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This study set out to identify emerging trends in advancing engineering for sustainable development, supporting the engineering workforce to address wicked problems, and strengthening pathways between engineering education, industry, and policy. The following question guided this work: What are the emerging factors impacting the future of global sustainability efforts within engineering, and how can these be amplified to increase the impact of engineering for sustainable development? Using an adapted Delphi method with surveys, focus groups, and member-checking interviews, we hosted the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) 2022 Engineering Global Development (EGD) Stakeholder Summit. The summit convened industry leaders, innovators, and academics to explore emerging factors impacting the future of global sustainability efforts in engineering. This manuscript synthesizes emerging trends and proposes recommendations for engineering, particularly in the specific focus area of engineering for sustainable development (e.g., ‘humanitarian engineering’, ‘global engineering’). Critical recommendations include the adoption of emerging cultural mindsets, which include: (1) take an interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder approach, (2) consider dynamic and interconnected systems, (3) increase humility and intercultural competence, (4) prioritize diversity and inclusion, (5) increase localization and center community perspectives, (6) challenge the perception that engineering is neutral, and (7) broaden the goals of engineering. Ultimately, this study highlights pathways forward for the broader engineering community to more effectively contribute to advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Published version

This article introduces the second of two special issues on philosophical approaches to leadership ethics. In this issue, the articles draw on the works of Plato, Niccolò Machiavelli, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas to explore questions in leadership ethics concerning leaders’ self-knowledge and self-constitution and their responsibilities to their followers. The articles in this issue demonstrate the potential of philosophy to deepen our understanding of leadership and ethics.

Despite decades of global development programming, poverty persists in the low-and-middle-income countries targeted by these efforts. Training approaches to global development must change and the role of engineers in these efforts must evolve to account for structural and systemic barriers to global poverty reduction. Rapid growth in Global Engineering graduate programs in the United States and Canada creates an opportunity to unify efforts between academic institutions and ensure that programs align with the sector's needs as identified by practitioners. To build consensus on how to equip engineering students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary, we convened practitioners, faculty and graduate students for a two-day workshop to establish an agreed-upon Global Engineering body of knowledge. The workshop was informed by a pre-event survey of individual participants and representatives of participating academic institutions with graduate programs in Global Engineering or a related field. Through the workshop breakout sessions and post-event work by the authors, we developed the following priority learning objectives for graduate education in global engineering: Contextual Comprehension and Analysis; Cross-cultural Humility; Global Engineering Ethics; Stakeholder Analysis and Engagement; Complex Systems Analysis; Data Collection and Analysis; Data-driven Decision Making; Applied Engineering Knowledge; Project Design; Project Management; Multidisciplinary Teamwork and Leadership; Communication; Climate Change, Sustainability, and Resilience; Global Health; and Development Economics. Although technical skills are central to preparing the next generation of Global Engineers, transversal and interdisciplinary skills are equally important in equipping students to work across sectors and account for barriers to global development and equity.

This article introduces the first of two special issues on philosophical approaches to leadership ethics. In it, we show some of the ways that philosophy contributes to the study of leadership and leadership ethics. We begin with an overview of how philosophers have treated some of the ethical aspects and challenges of leadership. These include discussions of self-interest, the problem of dirty hands, responsibility, moral luck, power, gender and diversity, and spirituality. The articles in this issue draw on philosophy to explore a variety of ethical questions related to leadership and the relationships that leaders have with followers and others.

The life‐blood of most organizations is knowledge. Too often, the very mechanisms set up to facilitate knowledge flow militate against it. This is because they are instituted in a top‐down way, they are cumbersome to manage and the bridges of trust fail to get built. In their thirst for innovation, the tendency is for firms to set up elaborate transmission channels and governance systems. As a result, staff are drowned in a deluge of mundane intranet messages and bewildered by matrix structures, while off‐the‐wall ideas and mould‐breaking insights are routinely missed. Added to this is the challenge of operating across professional, cultural, regional and linguistic boundaries, where ways of sharing knowledge differ markedly, even within the same project team. Drawing upon extensive research with scientists in the ATLAS collaboration (a high‐energy particle physics experiment comprising 3,500 scientists from 38 countries), we explore five paradoxes associated with knowledge exchange in global networks. Each paradox leads to a proposition which takes the theory and practice of knowledge management in a fresh direction. We conclude by outlining a number of HRM priorities for international knowledge‐intensive organizations.

Following Enron, WorldCom, Lehmann Brothers and other examples of organisational failure, much has been made of what appears to be a failure of leadership in institutional life. Of course the reasons for this failure can be attributed to many factors, but Business Schools have been consistently singled out for contributing to a moral malaise. The argument is that they typically reinforce the notion that ends justify means and that delivery on-time and on-budget is all that really matters. Leadership development programmes, especially MBAs, have been criticized for over-emphasising methodologies and models at the expense of more human qualities such as judgement, wisdom and morality. Although the argument that business education adversely affects the personal moral philosophies of students is disputed by some, a historical overview of university-based business schools in the United States by Khurana (2007) concludes that they have poorly served the ethical practice of management. Following the economic events of 2008, criticisms of business schools haves, if anything, intensified (Podolny, 2009; Starkey & Tempest, 2009). Meanwhile in a blistering attack on business school myopia, Kellerman (2012: 169) pronounced that “the leadership industry is self-satisfied, self-perpetuating and poorly policed; that leadership programs tend to proliferate without objective assessment; that leadership as an area of intellectual inquiry remains thin; and that little original thought has been given to what leader learning in the second decade of the twenty-first century should look like.”

BackgroundContinuous electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) in labour is widely used and computerised interpretation has the potential to increase its utility.ObjectivesThis trial aimed to find out whether or not the addition of decision support software to assist in the interpretation of the cardiotocograph (CTG) reduced the number of poor neonatal outcomes, and whether or not it was cost-effective.DesignTwo-arm individually randomised controlled trial. The allocations were computer generated using stratified block randomisation employing variable block sizes. The trial was not masked.SettingLabour wards in England, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland.ParticipantsWomen in labour having EFM, with a singleton or twin pregnancy, at ≥ 35 weeks’ gestation.InterventionsDecision support or no decision support.Main outcome measuresThe primary outcomes were (1) a composite of poor neonatal outcome {intrapartum stillbirth or early neonatal death (excluding lethal congenital anomalies), or neonatal morbidity [defined as neonatal encephalopathy (NNE)], or admission to a neonatal unit within 48 hours for ≥ 48 hours (with evidence of feeding difficulties, respiratory illness or NNE when there was evidence of compromise at birth)}; and (2) developmental assessment at the age of 2 years in a subset of surviving children.ResultsBetween 6 January 2010 and 31 August 2013, 47,062 women were randomised and 46,042 were included in the primary analysis (22,987 in the decision support group and 23,055 in the no decision support group). The short-term primary outcome event rate was higher than anticipated. There was no evidence of a difference in the incidence of poor neonatal outcome between the groups: 0.7% (n = 172) of babies in the decision support group compared with 0.7% (n = 171) of babies in the no decision support group [adjusted risk ratio 1.01, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.82 to 1.25]. There was no evidence of a difference in the long-term primary outcome of the Parent Report of Children’s Abilities-Revised with a mean score of 98.0 points [standard deviation (SD) 33.8 points] in the decision support group and 97.2 points (SD 33.4 points) in the no decision support group (mean difference 0.63 points, 95% CI –0.98 to 2.25 points). No evidence of a difference was found for health resource use and total costs. There was evidence that decision support did change practice (with increased fetal blood sampling and a lower rate of repeated alerts).LimitationsStaff in the control group may learn from exposure to the decision support arm of the trial, resulting in improved outcomes in the control arm. This was identified in the planning stage and felt to be unlikely to have a significant effect on the results. As this was a pragmatic trial, the response to CTG alerts was left to the attending clinicians.ConclusionsThis trial does not support the hypothesis that the use of computerised interpretation of the CTG in women who have EFM in labour improves the clinical outcomes for mothers or babies.Future workThere continues to be an urgent need to improve knowledge and training about the appropriate response to CTG abnormalities, including timely intervention.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials ISRCTN98680152.FundingThis project was funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) HTA programme and will be published in full inHealth Technology Assessment; Vol. 22, No. 9. See the NIHR Journals Library website for further project information. Sara Kenyon was part funded by the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care West Midlands.

In considering what it means to lead organizations effectively and ethically the literature comprising spirituality at work (SAW) and spiritual leadership theory (SLT) has become highly influential, especially in the USA. It has also attracted significant criticism. While, in this paper we endorse this critique, we argue that that the strand of literature which purportedly takes a Christian standpoint within the wider SAW school of thought, largely misconstrues and misapplies the teaching of its founder, Jesus. As a result, in dismissing the claims and application of SAW and SLT, there is a real risk that we lose the vital contribution of Christian thought, not least some of the timeless counter-cultural wisdom of Jesus which, we contend, offers a vital foundation to the practice of ethical leadership and business ethics in organisations. In proposing a way forward, two thorny issues which face all leaders are addressed: dealing with ego and closing the gap between what we say and what we do. The more we understand about the dynamics of human nature, the more we learn about the profundity of Jesus’ teachings. We then propose a number of ways in which Jesus-centred ethical leadership can be practised. Each is radical and each implies risk: both the personal risk of inner renewal arising from repentance as a doorway to personal integrity, as well as the risk of opposing unethical practices and promoting the excellence of core practices in the workplace.

Research on leadership development in organizations is abundant, as are the resources invested in developing their leaders. Although rarely made explicit, much of this writing and activity is driven by functionalist assumptions, with a primary concern for good design and enhanced corporate performance. Given the politically sensitive, culturally complex and institutionally embedded nature of leadership, as well as controversy over the way leadership itself is best defined and developed, the author argues that this reliance on a single perspective is potentially limiting. The aim of this paper is to enhance leadership development practice in organizations by proposing a fresh and theoretically informed approach for exploring the multiple meanings of leadership development. This is done, first, by clarifying the discursive assumptions underlying studies in this field and revealing the distinctive insights that arise from functionalist, interpretive, dialogic and critical discourses of leadership development; and second, by exploring how each of these discourses, or ‘readings’, might promote quite different approaches to leadership development in organizations.

Despite burgeoning literature on knowledge transfer, relatively little is known about how strategic knowledge is created and exchanged and, specifically, the influence of leadership in stimulating and marshalling successful innovation. We frame this process as a dynamic capability that is primarily inter-organisational; it is also highly complex, hard to grasp and hard to imitate and calls for knowledge leadership, a qualitatively different kind of leadership from that which characterises more traditional industrial economies. This poses particular challenges for human resource (HR) specialists seeking to promote knowledge leadership across institutional and cultural boundaries. We report on preliminary findings from interviews with scientists working in a global particle physics experiment being conducted in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN (an abbreviation of the French version of European Organisation for Nuclear Research), Switzerland. Given that this collaboration (a global set of loosely coupled, non-hierarchical networks) is prototypical of many international knowledge-based enterprises, the findings will help to inform the HR requirements for successful knowledge leadership.

In this paper we discuss the theme for the 2009 8th International Conference on Studying Leadership (ICSL): Leadership in Crisis, which was hosted by the Centre for Leadership at the University of Birmingham (CLUB). We introduce five papers chosen from the conference which make up this special issue and that engage with different facets or manifestations of crisis — in context, method and theory. Prior to introducing the papers we offer our own reflections on the theme of crisis and its implications for new theorizing in leadership. In our necessarily brief review of the topic we suggest there is cause for optimism and opportunity to move forward — as is exemplified in the contributions we chose for this issue. We suggest crisis is inevitable, as summed up by the phrase ‘events, my dear boy’ — Harold MacMillan’s tongue-in-cheek answer when asked what was the biggest challenge facing him as a leader. At the same time, we identify three challenges in relation to current leadership studies. First, how to elevate the collective and the contextual dimensions of leadership without losing sight of the individual. Second, how to conduct ontologically diverse research which nevertheless promotes dialogue with less favoured and familiar discourses. Third, given the local and time-bound prism through which we access social phenomena, how to make the most of glimpses at crisis through occasional slivers of light.

Foreword: Placing leadership Keith Grint 1. Introduction: Leadership and place Chris Collinge, John Gibney and Chris Mabey 2. Connecting place, policy and leadership Chris Collinge and John Gibney 3. Leadership challenges in the inner city: planning for sustainable regeneration in Birmingham and Barcelona Austin Barber and Montserrat Pareja Eastaway 4. Neighbourhood regeneration and place leadership: lessons from Groningen and Birmingham David Mullins and Gerard van Bortel 5. Leadership of 'subregional' places in the context of growth Lisa Trickett and Peter Lee 6. Leadership of cluster policy: lessons from the Austrian province of Styria Stewart MacNeill and Michael Steiner 7. Place-renewing leadership: trajectories of change for mature manufacturing regions in Europe David Bailey, Marco Bellandi, Annalisa Caloffi and Lisa De Propris 8. Place-making and the limitations of spatial leadership: reflections on the Oresund Chris Collinge and John Gibney 9. Leadership of place in the rural periphery: lessons from Australia's agricultural margins Michael Kroehn, Alaric Maude and Andrew Beer 10. Reflections on leadership and place Chris Mabey and Tim Freeman

Drawing upon the preceding articles in this issue, we propose a multiple discourses approach to the study of contemporary leadership and place-shaping literatures with the intention of encouraging researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to engage more self-consciously with the discursive frames within which they work. We argue that this is no mere intellectual exercise, but is crucial for garnering and combining the fruits of work in the (hitherto) parallel fields of leadership and place-making, where theorising has been fragmented and underemphasised, respectively. The approach seeks to reveal the different ways that ‘place’ is constructed, surfacing the tacit assumptions and aspects of leadership of place invoked. In the second section, we identify schools of leadership theory that directly speak to the notion of place, and use these discursive assumptions to re-interrogate the case studies featured in the previous articles. Third, armed with this discursive framework and illuminated by episodes fr...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to compare four different employee activities, namely developmental appraisal, coaching, 360 degree feedback and development centres, offering a comparative framework and an integration of existing research evidence.Design/methodology/approachThe paper proposes a unifying classification which combines existing dimensions derived from the literature, such as the degree of formality, with further differences or communalities such as the degree of simulation, ownership of data and frequency of occurrence. This leads to a review of the pertinent literature and research evidence for each of the four activities discussed, with particular reference to long‐term outcomes, their social context as well as individual motivation.FindingsThe literature review did not produce equivocal evidence for the effectiveness of any of the four activities. Ratings in appraisals are flawed, whereas their developmental aspect appears dependent on the communication between managers and their charges. Also, there is little evidence on what happens as a result of appraisal interviews in the context of the manager‐employee relationship, and how organizations could best optimize this activity to aid long‐term individual and organizational development.Practical implicationsIt is proposed that this classification framework could guide both the implementation and evaluation of diverse activities beyond those reviewed here. This framework may prove effective in making explicit and thus addressing the potentially conflicting expectations for prevalent activities from different parties involved. It is proposed that certain aspects of employee development, such as the employer‐manager relationship may be more suited to investigation through qualitative paradigms, but that ultimately more evidence is needed for long‐term outcomes at different levels (e.g. the individual and the organization).Originality/valueThe paper may help understanding of when, and under what conditions, which particular types of development activities are best suited to meet both individual and organizational requirements.

While comparative studies of human resource management (HRM) are relatively plentiful, few have examined the way organisations in different countries train and develop their managers, or the impact of this upon firm performance. Given the centrality of management capability for corporate and national competitive performance, this represents an important area of enquiry. Utilising telephone interview data from the human resource development manager and a line manager in 482 domestic and multinational organisations in four European countries, patterns of management development (MD) are found to differ according to country and, to a lesser extent, by international strategy. However, a significantly greater amount of organisational performance is explained by internal MD strategies adopted by the organisations concerned and the credence accorded these by line managers. Journal of International Business Studies (2008) 39, 1327–1342. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400405

Driven by concerns over Europe's competitive position in global markets, the role of leadership and management in boosting efficiency, productivity and innovation in European firms has moved up the public policy agenda. However, small firm participation in formal management development has been significantly lower than that for large organizations. The main focus of this article is on management training and development as a strategic activity. Seven partners in Britain, Denmark, Norway, France, Germany, Spain and Romania, took part in the LEONARDO programme's European Management Development project. Each surveyed structured samples of 100 firms, interviewing at least one senior manager and one line manager in each firm. This article contrasts the 191 small firms (20–100 employees) with 201 large firms (500 or more employees). The main contrasts in management development practices were partly due to size effects but also partly due to key differences in strategic approaches to management development.

This article illustrates a number of ways in which competency or capability-based management development (CBMD) can work simultaneously both for and against the interests of organizational agents. It does so by demonstrating how CBMD might usefully be understood as both ideological and quasi-religiously faith-based. These features are shown to provide opportunities for resistance and micro-emancipation alongside those for repression and subordination. The study employs a combination of ‘middle range’ discourse analytical techniques. In the first instance, critical discourse analysis is applied to company documentation to distil the ideological stance of an international organization’s CBMD programme. Critical discursive psychology is then used to assess the ways in which employees’ evaluative accounts both support and resist such stance. The analysis builds upon previous insights from Foucauldian studies of CBMD by foregrounding processes of discursive agency. It also renders more visible and discussible the assumptions and dilemmas that CBMD might imply.

Management development (MD) is widely regarded as a key element in a strategic approach to human resource management, yet there is still little empirical evidence that it actually contributes significantly to superior firm performance. In a study of 179 European firms across six countries, organization size explained some variance in productivity. However, the degree of variance explained is considerably enhanced when variables are introduced which capture the way MD is conceived and implemented. Specifically, line manager perceptions of the importance given to MD distinguish high-from low-performing companies when measured against an objective measure of firm productivity derived from a financial database.

Management development is generally regarded as a key element in a strategic approach to human resource management. Yet there is still little empirical evidence that it actually contributes significantly to superior firm performance, and if it does, precisely which aspects of management development policy and practice lead to these positive outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to test these relationships. Based on interviews with human resource development and line managers in 499 European firms, contextual factors like sales turnover, size and country explained some variance in perceptions of performance. However, the degree of variance explained is considerably enhanced when variables are introduced, which capture the way management development is conceived and implemented. Causal path analysis shows that a favorable strategic fit and organizational fit significantly predicts line manager perceptions of the importance given to management development, which in turn, distinguishes high- from low-performing companies.

This paper uses recent survey data to undertake a comparative analysis of management development across six Western European countries. Unlike most studies that compare management development practices, we rely on an institutional labour market perspective to compare managerial skills development and training. We suggest that, while there are few differences in terms of the priority firms from different countries give to developing managers, the methods that are used and skill profiles can differ considerably. Furthermore, institutional change may also challenge some conventional views of how managers are being developed. We conclude by distinguishing four country systems that reflect a series of common characteristic strengths and weaknesses of national managerial training systems.

Explaining the way organizations go about identifying and developing their managers will require some understanding of internal priorities and decision processes, as well as more macro factors like the national institutional context. We might also expect cultural factors to play an important part, but applying a cross-cultural analysis to management development policies and practices is relatively rare. One exception is an enduring framework which identifies the cultural characteristics of Germanic, Anglo-Dutch and Latin models [ European Management Journal 5(2) (1987) 72; The Global Challenge Frameworks for International Human Resource Management , McGraw-Hill/Irwin, Chicago]. Drawing upon a sample of 300 European firms, this paper tests the empirical validity of these three models and finds that some, but not all, of the features originally identified continue to hold true for firms in the countries concerned.

The problem and the solution. It is believed that management capability is a key to competitive performance at firm level and that this feeds through to economic effectiveness at a national level. Yet comparatively little is known about the policies, practices, and impact of management training and development activities undertaken by organizations in a cross-national context. This article introduces a research project designed to address these questions. Results are reported and compared for seven European countries. Although practice and priorities differ widely, certain approaches to management development are found to significantly improve organizational performance, irrespective of national setting.

The problem and the solution. Studies tracking the performance impact of progressive human resource management (HRM) practices have invariably included management training as a key element. By definition, such research explains much about the collective impact of HRM practices but does not allow us to assess the specific contribution of management training and development practices. Furthermore, the field is dominated by studies conducted in the United States. Here, the key messages emerging from the current study of management training and development in a European context are summarized. In so doing, implications for future research and professional practice are outlined.

Human resource development (HRD) practice can be viewed from a number of theoretical standpoints. Rather than viewing competing standpoints as unhelpful at best,or incompatible at worst,this article proposes purposeful dialogue between them. The argument of this article is that to draw on a range of interpretive lenses,far from inhibiting our understanding of HRD,actually helps the researcher arrive at a fuller and more holistic understanding of such activities. This,in turn,leads to better informed feedback to HRD practitioners as they seek to design and manage training interventions in organizations. By way of illustration,Bolman and Deal’s multiframe approach is applied as an interviewing device,with managers taking part in an executive coaching program in a case organization, demonstrating the unpredictability of an apparently straightforward HRD intervention. Implications for HRD theorizing,methodolo gy,and practice are summarized.

Writing on knowledge management (KM) and leadership studies tends to take place in parallel; both fields are prolific yet they rarely inform each other. A KM view tends to take a positional view of leaders and a functionalist view of firms: so it regards those with the ascription or status of leaders as pivotal, and knowledge as a commodity to be leveraged with the help of leaders to improve firm performance. But as the global reach of organizations in the knowledge-based economy become more stretched, as their operations become more networked and as their workforces become more mobile, the task of deploying and deriving value from knowledge becomes ever more challenging and calls for a qualitatively different approach which is termed knowledge leadership. In contrast to the instrumentalist approach of KM we offer some alternative discourses of knowledge and explore the implications of these for knowledge leadership. We then use interpretive discourse to examine the way knowledge activists enact and experience the exchange of knowledge in the ATLAS collaboration, part of the largest scientific experiment in the world at the Large Hadron Collider, near Geneva. We find this apparently democratic and homogeneous global network to be populated by quite different perceptions concerning the way knowledge is viewed, the way knowledge leadership is exercised and the impact of this on the global collaboration. We discuss the wider significance of these findings for knowledge leadership in other international knowledge-based enterprises and R&D businesses.

A string of high profile scandals suggest something of a moral meltdown at leadership level in organizations across all sectors. Why are business schools frequently failing in their mission to be capitalism’s conscience and to provoke deeper self- and other-awareness among their students? This book takes this up critique in three ways. It lays bare more precisely the moribund theories and amoral assumptions underlying much of what business schools teach. By way of remedy it proposes a number of ethical and spiritual resources including Heideggarian philosophy, MacIntyre’s virtue, classical Greek philosophy, Hebrew wisdom tradition, Christian spirituality and the Maori notion of wairua. Third, it considers not just what and why we teach in business schools, but how, by offering a range of innovative classroom approaches

Research on management development has been characterized by broad surveys of training activity, in–depth analyses of development methods and, more occasionally, attempts to evaluate the impact of training investment. The result is a fragmentary picture of management development practice, providing incomplete insight into why certain policies and activities succeed or fail. Drawing upon a large sample of those responsible for human resource development in their organizations, this paper proposes a theoretical framework which attempts to identify the key variables in a more coherent and comprehensive manner. The HRM context of a firm is found to be highly responsible for the management development processes it adopts; the amount of training undertaken is largely determined by priority, and, in turn, amount is the key determinant of perceived success.

In an attempt to deepen our understanding of how extensive and effective management development is in the UK, this article adopts some integrative approaches. First, rather than relying on the corporate perception of management development provision, the views of participant managers are compared to those of Human Resource Development managers. Second, in addition to reporting training volumes, data are gathered about a range of methods used to develop managers and perceived quality of these methods. Third, perceptions concerning the success and impact of management development are reported. While providers and participants agree on the increasing amount of formal training, providers are far more optimistic about the strategic nature, the availability and the positive impact of this development. The implications of this perceptual gap are discussed.

This article is derived from survey data obtained from a structured sample of 450 MBA graduates and is part of a wider programme of research investigating the current state of management development in Britain. The intention is to analyse the determinants of the amount, the methods and the impact of management development systems in UK organizations and to assess these findings in relation to a comparable analysis of HRD managers. Both the amount and the variety of management development methods are greater than has been previously reported and, for the HRD sample, the impact of this activity is broadly positive. While agreeing on the amount, MBA managers are less enthusiastic about the availability and effectiveness of management development they have experienced. Overall, the management development policy choices made by organizations are consistently the most influential in determining outcomes, and the implications for this are discussed.

A number of classifications have been developed for computer-mediated learning for accountants. In this paper a novel approach is taken by paying less attention to the content and more to the learner experience of such courses, and specifically their degree of control over the learning process. A framework is described for helping those with the responsibility for identifying and selecting computer-mediated learning courseware for accounting, finance and management training. The framework is based on the concept of making explicit the educational design of the learning programme and using this as an important criterion for choosing the most appropriate computermediated environment.

Describes an ongoing research project investigating how human resource strategies are conceived, designed and implemented in organizations as perceived by the managers involved. Data has been gathered using questionnaires completed by 723 managers studying the Open University MBA, over a five‐year period. The evidence shows most HR changes are organization wide and are intended to enhance organizational performance and support the achievement of primary business objectives. Whereas there is clear board level involvement at the initiation and planning stages, the responsibility for implementation is unclear. This absence of clarity, together with the citing of poor communications as the main reason for the failure of change initiatives, raises a number of questions about leadership, vision and direction, which are considered. The evaluation of the initiative is shown to be a difficult area, often involving inappropriate criteria and is perceived as having few links with the business strategy. From the perspective of their managers, it appears that organizations are still not effective in managing HR change and continue to make the same mistakes, despite the theories and prescription available in the literature.

In a review of trends and conceptual models, Kavaratzis (2005) offers a reading of place branding as the application of marketing practices beyond physical goods and services, in the context of deindustrialization. Branding is conceived as a form of communication, in which brand identities mediate between the activities of brand owners and consumer perceptions. Considered as a form of place management, place branding is thus positioned as the attempt to alter the way that places are perceived by specific groups of people – to develop and disseminate a recognizable identity for a place in order to promote processes considered desirable, such as inward financial investment, tourism or the development of political capital (Kavaratzis and Ashworth 2005). These concerns inform Hankinson’s (2007) principles for destination brand management and Gnoth’s (2007) functional, experiential and symbolic dimensions of destination brands. While branding as place management might appeal to those charged with supporting regional growth and sustainability, the task is far from simple. Unlike product markets, notions of place exist in the minds of a wide variety of actors prior to attempts to brand them. Thus the branding of places – neighborhoods, cities, regions – as attractive and sustainable requires collaborative networking, entrepreneurship and innovation, knowledge sharing and cross-boundary learning. In short, the complexity and political dimensions of the task implies a need for leadership. While reconceptualizing “place” in this way has immediate consequences for the nature of leadership required, place leadership is itself a field which remains relatively under-theorized to date. Our intention in this chapter is to propose discourse as a fresh and theoretically informed way to explore the leadership of place branding. By offering four different “readings”, we begin to identify contested assumptions of what is required to lead effectively in complex, sometimes chaotic, policy environments, working across institutional, professional, territorial and community boundaries.

Christopher Mabey and Geoff Mallory, who are respectively Head of and Research Fellow at the Open University Business School's Centre for Human Resource and Change Management, focus on attempts to modify behaviour and cultivate new competencies through cultural and structural change. They explore these issues, first, theoretically, by reviewing the growing body of relevant literatures and, second, empirically, by analysing two case organisations – the General Motors-Isuzi joint venture, IBC Vehicles Ltd, and Grampian Health Board – which adopted very different approaches. In both cases, they consider what assumptions underpinned the change processes, what human resource strategies policies were pursued, and what outcomes were apparent.

Christopher Mabey and Paul Iles review various dimensions of the ‘strategic’ integration of human resource policies and explore ways in which such integration might be promoted through a career management focus. the argument is illustrated with reference to the use of development centres in the National and Provincial Building Society and a new management development programme at Rank Xerox respectively. Christopher Mabey is Head of the Centre for Human Resource and Change Management at the Open University Business School and Paul Iles is Professor of Human Resource Development at the Liverpool Business School and Director of its Centre for Human Resource Development.

SUMMARY Though there have been many prescriptive accounts of career development procedures and techniques, there has been little systematic research into how extensive their use is in Britain, how effective they are, or how participants in such programmes react to them. Following a review of the availability, effectiveness, and acceptability of such programmes, we report the results of a survey of 120 British managers undertaking a distance-learning Master of Business Administration programme. In particular, findings are presented concerning the availability and usage of a range of such procedures and respondents' reactions to them in terms of their perceived fairness and usefulness for personal, organizational and career development. These studies help to identify features that characterize well-received career development programmes.

SUMMARY Much recent writing on Human Resources Management (HRM) has emphasized the desirability of a committed workforce and the central role of HRM practices in establishing and maintaining such commitment. Little empirical evidence for such effects has been presented however, and the conceptualization of employee commitment has often been confused, failing to recognize its multi–dimensional nature. Researchers have sought to identify the antecedents of commitment, concentrating on personal/demographic, task, role and supervisory style variables taken from job satisfaction research. With regard to organizational and career commitment, it may be more fruitful to examine the impact of HRM policies and practices. Several studies undertaken by the authors demonstrating the impact on employee commitment of such HRM practices as selection, assessment, induction and training are reviewed, indicating the possibilities for research and practice in this area. Such studies also reveal some pitfalls in the over–simple, uncritical models of commitment often presented, and some paradoxical findings from the authors' own work are used to present a more adequate perspective on the commitment process.