Improving management effectiveness by training - the use of video techniques to assist self appraisal

A videotaped assessment center for middle management skills incorporating self appraisal into the feedback process can provide effective training at substantially lower cost than traditional assessment centers. This paper describes one such assessment program and elaborates on its advantages for middle manager development.     

Directing Retribution: On the Political Control of Lower Court Judges

The sentencing decisions of trial judges are constrained bystatutory limits imposed by legislatures. At the same time,judges in many states face periodic review, often by the electorate.We develop a model in which the effects of these features ofa judge's political landscape on judicial behavior interact.The model yields several intriguing results: First, if legislatorscare about the proportionality of punishment, judicial discretionincreases with their punitiveness. Second, voters are limitedby two factors in their ability to make inferences about judicialpreferences based on observed sentences: the extent to whichjudges are willing to pander to retain office and the rangeof judicial discretion mandated by the legislature. Finally,legislators can sometimes manipulate judicial discretion toaid sufficiently like-minded voters in their efforts to replaceideologically dissimilar judges.     

The role of the human resources manager: strategist or conscience of the organisation?

The human resource manager treads a fine line in seeking to reconcile the values of the organisation with professional values about the ethical management of people. This paper seeks to explore this ambiguity. The research findings suggest that the extent to which HR professionals can influence organisational ethics is dependent on the culture and structure of the organisation, as well as on the status and credibility of the HR specialists themselves. In the main there is little evidence that their influence is significant.     

The practice of management training in large scale retailing

Actual practice in management training does not match up to what retailing executives agree is theoretically good for the firm.     

A space of one’s own: spatial and identity liminality in an online community of mothers

This paper investigates the role of an online community in the life of 11 Taiwanese women living in the UK and considers the implications this empirical case has for theorising about motherhood and the spatial dimensions of online/on-site space. Findings from a nethnographic and ethnographic fieldwork show how online discussions reflect and amplify the liminal identities of the community’s members. In looking at doing mothering at a collective rather than at the individual level, this study highlights how collective practices of consumption perpetuate liminal identities, exacerbating consumers’ sense of being out of place. It shows how online space is at the same time the product of online and on-site liminal identities and liminal social interactions and the re-producer of such interactions.     

Deep smarts

When a person sizes up a complex situation and rapidly comes to a decision that proves to be not just good but brilliant, you think, "That was smart." After you watch him do this a few times, you realize you're in the presence of something special. It's not raw brainpower, though that helps. It's not emotional intelligence, either, though that, too, is often involved. It's deep smarts. Deep smarts are not philosophical--they're not"wisdom" in that sense, but they're as close to wisdom as business gets. You see them in the manager who understands when and how to move into a new international market, in the executive who knows just what kind of talk to give when her organization is in crisis, in the technician who can track a product failure back to an interaction between independently produced elements. These are people whose knowledge would be hard to purchase on the open market. Their insight is based on know-how more than on know-what; it comprises a system view as well as expertise in individual areas. Because deep smarts are experienced based and often context specific, they can't be produced overnight or readily imported into an organization. It takes years for an individual to develop them--and no time at all for an organization to lose them when a valued veteran walks out the door. They can be taught, however, with the right techniques. Drawing on their forthcoming book Deep Smarts, Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap say the best way to transfer such expertise to novices--and, on a larger scale, to make individual knowledge institutional--isn't through PowerPoint slides, a Web site of best practices, online training, project reports, or lectures. Rather, the sage needs to teach the neophyte individually how to draw wisdom from experience. Companies have to be willing to dedicate time and effort to such extensive training, but the investment more than pays for itself.