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In a turbulent economic climate, characterized by pressures to improve productivity and reduce costs, leadership and performance management have a more central role in helping to ensure competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to explore current demands on leaders; and endeavours to explore linkages between management education and agile leadership.

Taking a grounded theory approach, this paper uses the concepts of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) to investigate the impact on desired attributes of leaders and the extent to which this is underpinned by current management education programmes. It draws on the VUCA model of agile management to examine current practices and experiences and considers future trends. Empirical research includes case studies and analysis of management syllabuses.

Syllabuses do not reflect the attributes that organizations expect leaders to possess and are content driven rather than process focused. VUCA is not yet mainstream in academic thinking.

There is a disparity between the output of business schools and the expectations of organizations. This may affect productivity. It is suggested that the use of live consultancies may provide a more beneficial management development experience.

This research opens an international debate that seeks to assess the relevance of current management education to the needs of organizations for agile, high-performing leaders.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between organizational strategy, performance management and training and development in the context of the Jordanian banking sector.

Models of strategic human resource management developed in the west are considered for their relevance in Jordan. A mixed methods approach is adopted employing interviews with senior managers and training and development managers, employee questionnaires and documentary analysis. It examines all banks in Jordan including foreign and Islamic banks.

Findings indicate that training and development is not driven by human resource strategy and that it is reactive rather than proactive. Training and development does improve skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviors but there is little evidence that it increases commitment and satisfaction nor that it contributes to strategic aims in any significant way. The linkages between strategy and training and development are not explicit and strategies are not interpreted through performance management systems. Consequently there is a lack of integration in organizational HR systems and the measurable contribution of training and development to competitive advantage is minimal

The paper offers suggestions as to how greater integration between strategy, performance management and training and development might be achieved in the Jordanian context.

This paper is the first detailed empirical study of training and development in Jordan to include considerations of transferability of western models to an Arab culture.

In a changing economic climate, characterised by pressures to improve productivity and reduce costs, performance management has a more central role in helping to ensure competitive advantage. Appraisals have become an almost universal feature of modern organizations and it is essential that they are perceived as fair if they are to bring about commitment to discretionary effort, which is increasingly a key feature in gaining competitive advantage. The purpose of this paper is to examine the outcomes and processes of performance appraisal through the concept of organizational justice.

This paper uses the concept of organizational justice to explore the outcomes, procedures and implementation of appraisal in contemporary organizations. It draws on a range of theoretical frameworks from both philosophy and social science, examines current practices and experiences and looks at future trends. Empirical research includes a ten‐year longitudinal study of practising managers and ethnography, questionnaires and interviews.

The authors conclude that appraisal frequently creates both actual and perceived injustice in organizations and a tension between managing performance and encouraging engagement, which is dependent on perceptions of fairness. The authors place appraisal within a framework of organizational justice and encourage further research into areas of organizational effectiveness.

The research clearly indicates that both managers and employees see a potential for appraisal, which is rarely achieved in practice. It opens up a dialogue linking the performance agenda with issues of development, motivation and perceptions of justice in the search for models of competitive advantage. This research also confirms the findings of others, most significantly in terms of reinforcing perceptions of dishonesty, mistrust, inequity and managerialism.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the contribution of appraisal systems to sustainable organizational effectiveness. It argues that competitive advantage is increasingly reliant on discretionary effort. As the emphasis of appraisal has shifted from a developmental to a performance focus, perceived unfairness in both procedures and outcomes threatens to undermine commitment and, therefore, sustainable performance.

Drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks, current practices and experiences are examined and future trends considered. Empirical research includes a ten-year study of practising managers and ethnography, questionnaires and interviews in two large organizations.

Appraisal frequently creates actual and perceived injustice in terms of both procedures and rewards. It also generates tensions between managing performance and encouraging engagement.

This study indicates that further research in other sectors will contribute to the development of greater understanding of sustainable strategic approaches to HRM.

Emphasis on performance in appraisal devalues developmental aspects and sometimes affects employee well-being. Separation of the two through mentorship schemes may help to address the paradox, whereby the performance management element of appraisal undermines rather than enhances organizational effectiveness.

The conventional wisdom of the appraisal culture is challenged. We argue it is essential to expand the discourse between performance, justice and ethical value systems if sustainable competitive advantage and well-being are to be achieved.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Should you teach an engineering student about Marxist interpretations of Jane Austen? Or a philosophy student about how to fix a broken leg? Well, unless you were desirous of an especially rounded education, then this would seem pretty pointless. However, it has been the lament of many specialists that mainstream education simply follows the paths established centuries before, and do not reflect modern needs of students. Could this also be true of the highly regarded Masters of Business Administration and the students paying tens of thousands of dollars to put themselves through it?

This study provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

This paper reports findings from the first annual cycle of a three‐year research project on the provision and use of electronic information systems (EIS) within higher education in the UK. The project, JISC User Surveys: Trends in Electronic Information Services (JUSTEIS), was funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and undertaken at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth (UWA). Students, academics and library staff in 25 universities were surveyed using critical incident and critical success factors methodologies to ascertain the range and nature of EIS use. Provision of these systems by higher education institutions was also investigated via an analysis of their library websites. The findings reported in this paper focus on student use and the purposes for which EIS are employed, and reveal the limited array of EIS used and the ad hoc nature of search strategies adopted across undergraduate and postgraduate bodies within a range of disciplines. There appears to be little or no variation in the pattern of EIS use by the various student groups studied – the effect of the Internet on information seeking by students is hugely significant and the more formal resources, such as JISC‐negotiated resources are little used. There is little evidence of coherent search strategies used by students. Recommendations for both the JISC and higher education are offered.