike Gschwandtner and Erika Pircher: Equal opportunities and collective bargaining in Austria; -Mia Latta: Side-streaming gender? The potential and pitfalls of the European ideology on mainstreaming gender issues. (IAB2)