This study explores the nature of skills forecasting in nuclear decommissioning and that which makes skills forecasting information useful. The study adopts a pragmatic approach using an interpretative, qualitative case study research design and draws on aspects of a critical realist approach to uncover, deconstruct and challenge some ‘norms’ in skills forecasting. The study makes an original contribution to knowledge through the identification of nineteen factors that influence skills forecasting in the nuclear industry. It also generates a baseline of knowledge on the theory and practice of skills forecasting and management through a review of the literature on skills, forecasting, skills forecasting and workforce planning and relevant aspects of public sector management and HRM. The study documents and compares current skills forecasting practice amongst UK site licensed companies and selected supply chain companies. Such research has not previously been conducted in the nuclear decommissioning industry. This answers research questions about why, and how, different groups in the sector perform skills forecasting and how variations in approaches affect the information produced. It also answers research questions about who uses skills forecasting information, and how. Together with a review of current problems with skills information, this contributes to an understanding of what makes skills information useful. The research evidences that while the industry has some common features with other High Reliability Organisations, there are unique dimensions which make this research significant. Some ‘norms’ operating in skills forecasting were challenged including how it is being used, eg as an agent for change by some groups, and assumptions about the potential availability of skills from the supply chain. The literature review was used to construct a practical-ideal type, an approach derived from classical pragmatism offering a version of a nearly ideal process, on the understanding that this is socially constructed and subject to continual change. Existing practice is evaluated against this practical-ideal type in a unique application of this methodology in the nuclear decommissioning context.

Human resource management advocates consider that obtaining employees' affective commitment to the organisation is an important objective. A key part of this concept is concerned with employees' identification with organisational goals and values. Recent research however, indicates that employers want employees to maintain their commitment levels even though organisations are undergoing periods ofextensive change that impact on many aspects of these goals and values. In the literature, employee commitment is regarded as a stable construct that nothing seems to alter. Despite this, there is increasing evidence to suggest that commitment may change if something in the organisation changes. To date, little research has sought to measure the impact of organisational changes on employee commitment. This study seeks to find out if commitment is altered by organisational changes or if commitment remains constant after the implementation of change. It also examines the impact of a range ofvariables on employees' commitment levels not previously addressed in the literature. The study adopted a cross sectional design. Data was collected by use of both quantitative techniques, (incorporating the British Organisational Commitment Scale or BOCS) and qualitative approaches, in three organisations located in the South East of England. An evaluation of the BOCS' reliability and dimensionality was carried out. In contrast to the literature, an eight item scale was shown to be superior, providing the best fit to the data. BOCS was found to comprise two distinct, but related components, hence the measure is considered bi-dimensional. The study makes several contributions to the literature. In particular, the: process of change (i.e. strategy used by each organisation to elicit organisational changes); antecedents to commitment (i.e. personal and work related variables); extent to which changes are experienced and content of change (i.e. the changes themselves) are all shown to affect the outcomes for individuals' commitment after periods of change in the organisation. Of the changes examined, almost all lead to increased levels ofemployees' self reported commitment. This challenges the claims that suggest commitment is stable and unchangeable. The study also revealed a number of factors lead to increased commitment amongst the workforce after change. These represent employee perceptions of change. Researchers and practitioners will need to focus on these issues in the future when considering commitment if they are to safeguard it after changes in the workplace.

It is widely acknowledged that discipline at work is a neglected area of study in the context of contemporary employee relations. Within the workplace the handling of discipline is largely prescribed by formal rules that are captured in policies, applied through procedures and then interpreted by the actors who facilitate this process. This thesis argues that an empirical understanding of the disciplinary process can only be achieved if it includes an appreciation of the nature of the relationship that is established during the disciplinary process and that this is crucial for us to develop a full understanding of the dynamics that take place within this activity and between these functions. It contends that throughout the process of disciplinary handling there exists a highly contested terrain (Edwards, 1979) that is constantly contended by the various actors that play out this vital role in relation to aspects of power, control and consent.

This thesis integrates theory and practice of team coaching into a holistic framework relevant to professional coaches and professional coach educators. I adopt an autoethnographic approach, exploring team coaching via three fieldwork sites; two sites where I am the team coach and thirdly a discussion group of professional coaches. Fieldwork data is collated chronologically and implicit knowledge is surfaced through story telling as a mechanism of sense making to answer the question: What is going on when I am coaching a team? In analysing and interpreting my stories, I take a postmodernist theoretical perspective, adopting a deconstructive approach which seeks to elucidate multiple ways of knowing and seeing. The resulting framework draws on four metaphors. Team as machine that follows a functionalist model of effectiveness that can be managed through behaviours and process. Team as family, which illuminates the interwoven nature of individual relationships and suggests strategies to create safe, mutually respectful collaborative behaviours. Team as living system represents the experience of teams thriving within a dynamic interrelated environment. Finally, the team and coach in Wonderland depicts a coaching assignment as analogous to following the White Rabbit into Wonderland. In a strange environment we may feel uncertain and vulnerable, however, curiosity enables us to remain open to possibilities. Each metaphorical perspective offers a ‘mode of awareness’ from which to operate as a coach. The framework develops our understanding of team coaching by bringing together diverse theoretical streams to inform what is going on in a new and accessible way as the metaphorical devices encapsulate complex ideas with simplicity. I contribute to team coaching practice as professional coaches can use the metaphorical language allied with theory to plan and reflect upon coaching assignments, consider relevant coaching approaches and engage in supervision. A shared language of metaphors provides researchers and practitioners with a new way to describe team coaching, creating a foundation on which to progress development in the future. In addition, the framework provides the basis for a coach development curriculum. I distinguish between team coaching and other team-based interventions and highlight how dyadic coaching practices may be applied within the team context to enable professionals from a variety of backgrounds to engage with the framework. Finally, I offer a transparent insight into a different way of investigating professional coaching practice describing how autoethnography allows us to tell practice stories in ways that are both evocative, insightful and open to analysis.

This study investigates the interactions between the employment relationship and the employee rewards system. There is an implied and broadly accepted connection between these aspects of organisational life, yet the connection has not been clearly developed within either the employment relations or employee rewards literature. Employment relations research commonly prioritises certain features: organisational context; parties’ ideologies; processes concerning the interaction of the parties; and outcomes of the relationship. This study attempts to be located in this tradition: it regards rewards as an outcome of the employment relationship. However, whilst many studies of this type have tended to emphasise the interaction of isolated features, this study attempts to theorise the nature of the interactions between the reward outcomes and the other features of the relationship in a holistic manner. The study begins from an ontologically realist view of the employment relationship and employee rewards; however, it also acknowledges that these social facts are interpreted by parties, and that these interpretations are significant. The study adopts many of the features of mainstream employment relations research, reflected in a pluralist theoretical perspective. A predominantly inductive, multi-method, case study research strategy is utilised, focussing upon two unionised, private sector, manufacturing organisations. Data is collected from the parties to the employment relationship using research instruments derived from two primary conceptual models: Walton & McKersie’s (1965) behavioural bargaining framework, and Gomez-Mejia and Balkin’s (1992) algorithmic-experiential model of rewards. Analysis of this data indicates substantial commonality between the cases and suggests a complex set of interactions between the features of the employment relationship and employee reward outcomes. Key findings indicate the importance of understanding parties’ reward preferences as they provide insight regarding: the formulation of parties’ ideologies; the effectiveness of processes; and the interpretation of reward outcomes.

Performance pay has been identified as a key element of modem human resource strategy but published field research has been limited. This thesis investigated the objectives, methods of operation and outcomes of several performance pay schemes through the creation and testing of several hypotheses. Evidence was gathered through a longitudinal study in one organisation augmented by case studies in two further organisations. The findings showed that organisations demonstrated a mix ofoperational and cultural objectives for introducing performance pay while the desired outcomes were to promote cultural change, internal equity and increased motivation. However, the findings from the longitudinal survey showed that the desired outcomes were not met, as viewed by the employees. Motivation was not increased, nor did the scheme help to change culture while pay satisfaction remained at a low level, although the employee response to the scheme showed a limited improvement after operating for one year. Positive employee viewpoints were highly correlated to the level of communication and satisfaction with pay. In terms of the influence of employee characteristics, women and non-union members were significantly more positive than men and union members. A cluster analysis showed that negative views were more strongly held than positive views which statistically influenced the outcomes and employees with such negative views had a 'bundle' of characteristics, namely middle grade males with long service and union membership. This research has made a number of contributions. It has added to the limited number of UK field studies and its longitudinal nature provides unique fmdings. It has provided data on the launch and initial period of operation ofa perfonnance pay scheme, as perceived by the employees. It has shown further evidence of strategic use of performance pay schemes with a newly constructed model. The findings have important implications for management, especially in relation to the identification of key supporter groups and opponents to the scheme and the issues that employees regard as key to the success of the scheme.

This thesis aims to empirically examine the impact of investing in human capital development on organisational performance. It examines the relevant literature on human resource accounting and human capital development from different methodological strands and synthesises its findings in the development of a new theoretical framework. The literature review points out the challenges that remain to enterprises in quantifying and measuring the benefits of human capital development. The proposed framework takes into account those conceptual aspects of human resource accounting that how investment in human capital development can be measured to investigate the financial returns for organisations. The said framework also considers various contextual contingent factors that lead to a higher level of human resource sophistication and consequently which could affect the organisational performance. On the basis of relationships predicated between the key constructs of the theoretical model, a list of hypotheses is developed. The research methodology adopted by the researcher is based on the ideology of objectivism. It adopts a functionalist paradigm and a set of philosophical assumptions related to realism, positivism, determinism and nomotheticism. Its approach is deductive in terms of theory testing, employs the survey as its primary research strategy and uses mainly quantitative and partially qualitative methods of data collection. It adopts a cross-sectional time horizon and seeks to be exploratory and explanatory in nature. The main sample is comprised of 320 leading manufacturing organisations in Pakistan. A self-administered questionnaire is designed to collect data from human resource managers or individuals dealing with human resource development within the Pakistani manufacturing enterprises. SPSS-19 and SmartPLS packages are employed to analyse the quantitative data. Partial least squares method of structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is adopted for the testing of hypotheses. The study’s quantitative results provide an evidence of association between investment in the development of human capital and the benefits to organisations. Furthermore, organisations that invest in training and development programmes have high employee productivity which ultimately contributes towards high organisational performance. The qualitative results help in identifying the major problems faced by management of the Pakistani manufacturing organisation in evaluating investments in HCD and their impact on organisational performance. This research is a pioneer work in Pakistan and thereby contributes to the existing global literature on management accounting in general and on human resource accounting in particular.

This thesis explores the impact of changes in health policy introduced by Conservative administrations in the period 1987 to 1995 on the definition, management and control of professional work within general medical practice. The research underpinning this work combined secondary analysis, large-scale primary fieldwork and qualitative research with clinicians and managers. The first stage of primary fieldwork was conducted during the period September 1994 to June 1995 and consisted of a postal survey of 750 practices across England and Wales. This was followed up with a second phase of research involving depth interviews with managers and clinicians, delivered in the period July to November 1995. This pluralist methodology sought to connect micro and macro levels of analysis in exploring the relationship between the state, professions and managers in primary care. The research explores the extent to which a number of professional freedoms have been challenged by policy change including political, economic and technical autonomy and the extent to which this had changed the position and rewards of managers in general practice. Employing a multi-dimensional approach to the analysis of power this thesis suggests that prevailing theories of a decline in professional power, based primarily on economic relations at the macro level cannot account for the complexity of relations found in UK general practice. Further, studies focusing at the collective level of bargaining between the state and the medical profession in the UK have over-estimated the impact of policy change due to a neglect of study at the micro level. Rather this study has revealed a complex picture of both continuity and change in which general practitioners have lost, retained and in some cases extended their power as a result of policy initiatives. Whilst professional freedoms have remained relatively intact, the impact of policy change on the occupation of Practice Management has been more significant, with prevailing discourses of `managerialism' creating gendered struggles over the definition and meaning of management in primary care. This work therefore calls for a multi-dimensional account of social life which can explain the complex interaction of differing sites of power, within which a wide range of power resources are deployed. Further this work would endorse a dynamic concept of power in which 'patterns of interaction' (Bradley 1999) are fluid and changeable rather than fixed and self-sustaining systems. It is argued here that constraints on social action are created by the history of past agency, embedded in institutions and social practices that both shape, and are shaped by the agency of individuals.

Despite the significance of understanding the reasons under which talented individuals are more likely or less likely to quit, the nature of the relationship between Human Resource Management Practices (HRMPs) and turnover intentions has proven to be unclear. Prior studies suggest that talented employees’ turnover imposes significant negative impact on organisational performance, e.g. decrease in productivity, profitability, innovation, serviceability and morale of remaining employees. Likewise, a serious talented Frontline Managers (FLMs) turnover is observed in the private banks of Pakistan. The corresponding reason identified is their dissatisfaction with existing conventional HRMPs, which are typically bureaucratic in nature with no provision of training and development, and lack appreciation, seniority-based pay and promotions. Owing to these factors, FLMs are switching towards reputable government and multinational organisations. In fact, FLMs play an important role in the development and success of banks. To investigate this issue, the present study elaborates an examination of the use of synergistic HRMPs in an on-going effort to control the talented FLMs’ turnover intentions. Precisely, it examines the impact of two formative bundles, namely, skills-enhancing practices (SEPs, i.e. training and development) and motivation-enhancing practices (MEPs, i.e. pay, promotion, recognition and job security) on FLMs’ turnover intentions through organisational commitment. The research methodology employs a positivist philosophy, deductive approach and a quantitative method followed by a survey-based research design. A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed through random sampling technique; 344 questionnaires were finalised for analysis. PLS-SEM was used to test the research hypotheses. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the findings of this study indicate that both SEPs and MEPs demonstrate no significant direct impact on talented FLMs’ turnover intentions. However, organisational commitment (OC) has been found to fully mediate the relationships between both HRM bundles and FLMs’ turnover intentions. This research contributes to HRM literature particularly in the area of HRMPs—Turnover relationships. Furthermore, this study reveals that socio-economic relationships can be used to influence FLMs’ OC and turnover intentions. The findings further suggest that adoption of effective SEPs and MEPs in local banks enhance talented FLMs’ skills and motivation which eventually reduce their turnover intentions. Additionally, this study highlights the important and critical role of OC in HRMPs—turnover relationships, particularly in the Pakistani banking sector and further recommends management to review their HRMPs, which not only tend to reduce turnover but also lead to FLMs’ enhanced enthusiasm to serve.

The current study seeks to contribute specifically to the literature on reward management and managerial performance. In doing so, it aims to address certain gaps in the existing literature; particularly a noticeable lack of research in rewards and individual performance relationships in a developing country, Pakistan. This study has sought to examine the relationship of extrinsic rewards comprising of pay, bonuses, opportunities for promotion and intrinsic rewards such as sense of recognition, job characteristics with individual performance measured as task and contextual performance including citizenship behaviour. Furthermore, the study has sought to examine the mediation role of organisational justice elements such as procedural and distributive justice in reward performance relationships. The study aims at identifying different rewards being offered in textile organisations and their relationships with performance of front line managers in textile sector organisations. The study focuses primarily on key research questions: 1. What is the relationship between extrinsic rewards such as pay and bonus based incentives with the performance of front line managers? 2. How do opportunities for promotion relate with performance of front line managers in textile industry? 3. What is the relationship of intrinsic rewards such as sense of recognition and job characteristics with the performance of front line managers? 4. How does procedural and distributive justice influence the reward performance relationships for front line managers in textile industry? Being deductive in nature, the current study revolves around the premises of positivist philosophy. Being cross section in nature, a survey based design is selected and a quantitative strategy is used in this study for data collection and analysis. The study is facilitated by random stratified sampling for data collection and structural equation modelling technique to draw results of direct and mediation effects of study constructs. The results portray significant relationships of rewards and individual performance with relatively strong emphasis on task performance in comparison to contextual performance. The results further highlight the mediation of procedural and distributive justice particularly in extrinsic rewards and task performance relationships for front line managers. The study seeks to contribute to existing theoretical knowledge and practices in developing economies and is pioneering in its examination of rewards-individual performance relationships in Pakistan. In examining organisational rewards with task and contextual performance for front line managers in private manufacturing sector, the study tends to address the gap in existing literature on reward and performance management. Moreover, the current study further seeks to examine the mediation effects of procedural and distributive justice in reward performance relationships discovering this field of theoretical knowledge as existing literature does not reflect upon this gap. The study intends to offer help and support to concerned stakeholders in better understanding, developing and modifying rewards-performance relationships particularly for textile industry in Pakistan.