Part One of a two‐part article. A survey of organisational development practices in France reveals the lack of a clear OD theory: it does not have a precise technological context, nor does it refer to the social philosophy origins of American OD. Some consultants claim to practise OD but...

The predominant psychological type among senior police officers is the extraverted‐sensing‐thinking‐judgement type, pragmatic and practical and thus ideally suited to many aspects of police work, according to data presented to 119 Australian senior police officers. The high proportion of...

Women are under‐represented in senior positions within organisations, but more research is needed before a definitive statement can be made about the promotion process of senior executives. Data from questionnaires distributed among the senior executives of 379 Chicago‐based firms and 225...

Despite all that has been written about organisational communications, its relationship to job satisfaction has received little attention. There are at least three notable exceptions. Likert was probably one of the first management writers to specifically identify communications as having an...

The ancient Chinese believed that the most severe curse was to be condemned to live in interesting times. They define such times as being fraught with rapid change and turmoil. Today's managers must feel they have been subjected to this greatest of all curses. Managers who have survived the...

The search for methods of improving the efficiency and competitiveness of manufacturing industry in the UK has been intensified during the present recession and has led many managers to look to Japan as a model for economic prosperity. A prominent feature of the Japanese model is a form of...

In this post‐industrial period of human development, traditional organisational models and managerial styles are gradually being replaced. They are inadequate and unproductive with the new knowledge workers. Therefore, a major transition is underway in social systems from “disappearing...

Collective bargaining can be perceived as a form of joint decision‐making between groups, and the process by which agreements are reached can be analysed through the accepted principles of group dynamics. This article considers the process of collective bargaining with particular reference to...

In a recent survey of managers (conducted at the Irish Management Institute, Dublin, early 1983) more than 80 per cent considered time as a problem for them. Although time is the one resource available equally to all managers, paradoxically, it is a resource that causes considerable stress and...

The problems our western societies are confronted with nowadays are too easily classified under the general denomination of “economic recession”. Although no one can deny the slump in the world economy—from which we seem to be emerging—this global denomination remains an...