Purpose – Highlights the reasons for the move to HR partnering and the advantages it can bring. Design/methodology/approach – Suggests three essentials of successful HR partnering – understanding, resources and credibility. Explores each in some depth, and illustrates them with cases based...

Exactly how do you get executives to listen to your ideas and opinions, offer you a role in the major business decisions and value your contribution?

At a time when many Development Centres do not run as well as they should, strategic advice is provided on the core process of all Centres: assessment, counselling and development planning. Each of these processes is covered in depth and, throughout, the experience of major companies such as...

Presents the findings of a major survey comparing alternative development centre designs. Aims to understand which designs are most effective; results suggest that “third generation” centres generally address common problems better than earlier models. Presents new data on centre use and...

Uses multiple regression to highlight the key design variables underpinning development centre effectiveness. Finds third‐generation designs which provide exercise realism, participant involvement and concerted development planning on the centre to be significantly more effective. Proposes...

Analyses the business context of management development in the late 1990s, and presents some surprising survey results on the effectiveness of development methods ‐ results which challenge many of our past assumptions. Describes two central “principles” of effective management development...

Two forces of change in the field of assessment centres are described — change in company attitudes towards centres and a growing body of research which questions the current thinking on the subject. How one organisation — London Regional Transport — responded by making what appears to be...