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Purpose--The purpose of this article is to enhance understanding of influences on interaction between corporate personnel and development specialists and line functions associated with expatriating managers. Line managers are expected to accept greater responsibility for people management and development. But line managers' strategies for managing risks inherent in supervising expatriate managers may cause to surface incompatibilities with specialists' corporate "policy conscience" role. A pluralistically inclined perspective on "managerial interest streams" offers insights into inter-group perceptions and behaviour. Design/methodology/approach--Focusing on organisational actors' interpretations, a non-standardised survey by e-mail, covering a small sample of expatriate managers (n=20) employed in various countries by a large UK-headquartered healthcare retail group, was complemented by semi-structured interviews with personnel and development specialists in a further seven large multinational companies. Findings--Potential tensions around the application of corporate expatriation policy may be attributed to factors "educating" line and specialist orientations to expatriate managers. Originality/value--The value of the paper is in the development of an original model sketching pluralistically located interaction around expatriation management. While limited to an exploratory empirical investigation, the practical implications derive from specification of opportunities and threats to partnership building between those involved in expatriating managers. (Contains 1 figure.)

The emerging character of the UK government's public sector pay reforms during the second and third (New) Labour terms of office is reviewed and contextualised. Three settings are examined where pay reform has been actively employed – with the accent on harmonisation, simplification and devolution of practice, with the express intention of restoring public service workforce morale, while improving services to clients – namely, local government, the National Health Service and the Higher Education sector. The evidence is interpreted as illustrating undoubted change, but also significant areas where progress has been less than intended, measured against the government's original programme goals. Equal pay considerations appear to have dominated all three projects reviewed: the failure to date of public sector managements to capitalise on opportunities the new pay architecture affords them to change local working practices may be attributed to a combination of factors discussed in the article. These have given rise to tensions as efforts have been pursued to transplant private sector pay techniques, somewhat hastily in some cases, without due consideration of the institutional context within which public services and proximal institutions function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the March 2006 "Voice and Value" conference of the London School of Economics, held in London, England. The article gathered academics, businesspeople, policymakers and trade unionists to discuss the impact of trade unions on business. The conference also attempted to assess the employee "voice" and the value of trade unions in establishing this voice. Among the speakers at the conference were Durham University professor Graham Deitz and Oxford University professor Ian Kessler.