Maary Barnett

Mary Barnett, the defendant, should not be held responsible for the actions taken and she should clearly be put under the care of the doctors in a health facility. Taking under consideration that Mary is mentally ill and has postpartum depression, she should not be put in jail for it. Alice Jones has known the defendant for more than eight years, and she thinks Mary has a very good attributes both as a social person, and a mother. Ms.Jones believes Mary started to get depressed after Allison was born, and especially when her ex fiance Tim Stewart moved to California and called off the wedding and she started drinking. For all these reasons Alice believes Mary left little Allison without consciously being alert that she had left her unattended. Dr. Bloom says Mary has postpartum depression, which offended her after the birth of her child. Like Ms. Jones, Dr. Bloom thinks she is depressed, despite, and alcoholic. She was obsessed with her fiance, which drove him away and just made thin gs worse.Since the trial Mary has suffered 2 anxiety attacks and had been in the hospital for several days. Mary Barnett herself knows that she did wrong leaving the child alone, but says that she did not know what was going on, and that she would have stopped it if she had realized what she was doing. All she had wanted was to get to her ex fiance with the hope of him fixing things, yet this didn’t happen. Caroline Hospers thought that Mary was a disgrace and that she couldn’t even keep a husband, but what she didn’t know was that Mary was depressed and in desperate need for help.She thought Mary was just another drunk that was irresponsible and not fit to bad mother. Hospers is wrong because Mary lobed her child and because of the depression and the drinking she didn’t know what she was doing. Officer Mitchell was there when they found the child dead and interrogated Mary. Mary explained what had happened, yet the officer found out this wasn’t tr ue and that there was no babysitter involved, but what the officer doesn’t know is that she was so upset and verwhelmed that Mary just must have said whatever came to her mind. Dr. Parker believes Mary was mentally competent when she left her baby alone to die, yet she knows when she left the baby alone to die, yet she knows she suffers from depression and anxiety. She thinks she is able to stand in trial, but Ms. Barnett will probably fall into another anxiety attack. For this reason being that Mary’s truly not capable of standing in trial to defend her.Mary Barnett is truly incapable of maintaining herself in a stable position where she can stand in a trial and defend herself. She is not responsible for not knowing her actions would cause damage to her baby, because she wasn’t herself on that day. Mary Barnett had only one hope of light, her ex fiance, and with him not being there to keep her daughter, she acted without knowing or even thinking anything would happened, she went off to find help and instead found her baby dead without a reason in her head or what had just happened.

Describe how Arthur Miller creates Essay

â€Å"Describe how Arthur Miller creates an exciting climax for both acts of ‘A View from the Bridge'† ‘A View from the Bridge’ by Arthur Miller, is a play about obsession and betrayal. The main character, Eddie Carbone, becomes overprotective over his niece, Catherine, to the degree of infatuation. This obsession helps to cause the break down of Eddie’s marriage, as his wife, Beatrice realises the alarming nature of Eddie’s fixation. Eddie’s feelings for Catherine existed before Beatrice’s cousins, Marco and Rodolfo came, but their arrival intensifies the situation, as Eddie becomes more and more jealous of Rodolfo, and of Catherine’s love for him. This play is a tragedy and, like most tragedies, it is serious and ends with the death of the main character, Eddie. Eddie dies after betraying his wife’s cousins to the immigration bureau. As a result, Marco, who is filled with hatred and in need of justice, stabs him. Arthur Miller was a New Yorker who worked on the Brooklyn docks, for a time. His experience of the docks and of the people around them, led him to write this play, which is set there. During this coursework, my aim is to study the ends of the two acts in depth to see what techniques Miller uses to make them dramatically effective. The last scene of act one (from page 39 when Catherine puts ‘paper doll’ on the phonograph) portrays at first is one of a reasonably happy home but Arthur miller uses a combination of significant action and verbal nuances to show depth of characters and character emotions. The basic events of the scene are Rodolfo and Catherine dancing, Eddie showing Rodolfo how to box, and then Marco, challenging Eddie to lift a chair. These are three main parts of this last scene, which demonstrate symbolic changes in the character relationships, the first two build up to the final conflict between Marco and Eddie, which sets the tone for the second act. The first important section of the scene is the dancing between Rodolfo and Catherine. We see in this scene that Rodolfo feels uncomfortable because of Eddie he ‘Stiffly rises, feeling Eddie’s eyes on his back’ this shows that Rodolfo may realise how Eddie feels towards his niece, Rodolfo doesn’t want to upset him, we see the way Eddie feels about the dancing in the stage direction ‘EDDIE turns his head away. ‘ These few simple actions are very important to the play, they show Eddies feelings and the start or progression of the hatred Eddie feels towards Rodolfo and show a subtle conflict between Eddie and his niece. During we find out about a number of things in more depth, for example our understanding of the plays characters changes considerably. We find that Marco disapproves of the way Eddie is treating Rodolfo, this is quite a surprise since we, as an audience do not expect Marco who has previously been shy and quiet to make such a blatant challenge as he does in this scene. Twists and surprises in a plot tend to create suspense and tension so this is a very effective technique to use. The action in this scene Marcos action of holding up a chair triumphantly in front of Eddie is an interesting and significant action because the chair seems to be a symbolic weapon. Marco is threatening Eddie with it, this is analogous to the way he actually uses a weapon to kill Eddie in the final scene of the play. The way that Arthur Miller uses such an imposing action as lifting a chair above head height to make a defined, pointed change in Marco is effective because it is dramatic and startling in the way that it breaks from the tone of the rest of the scene. Although powerful and startling the action of lifting the chair is also subtle in that it states without using words, just how Marco feels and sets out his warning, it is succinct which is part of what makes it effective. I do not believe words would have worked as well at portraying the overall feelings, not just of Marco but also of the other characters. This is a major way that Arthur Miller creates an overall atmosphere. He uses actions that involve the audience reactions and opinions of all the characters and the aids the creation of a climax. Emotions of the audience towards characters are mixed. They may feel happy for Catherine and Rodolfo in that they have found each other and seem so happy. Some may speculate, however, about that, this relationship’s days are numbered due to Eddie’s obviously hostile feelings towards Rodolfo. They may also feel anxious as to how the conflict that has arisen between Marco and Eddie will be resolved. This emotional uncertainty is exciting and leaves the audience thinking because of the culmination of events. This last scene in act one is used very effectively by Arthur Miller to sow the seeds of events which are going to happen in the 2nd act of the play. It is only at this point in the play that we get true insight into the feelings of Marco, his stubbornness, his need to prove himself and his brother, which turn out at the end of the play to be fatally strong. It is also only now that we see any dislike of Marco from Eddie, it is this dislike and need for apology that causes the end scene to happen in such a tragic manner. The Characters in this scene are very interesting to observe on their own but it is also interesting to see how Arthur Miller has contrasted the actions of his characters in this scene. One such contrast is that between Marco and Eddie. Eddie uses Aggressive action, such as boxing to make his point whereas Marco’s subtle challenge with the chair is, non-aggressive but still makes the intended point. These contrasts between the two men’s actions are very interesting and are very effective in demonstrating the differences between their personalities; this makes it even more interesting at the very ending of the play how Marco has changed into a person willing to be violent to get revenge. This final scene leaves many questions unanswered. The conflicts between the characters in this scene could lead the audience to speculate as to how things will develop in the next act but although this scene gives the audience, some idea of how things turn out it does not tell them everything. They may ask themselves what is going to happen to Catherine and Rodolfo’s relationship since it seems plain that Eddie dislikes Rodolfo and disapproves of his relationship with his niece. And they may wonder about Beatrice and Eddie’s marriage since it appears to be weakening there is no way, however that at this point the audience realise the ending, they are left in suspense. This means that the ending of this act is all the more of a climax; the audience are left teetering on the edge of knowing more but are left to ruminate till the second act. That in itself is enough to explain the way Miller creates of a climax here. The situations that develop in this play would be difficult for anyone to deal with. Eddie finds the situation that he is in especially difficult and consequently he is seriously affected by it. In this play Eddie goes from being a popular man, respected in the community to being a man willing to betray his own family and, in the final scene one prepared to kill. Eddie started by just being over protective of Catherine, which developed into jealousy of Rodolfo because Catherine loved him and this, in turn developed into passionate hatred of both Marco and Rodolfo. Eddie hardly understands what he himself is feeling at the end of the play. These emotional changes are central to Arthur miller’s play since they help to cause the chain of events leading up to the final tragic end and are very important in creating interest and drama in the play. This is especially significant at the ends of the acts and creates a charged atmosphere. The changes in Eddie during the play also have consequences on the people around him, especially on Beatrice. Eddie spends less and less time throughout the play with Beatrice socially and more importantly, he spends less time with her intimately. There is evidence in other scenes that the sexual part of the Carbone’s marriage has already collapsed but that Beatrice desperately wants to save the marriage by sitting down and sorting things out.

Computer Operating System

An operating system (OS) is like a facilitator, providing an environment for application programs to run in. It provides an interface between computer hardware and the user of the application programs. Application programs are a stored set of instructions for responding to a specific request. Hardware are the physical devices that make up the system such as the monitor, keyboard, printer, ect. The OS typically includes anywhere from tens to thousands of built-in subroutines called functions which applications can call to perform basic tasks such as displaying a string of text on the screen or inputting a character from the keyboard. The OS allows the user to interact with and obtain information from the hardware through a series of layers. The command layer is the only part of the OS that interacts with the user and sometimes is referred to as the shell. It is the user†s interface to the OS in that the user can request system services via a Job Control Language (JCL), which is the set of commands and their syntax requirements, or through a GUI (Graphical User Interface), the newest command language. The command interpreter decides which services must be executed to process the request and passes these to the service layer. The service layer accepts the commands and translates them into detailed instructions. There is one service call for each number of system requests provided by this layer. It handles functions in process control, file control, and device control. It makes requests to drivers for access to the kernel layer, which interacts directly with the hardware. Input must travel through these layers to reach the hardware and the results must travel back. First and foremost, an operating system must provide a mechanism for starting processes, which most of us know as programs. There are two main types of operating systems: single-tasking and multitasking. DOS is an example of a single-tasking operating system, which simply means that it can only run one program at a time. Windows95 (or newer editions, prior editions were a GUI interface to DOS) is the most widely used multitasking operating system on PC†s. Multitasking means that many programs can run at the same time. The processor (CPU), which selects and executes instructions, must divide its time to each active application to make it appear that all are running at once. These types of operating systems contain schedulers that divide the processor†s time among active processes. The schedulers are located in the kernel. Each process has one or several threads of execution. Every few milliseconds the scheduler takes control of the CPU from the thread it is currently executing, uses a complex time-allocation algorithm to decide which thread should execute next, and continues executing the thread at the point where it was last interrupted. The next fundamental duty of an operating system is to manage the memory – or storage of data – available to it and its applications. The goal in memory management is to give each application the memory it needs without infringing upon memory used by other applications. When a program is loaded and ran, the OS allocates a block of memory to hold the program†s code and data. If a program requires additional memory, it can call a function in the operating system to request more. DOS does not handle memory very well because it runs in real mode, where only 1MB of RAM (Random Access Memory) is addressable. The RAM is volatile memory that stores the running applications but the information is lost when the computer is turned off. Windows95 does a much better job of managing memory because it runs in protected mode, which allows it to use all memory, including extended memory. And even when that much memory isn†t enough, it can make more available by creating virtual memory from free space (space that has nothing stored in it) on a hard disk (non-removable secondary storage hardware device). Virtual Memory is a memory management technique that only loads active portions of a program into main memory. Windows95 also takes steps to prevent an application from accessing memory that it does not own. In DOS, and application can write to someone else†s memory, including the operating system†s, which can crash the entire system. Windows95 runs applications in private address spaces that are logically isolated from each other and identify the start of the file. One of an operating system†s most important components is its file system – the part responsible for managing files stored on hard disks and other mass-storage devices. An operating system provides high-level functions that applications can call to control file I/O, which covers the opening, closing, creating, deleting, and renaming of files. To read a chunk of data from a file, the application calls an operating system function and passes the operating system the file handle (which uniquely identifies an open file), the address in memory where the data should be copied, and the number of bytes to copy. The OS has to identify each sector on the disk that holds a portion of the requested file and program the drive controller to retrieve the information, sector by sector. It has to do this efficiently so that the information is retrieved quickly. The OS finds the right locations on the disk because it keeps a map that contains the name of each file and a record of where it is stored. DOS and Windows95 use a file allocation table as a map to find the locations. Another role that operating systems play in making a computer work is controlling device I/O. A device is a piece of hardware such as a video adapter, keyboard, or mouse. To talk to a device, a program must speak the device†s language, which usually consists of streams of 1†³s and 0†³s. There are thousands of different devices and â€Å"languages†, so the OS helps out by serving as an interpreter. It talks to the devices through device drivers, which are interface programs specially designed for each individual I/O device. Most operating systems like Windows95 come with dozens of different drivers for each I/O device. DOS also uses drivers, but they are often so primitive that the applications perform device I/O by relying on low-level routines encoded in ROM (Read Only Memory – allows the data to be read but not written) in the computer†s BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or by talking directly to the hardware. Computer Operating System An operating system (OS) is like a facilitator, providing an environment for application programs to run in. It provides an interface between computer hardware and the user of the application programs. Application programs are a stored set of instructions for responding to a specific request. Hardware are the physical devices that make up the system such as the monitor, keyboard, printer, ect. The OS typically includes anywhere from tens to thousands of built-in subroutines called functions which applications can call to perform basic tasks such as displaying a string of text on the screen or inputting a character from the keyboard. The OS allows the user to interact with and obtain information from the hardware through a series of layers. The command layer is the only part of the OS that interacts with the user and sometimes is referred to as the shell. It is the user†s interface to the OS in that the user can request system services via a Job Control Language (JCL), which is the set of commands and their syntax requirements, or through a GUI (Graphical User Interface), the newest command language. The command interpreter decides which services must be executed to process the request and passes these to the service layer. The service layer accepts the commands and translates them into detailed instructions. There is one service call for each number of system requests provided by this layer. It handles functions in process control, file control, and device control. It makes requests to drivers for access to the kernel layer, which interacts directly with the hardware. Input must travel through these layers to reach the hardware and the results must travel back. First and foremost, an operating system must provide a mechanism for starting processes, which most of us know as programs. There are two main types of operating systems: single-tasking and multitasking. DOS is an example of a single-tasking operating system, which simply means that it can only run one program at a time. Windows95 (or newer editions, prior editions were a GUI interface to DOS) is the most widely used multitasking operating system on PC†s. Multitasking means that many programs can run at the same time. The processor (CPU), which selects and executes instructions, must divide its time to each active application to make it appear that all are running at once. These types of operating systems contain schedulers that divide the processor†s time among active processes. The schedulers are located in the kernel. Each process has one or several threads of execution. Every few milliseconds the scheduler takes control of the CPU from the thread it is currently executing, uses a complex time-allocation algorithm to decide which thread should execute next, and continues executing the thread at the point where it was last interrupted. The next fundamental duty of an operating system is to manage the memory – or storage of data – available to it and its applications. The goal in memory management is to give each application the memory it needs without infringing upon memory used by other applications. When a program is loaded and ran, the OS allocates a block of memory to hold the program†s code and data. If a program requires additional memory, it can call a function in the operating system to request more. DOS does not handle memory very well because it runs in real mode, where only 1MB of RAM (Random Access Memory) is addressable. The RAM is volatile memory that stores the running applications but the information is lost when the computer is turned off. Windows95 does a much better job of managing memory because it runs in protected mode, which allows it to use all memory, including extended memory. And even when that much memory isn†t enough, it can make more available by creating virtual memory from free space (space that has nothing stored in it) on a hard disk (non-removable secondary storage hardware device). Virtual Memory is a memory management technique that only loads active portions of a program into main memory. Windows95 also takes steps to prevent an application from accessing memory that it does not own. In DOS, and application can write to someone else†s memory, including the operating system†s, which can crash the entire system. Windows95 runs applications in private address spaces that are logically isolated from each other and identify the start of the file. One of an operating system†s most important components is its file system – the part responsible for managing files stored on hard disks and other mass-storage devices. An operating system provides high-level functions that applications can call to control file I/O, which covers the opening, closing, creating, deleting, and renaming of files. To read a chunk of data from a file, the application calls an operating system function and passes the operating system the file handle (which uniquely identifies an open file), the address in memory where the data should be copied, and the number of bytes to copy. The OS has to identify each sector on the disk that holds a portion of the requested file and program the drive controller to retrieve the information, sector by sector. It has to do this efficiently so that the information is retrieved quickly. The OS finds the right locations on the disk because it keeps a map that contains the name of each file and a record of where it is stored. DOS and Windows95 use a file allocation table as a map to find the locations. Another role that operating systems play in making a computer work is controlling device I/O. A device is a piece of hardware such as a video adapter, keyboard, or mouse. To talk to a device, a program must speak the device†s language, which usually consists of streams of 1†³s and 0†³s. There are thousands of different devices and â€Å"languages†, so the OS helps out by serving as an interpreter. It talks to the devices through device drivers, which are interface programs specially designed for each individual I/O device. Most operating systems like Windows95 come with dozens of different drivers for each I/O device. DOS also uses drivers, but they are often so primitive that the applications perform device I/O by relying on low-level routines encoded in ROM (Read Only Memory – allows the data to be read but not written) in the computer†s BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or by talking directly to the hardware.

AIDS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 5

AIDS - Essay Example According to UNAIDS estimation at present, there is an approximation of 33.4 million people across the globe living on this face of earth while suffering from AIDS and every year estimated two million people expire from AIDS and its related illnesses. UNAIDS has approximated (UNAIDS, 2008). The case is even more critical in Sub-Sahara region of Africa where every 7 out of 10 deaths take place due to AIDS. Moreover, the region has almost sixty-six percent living case of AIDS and the percentage of new AIDS infection in children is as much as ninety percent (Stine, 2009). The cause of AIDS is the HIV virus. It is the virus that slowly weakens the human immune system. HIV increasingly does damage to the immune system cells therefore, the human body gets more prone to these infections, to which it has trouble in fighting back. A person diagnosed with AIDS is usually at the very high and advanced level of HIV infection flourishing in its body. The development of HIV in a human body is a slow process and it can take even years for a person with HIV virus to become an AIDS patient (AIDS.org, 2009). The symptoms of AIDS are though, not as vivid and obvious as the symptoms of other diseases. The person diagnosed with aid has the obvious illnesses related to AIDS. These AIDS related symptoms or conditions include infections, cancer, or tumor. These infections are opportunistic infections because of the reason that they develop in any human body due to the weak immune system. A person can suffer from AIDS with or without these opportunistic infection, the other symptoms are the tumor or cancer in any part of the human body due to AIDS. Moreover, the diagnosis of AIDS is also positive when the total number of human immune system cells decrease to a certain point. The major channels through which the transmission of AIDS takes place are the sexual intercourse, getting exposed to the infected parts of body or fluids, and from mother to

Effective leadership Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Effective leadership - Research Paper Example Scoring is based on the same evaluation and results are investigated with possible suggestion on team improvement. Introduction Structure of the paper The paper analyses a team performance based on theoretical frameworks right from its formation till the very end. It begins by identifying the team and the components within it and then discusses the process by which a team is formed. The team here is identified as a group created to stage a drama in 31 days time. The group identifies its various departments and operates for 30 days. In these 30 days, the group functioning is analysed based on few theoretical frameworks on group behaviour. The next stage discusses the role of individual participation and contribution towards the group and how personal and interpersonal skills were utilised. The paper concludes in evaluating the team’s performance on the team effectiveness critique and exploring the results thereof. The Team The team under study is a small one of 15 people coming together to stage a drama designated to the task of providing a good theatre experience to its audience. The team has 15 members who are divided into various divisions of the work unit. Each member on the team has a level of competency that is desired by the theatre event and the department under which the team member operates. Each team member works towards the common objective of giving a good performance on the day of the event. Team members are equally competitive and capable in delivering high levels of performance. Each individual has a separate set of skills that are necessary for achieving divisional and common organizational goals. The group is divided between actors (6), technicians (3), scriptwriters (2), director (2), marketers and organizers (2). The director has all necessary information regarding the drama event and shall act as the team leader. The Project To stage the drama, the team has a time period of 30 days to stage the drama. They have to present the show on the 31st day of the task being assigned. The team decided to meet 15 alternate days to put together the entire drama in place. The meetings were held on day 1, 2, 5, 9, 12, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and 30 from the day it was decided to stage a drama. Team Development Building an effective and efficient teamwork is important in today’s scenario. It is observed that team building is an onerous task. New teams do not start functioning exceptionally well at the very onset. Their formation takes time, efforts and a pattern that follow stages that can be easily classified into four general categories. A group of strangers becomes a team with common goal once they undergo the following stages (Mindtools, 2013). Forming The first stage is characterized by coming together of individuals to form a part of the group. Here individuals act in a very polite and positive manner primarily because they want to be accepted by the other members. The team leader has an advantage at this stage because the roles and responsibilities of other members are unclear. People are engaged primarily in deciding tasks and gather impression and information about other members of the group. This stage usually lasts very long, may be one single meeting and is devoid of any major conflict or controversy. The team under study identifies the roles and responsibilities of each participating in creating the entire drama. The behavior was formal and polite where individuals got acquainted with

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT - Essay Example Infomedia also considers itself as an interest publishing organization. Their strategic alliance’s formation occurred in April, 2008. The two companies sought to provide the Small, Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with quality solutions directed towards the advancement of both domestic and global trade (Das 34). Introduction Managers in most organizations are adopting strategic alliance as a way of realizing their strategies instead of retaining the old strategic make and sell strategy initially used. By definition, a strategic alliance is a relationship formed because of the availability of mutual interests between groups of interdependent organizations. These relationships last for as long as they prove to be economically viable (Das 67). In the case of Alibaba and Infomedia, both companies realized the potential benefits of supplying the SMEs with quality solutions, which pave the way for further advancement in both the domestic and global trade sectors (Yoshino and Rangan 76). .. . Alibaba, a company, which has an established presence in e-commerce, stood to benefit from the alliance by realizing some of its expansion strategies. Alibaba’s choice to form an alliance with Infomedia, a respectable Indian based company guaranteed Alibaba a successful entry into the Indian market. On the other hand, Infomedia stood to benefit from the access into the global mainframe, a niche successfully occupied by Alibaba. Targeting the small and medium enterprises proved to be a successful strategy. This is because both Indian and Chinese business sectors comprise these businesses in large numbers. Therefore, both management teams were able to come up with strategic goals that would ensure an efficient and effective way of dealing with their competitive surroundings. The different areas analyzed in order to determine whether both companies fit included strategic, cultural, resource, and structural aspects. The realization that these companies proved to be compatible on a strategic, cultural, resources and structural level showed that two were a match and that they formed a perfect fit (Das 116). b) Type of strategic alliance Determining the strategic alliance suitable for both the organizations also proved to be an integral part for both organizations. Companies choose between horizontal and vertical types of strategic alliance. The horizontal type allows competing businesses to form an alliance that will allow each partner to gain access to various segments in the industry. Horizontal strategic alliances allow partners to learn from each other, reduce the risks, and improve efficiency. On the other hand, vertical strategic alliances involve the partnering of one or more suppliers or customers. They create extra value for the

Creation and implementation of an effective recruiting and retention Research Paper

Creation and implementation of an effective recruiting and retention program - Research Paper Example Regards †¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦. Table of contents 1. Introduction 3 2. Problem statement 3 3. Review of current practices 3 4. Strategic plan for recruitment and retention 4 5. Implementation strategy 5 6. Final recommendations and possible outcomes 5 7. Conclusions 6 References Appendices 1. Introduction: Current businesses are challenged with high employee turnover irrespective of various human resource development and employee-friendly practices. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to explore various other opportunities to reduce employee turnover while abiding by obligatory requirements, which can save costs and improve profits. This paper presents some potential solutions to high employee turnover issues in addition to some recommendations for implementing these solutions before concluding with key points. 2. Problem Statement: Recruiting and retaining the older and disabled work groups are challenging, but provide many advantages too. Organizations in the IT sec tor, like Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS), invest huge amount of money in developing their employees to perform as per expected standards, which eventually lead to losses when employees leave for outside opportunities. Immense competition and advanced communication technologies that have given rise to numerous opportunities have constantly haunted organizations in the IT sectors resulting in large voluntary employee turnover. Most of the times, practices in recruiting and retaining employees do not seem to be aligned to organizational strategies and long-term objectives; one such example is practices to implement diversity. Most of the companies do not put optimum efforts to hire diverse workforce, which can actually provide competitive advantage. 3. Review of current practices: Strategic human resources management focuses on integrating human resource planning, recruitment, selection and retention in a manner that not only assists in achieving organizational or departmental ob jectives but also sustain the organizational position and performance through effective HR practices and procedures (Armstrong, 2008). Currently, most of the recruitment occurs electronically as this medium provides larger database to recruit the best candidate; however, this medium provides little or no personal/human contact that would be required for appropriate assessment of the candidate. Moreover, usage of internet is not similar among all groups of job seekers. For instance, Scott, Snell and Bohlander point out at the 2010 study by Kessler Foundation, which indicated only 54% of disabled using internet for job search compared to 85% of non-disabled candidates. Such disproportion could affect company’s efforts towards exercising diversity, which is a legal and moral obligation. Spiezia (2002) highlights that employing older workers can be beneficial, a very important retention program employed by some organizations, but ignored by many. Studies indicate that older worke rs are more loyal, committed, honest compared to younger counterparts (Spiezia, 2002); however, some studies also indicate that the reason for many organizations overlooking older workforce is lower productivity, slower learning and potential health risk (Ashworth, 2008). Nevertheless, employing older and disabled workforce is a legal and moral obligation of organizations. Moreover, worker shortages can be overcome by employing the older and disabled

The poverty in the world Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The poverty in the world - Essay Example The author also notes that the global food crisis affects mostly poor people – who have to spend most or all of their income on food. Using various examples of extreme weather events worldwide, the author argues that political or economic decisions may be related to the food crisis, but their role in the rapid expansion of the crisis can be doubted; rather the weather, as affected by the increased pollution, should be characterized as the main cause of the global food crisis. The views of the author, as briefly presented above, are critically discussed and evaluated using appropriate literature, i.e. academic studies which focus on the global food crisis. 2. Issues discussed in the paper – presentation and analysis In the article under analysis, Krugman aims to present the key causes of the global food crisis. ... However, extreme weather events - recent ones - in specific countries are used in order to prove the relationship between the global financial crisis and the specific events. More specifically, reference is made to the fires in Russia, the flooding in Australia and the dry weather in Brazil. It is noted that extreme weather events are more likely to influence the food prices – compared to the commodity prices, which cannot have an impact, in accordance with Krugman, on the food prices. However, no data or relevant reports are used for supporting the specific view. Instead, the events are mentioned followed by the personal views of the author, without using appropriate literature or findings of research made on the specific issue. The key point of the article is that the global climate change which has led to natural phenomena such as the La Nina, is the key cause of the global food crisis and for this reason the claims that ‘Ben Bernanke has blood on his hands’ (K rugman, p.1 & 3) should be opposed as non-valid. Instead, measures should be taken in order to control the global food crisis that, in accordance with Krugman, is expected to further expand, as a result of the increase of greenhouse gases. 3. Evaluation of the author’s perspective In accordance with the issues discussed above, the global food crisis, as expanded quite rapidly in the international community is quite difficult to be controlled, mostly because it is related to events that cannot be foreseen and they are quite difficult to be confronted. In fact, no matter the technology available, certain of these events, cannot be managed, like in the case of fires in Russia and the flooding in Australia

IKEA in China Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

IKEA in China - Essay Example The corporations decide to enter into new country to capture the new market and in this process they primarily focus cross cultural factors for building multicultural teams. However, they have to face several difficulties due to mismatch of organisation culture and social culture (Rajagopal, 2007, p.8). This paper will attempt to analyse distinct features of cross cultural differences affecting international trade in context of IKEA’s business in China. To offer basic understandings and interpretations of cross cultural difference, some relevant models and concepts will be critically analysed and discussed. This paper will also include the basic difference of Swedish and Chinese cultures. Role of expatriate managers in managing multi-national corporations will also be discussed. Finally, the paper will end by summing up the entire discussions and findings. IKEA is a privately-owned global furniture company. It is a Sweden-based company and founded by Ingvar Kamprad who started to sell matches at the age of seven during 1920. During 1940-1950, he entered into the furniture business and the business experienced a rapid growth within a short span of time (IKEA-a, 2010). Currently, it offers large varieties of furniture for domestic and commercial purposes. It also provides furniture for children (IKEA-b, 2010). IKEA has expanded its business in the global market and it is present in the entire Europe, North America, Middle East and Asia pacific regions. The business idea of IKEA focuses on its core value, product range, low price and betterment of everyday life of its valuable consumers (IKEA-c, 2010). Business and culture are inter-related with other and hence, before presenting critical analysis of cross culture, expatriate management and multicultural operations. The national culture is the prime factor that affects the culture of an organisation and its behaviour.

Discovery of electrons(J,J Thomson) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Discovery of electrons(J,J Thomson) - Essay Example Cathode rays were an enigma during the late 1800s. Many Europeans thought that the rays emitted at the cathode in the discharge tube were an ethereal disturbance, like light. Crookes proposed in 1879, that the cathode rays were radiant matter or negatively charged particles that were attracted to the anode and repelled from the cathode (Cambridge Physics, 2015). In Germany, Hertz conducted an experiment where he observed that the rays discharged could pass through very thin gold sheets. He also conducted another experiment to find out the impact of electric fields on the rays and wrongly concluded that the rays were not deflected by the electric fields. In 1897, J.J Thomson repeated Hertz’s experiment (Cambridge Physics, 2015). The difference between J.J Thomson’s experiment and Hertz’s experiment was that J.J Thomson conducted his experiment in a vacuum tube. Hertz had too much gas in his discharge tube and the gas had become ionized by the electric field. The positive ions were attracted to the negative plate and the negative ions were attracted to the positive plate. This reduced the net charge on the plates and the strength of the field was not enough to deflect the cathode rays. J.J Thomson repeated the experiment and when he passed the cathode rays through the electric field in a vacuum, deflection occurred. The fact that the cathode rays moved towards the positively charged plate allowed him to conclude that the rays must be negatively charged. After this, J.J Thomson used two coils of wire known as the Helmholtz pair to produce a uniform magnetic field. Any beam of charged particles when passed through the magnetic field produced by the Helmholtz pair will be bent at 90 degree angle to the field into a complete circle Using this concept, J.J Thomson positioned the coils to cause a deflection in the opposite direction to that produced by the electric field. To balance the forces

Is Hip-Hop Dead Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Is Hip-Hop Dead - Assignment Example As the paper outlines, since its genesis in New York City in the mid-1970s, rap has spread to other parts of the world. A lot of research on rap has focused on chronicling its emergence and rise as a social movement. Listeners of rap have conspicuously been left out in prior research on the area. In the beginning, rap listeners were largely Latino and Black but Whites joined in later. Rap has criticized politics and racism since its emergence. However, though, rap has invited criticism from political and religious circles. These criticisms have not put down rap fans (Sullivan 232). Surveys showed that Blacks were leading in the impact of rap on its listeners. White supporters of reported that their racial views had been changed by rap. African Americans have a wider knowledge of rap than whites do. There are racial and gender dimensions in the preference for rap. Rap listeners differ in terms of the reasons as to why they listen to it. African American adolescents may listen to rap a s an element that helps in identity formation while white adolescents listen to it as a source of entertainment. Rap may not act as an effective interracial socializer because it might give White adolescents a skewed perception of the African American culture, diversity and it may entrench stereotypes. Many aspects need researching in regards to rap. These include urbanicity, age, class and listeners’ impacts on hip-hop. Listeners’ interpretation of rap and its message has not been researched adequately, through inquiry into this aspect can help unearth the basis of the differences between the various ways in which rap listeners of different races appreciate the genre (Sullivan 236). This article underscores the importance of listeners when considering rap. Considering the reasons why different rap listeners embrace the genre is insightful because it helps demystify the conception that there is homogeneity in the appreciation of rap. It is helpful to note that rap alon e might serve as a multiracial socialize and though one would have thought that the music suffices to instill an accurate view of African American culture, it is enlightening to know that the knowledge that the music imparts is not complete. The article has instrumentally shown that the racial difference in regards to the preference for rap music is reducing.  

Is The Us A Hegemon Essay Example for Free

Is The Us A Hegemon Essay A hegemon can be defined as a paramount power or state that can influence the course of events globally (free dictionary, 2008). By this very definition, America qualifies to be referred to as a hegemon. Since the collapse of the Cold War, the US has emerged as the most powerful nation on earth. Its influence is felt in the political, economic and military realms where its hegemony remains largely unchallenged. US administrations have not shied away from flexing their power and this has been increasing experienced in political matters where the US has pushed its agenda for new world order based on democratic ideals. No country is above the law. However, because of their position globally, powerful nations do at times take actions that are in direct contravention of laid down rules and procedures. In its attempt to democratize the world, the US has acted as though it was above international law. The invasion of Iraq is a case in point. Despite the Security Council’s condemnation of the planned invasion, the US and Britain went ahead to wage war and eventually topple Sadamm. President Chirac of France spoke out strongly against the trend by the US in taking unilateral decisions that contravened international law as it could set off a bad precedent (Litchfield, 2003). The detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay is a blatant disregard of the Geneva Convention that stipulates how prisoners of war are to be treated (UNHCR, 2008). By torturing the detainees and denying them their rights, the US has chosen to ignore international laws set up by the Commonwealth of Nations (Leonnig and Mintz, 2004) In summary, the US has taken advantage of its hegemonic status to carry out illegal acts as per international law. These actions do not augur well for international cooperation and peace as other nations will be tempted to act unilaterally and in direct contravention of the same laws that are meant to ensure world stability

Relationship Between HRM and Employee Attitude

Relationship Between HRM and Employee Attitude The relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes Introduction The concept of human resource management (HRM) has received focussed attention for around 20 years, with the catalyst being that many US companies found they were being rivalled and in some instances overtaken, in markets they had dominated (Ehrlich, 1994, p. 492). As Lodge (1985, p. 319) observes: By the early 1980s there was still little disagreement that US corporate managers, employees and trade unions would have to change their ways in order to compete successfully for markets in America and abroad. Harvard university academics introduced a new compulsory component of HRM into their MBA syllabus and reinforced this so-called Harvard Model with influential books and articles (Beer et al., 1984; Walton, 1985b; Walton and Lawrence, 1985). While there would surely have been a genuine desire to help US business, US society, and even US employees, there was also a long-term effort to ensure that the Harvard Business School faculty provided leadership in human resource management (Walton and Lawrence, 1985, p. xx). The Harvard concept stresses that HRM should lead to employee commitment not simply as a means to employer objectives of improved productivity and profits, but because the fulfilment of many employee needs is taken as a goal rather than merely a means to an end (Walton, 1985a, p. 49). At about the same time as the Harvard concept was being developed another viewpoint was being promulgated by academics who supported a strategic concept of HRM, with the major work edited by Fombrun et al. (1984). This work emphasises that the four generic human resource activities of all organisations: selection/promotion/placement process; reward process; development process; and appraisal process (Tichy et al., 1984, p. 26) need to be strategically aligned with the organisations overall strategic objectives. Hard and soft HRM British writers have focused on the differences between the Harvard commitment concept of HRM and the strategic HRM concept. Keenoy (1990, p. 368) sees the Harvard concept as philosophically grounded in the recognition of multiple stakeholders and the belief that the practice and benefits of HRM can be achieved through neo-pluralist mechanisms, while the strategic concept is almost uniformly unitarist in orientation and displays a quite singular endorsement of managerial values. The former is frequently referred to as soft HRM, while the latter is hard HRM. In theory, soft HRM fulfils employee needs as an end in itself, and the favourable attitudes generated from the use of appropriate HRM practices (Guest, 1997) together with communication, motivation and leadership (Storey, 1987, p. 6), result in commitment to the organisation and improved performance. Hard HRM is only concerned with the effective utilisation of employees (Guest, 2002) and emphasises the quantitative, calculative and business strategic aspects of managing the head count resource in as natural a way as for any other economic factor (Storey, 1987, p. 6). If the reality of soft HRM practice was that it produced the benefits referred to in the rhetoric of academic evangelists such as Richard Walton then it should be highly favoured by both employees and employers. Questions have been raised by a number of researchers, however, about the ability of soft HRM to achieve these benefits. There are two concerns. The first is that the real motive behind its introduction is to undermine unions (Sisson, 1994). Indeed, going back to the introduction of the Harvard concept of soft HRM, Lawrence (1985, p. 362) writes about a seminal colloquium on HRM between 35 senior executives and Harvard academics. He claims that the question as to whether HRM was designed to keep the union out was emphatically denied, and he protested that all but three of the firms represented were at least partially unionised, with several having had a significant number of units of both kinds, with their older plants unionised and the newer ones not. An unreasonable interpr etation therefore would be that these leaders of commitment HRM will happily dispense with unions given the opportunity. Indeed, Lawrence (1985, p. 362) admits that there was a general view that in a well-managed unit with decision-sharing, a union was not needed to represent employee interests. Guest (1990, p. 389) concludes, the main impact of HRM in the United States may have been to provide a smokescreen behind which management can introduce non-unionism or obtain significant concessions from trade unions. The second concern is that meeting the needs of employees has never been an objective in itself, and has simply been the normative view of what Harvard academics would like to see as the employment relationship. Truss et al. (1997, p. 70) in a study of soft and hard models of HRM, concluded that even if the rhetoric of HRM is soft, the reality is almost always hard, with the interests of the organisation prevailing over those of the individual. Similar conclusions have been reached by Keenoy (1990), Poole and Mansfield (1992), Guest (1995) and Legge (1995a, b, 1998). If the soft model of HRM has validity, then there should be a clear relationship between the experience of soft HRM practice and positive employee attitudes (reflecting their needs are being met) and increasing employee commitment as well as improved productivity. Surprisingly, however, most of the research and reporting on HRM has ignored the views of employees. Legge (1998, p. 14) points out: when reading accounts of HRM practice in the UK and North America it is noticeable the extent to which the data are (literally) the voices of management. Guest (1999, p. 5) agrees, claiming that from its conception human resource management reflected a management agenda to the neglect of workers concerns. Some studies have considered employee reactions to HRM (Gibb, 2001; Appelbaum and Berg, 2000; Mabey et al., 1998) but Guest (2002, p. 335) is perceptive in his criticism that a feature of both advocates and critics of HRM is their neglect of direct evidence about the role and reactions of w orkers. Even the exceptions noted which gave employee reactions to HRM did not relate the employee experience of HRM practices to their reactions, and Guest (1997) argues for a research agenda that addresses this gap. This paper aims to contribute to this gap by fulfilling two major objectives. The first is to add to the limited number of studies which have tested to see if there is a relationship between HRM practice and positive employee attitudes. The second objective is to see if there is a significantly stronger relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes if employee perceptions of HRM practice are taken as the measure of HRM rather than employer perceptions, which has been the approach taken in general by previous researchers. HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes The soft model of HRM, as stated previously, suggests a relationship exists between the use of appropriate HRM practices and positive employee attitudes, and while theoretically these relationships remain poorly developed (Guest, 1997, 2001), a number of attitudes are nonetheless widely considered to be an outcome of soft HRM. For example, levels of job satisfaction, which is the affective perception that results from the achievement of desired outcomes (Harber et al., 1997), are found to be related to levels of HRM practice (Guest, 2002; Ting, 1997). High levels of employee commitment have also been found to be related to the use of appropriate HRM practice (Guest, 2002), and results from investing in HRM practices which benefit employees. For example, the provision of opportunities for training and skill development benefits the employee by equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to function autonomously and responsibly (Guest, 2002). Furthermore, it impro ves retention and enables them to cope with change in the work environment (Guest, 2002). Organisational fairness is the term used to describe the role of fairness as it directly relates to the workplace and is concerned with the ways employees determine if they have been treated fairly in their jobs and the ways in which those determinations influence other work-related variables (Moorman, 1991, p. 845). The HRM systems, policies, and procedures that operate in an organisation have been identified as impacting on an individuals perceptions of bias and fairness (Kurland and Egan, 1999; Greenberg, 1990). Studies show that where employees believe they are treated fairly in the workplace then they hold positive attitudes towards the organisation (Moorman, 1991), whereas HRM practices that are perceived to be unfair have been found to result in the employee feeling bewildered and betrayed and thus less committed (Schappe, 1996). As far as the relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes is concerned, the HRM practice dimension has been measured by collecting data from employers in one of the two ways using additive measures of HRM practice or self-reports about the extent to which particular HRM practices have been operationalised. A possible third approach would be to collect employee views about the operationalisation of HRM practice and then relate these reactions to their attitudes. These approaches are described below. The additive approach To date the most common approach for assessing the relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes is the additive approach. This involves employers indicating, using a yes/no response format, which HRM practices from a predetermined list currently operate in their organisations. The yes responses are then added together, and the assumption is that a higher sum indicates better HRM. Researchers using the additive approach usually correlate the total number of practices with the HRM outcomes being examined. Research exploring this relationship show a strong correlation between high numbers of HRM practice and positive employee attitudes (Fiorito, 2002; Guest, 1999; Guest and Conway, 2002; Appelbaum and Berg, 2000). While this approach is frequently used, it has attracted criticism (Fiorito, 2002; Guest, 1997, 2002). The additive approach is very simplistic. If an employer claims a practice is utilised there is no differentiation on the basis on how well, or to what extent the practice exists. For example, there could be token training and development, or a high level of commitment to a professional and effective training and development programme. Both examples are credited as a yes. This perceived weakness has led some researchers to use employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice. Employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice Guest and Peccei (1994) suggest that an improvement on the additive approach is to assess the extent or strength of practice using response bands such as those contained in Likert scales. Such an approach sees employers self-reporting, either on the extent they consider particular HRM practices to be effective (Delaney and Huselid, 1996), or alternatively on the extent to which HRM practices have been operationalised (i.e. to what extent practices are practised) in their workplace (Kane et al., 1999). Guest (2001, p. 1099) claims further research is needed to test the extent that employer and employee views on HRM practices coincide or differ. Specifically he suggests: There is now a need for more research comparing the responses of managers responsible for developing and overseeing HRM practice and employees to identify levels of agreement about the operation of practices such evidence as it is possible to glean from reports about levels of autonomy and consultation suggest that levels of agreement might be quite low. Support for this assertion has already been found. For example, Appelbaum and Bergs (2000) study comparing supervisor and employee perceptions about participative initiatives in US organisations found wide differences. Similarly, Kane et al. (1999) also found evidence of perceptual differences about HRM between different organisational stakeholders. While managers and employers are important stakeholders, so too are employees. This has led to a strong call for employee voice to be heard in HRM research (Guest, 2001). Employee self-reports about the strength of HRM practice Given the apparent perceptual differences between employers and employees perceptions of HRM then a third approach that could be used would see employees reports on the strength of operationalised HRM practice analysed in relation to their levels of work-related attitudes. There is now growing support for assessing HRM from the employee perspective emerging in the literature (Fiorito, 2002; Gibb, 2001; Guest, 2001), and given that where the concern is employee attitudes, then it is intuitively logical to relate that to employee rather than employer perceptions of the effectiveness of HRM policies and practices. Method The most common approach employed in studies assessing the relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes is the survey (Cully et al., 2000; Guest, 1999), and this is the method of data collection used in this study. Four areas of HRM practice are examined good and safe working conditions, training and development, equal employment opportunities (EEO), and recruitment and selection. These areas of HRM have been selected because they have previously been identified as those likely to have the greatest impact on employee behaviour and attitudes (Guest, 2001). Three employee work-related attitudes are examined organisational commitment, job satisfaction and organisational fairness. These attitudes are generally considered to be desirable outcomes that result from the use of soft HRM (Meyer and Smith, 2000; Guest, 1997). Measurement Three approaches are used to measure HRM practice an additive measure completed by the employer, and two perceptual measures, one completed by employers and one completed by employees. All three measures relate to practices characterised in the literature as soft HRM or best practice HRM (Guest, 1999; Guest and Peccei, 1992; Johnson, 2000; Kane et al., 1999). They are employee-centred (i.e. they should produce benefits for employees when operationalised), and thus should impact on employee work-related attitudes. The additive measure, as stated, is the one most commonly used in research of this type. The additive measure used in this study asks employers to indicate, using a yes/no response format, which practices, from a comprehensive list of 80 practices (20 for each functional area covered), currently operate in their organisation (for example, Do you consult employees on their training needs?). A 20-item scale consisting of statements about HRM practice is used to assess the strength of HRM practices (five items for each of the four functional areas). Respondents are asked to indicate, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree, the extent they consider each practice occurs in their organisation, for example, EEO is promoted within this organisation (see Appendix 1 for a full list of statements). The same scale is used for both the employer and the employee groups, with the wording amended to reflect their different perspectives. Employer and employee assessments of HRM using this measure are, therefore, concerned with the judgements these groups make about the extent a particular HRM practice has been operationalised in the workplace. The ÃŽ ± coefficients for the five item measures relating to each of the four areas of HRM practice examined ranged from 0.83 to 0.88, suggesting high internal consistency exists (Browne, 2000). The s tatements about HRM practice on the perceptual measure closely reflect the ones used in the additive measure, but there is not a direct correspondence as that would have resulted in an excessively long measure. Three widely accepted measures of employee attitudes are used. Guest (1997) suggests organisational commitment should be measured using the standard measure developed by Mowday et al. (1979) the organisational commitment questionnaire (OCQ) because this scale captures the extent the employee identifies with the organisation, their desire to remain in the organisation and their willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organisation. An adapted and shortened version of the OCQ is used in this study to measure organisational commitment. Again, respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with each of the statements using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree (ÃŽ ±=0.8535). To measure job satisfaction, an adapted and shortened form of the Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire (Weiss et al., 1967) is used. The scale has six items and respondents are asked to indicate how satisfied they are with respect to each of the statements, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=very dissatisfied to 5=very satisfied (ÃŽ ±=0.8664). While organisational fairness has two dimensions distributive and procedural this study is concerned only with procedural fairness and HRM policy and practice. The measure used is an adapted and shortened six-item version of the procedural justice scale used by Moorman (1991). This measures employees perceptions about the way formal procedures are carried out. Respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with each of the statements using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree (ÃŽ ±=0.9160). Employer and employee respondents were also asked to provide a range of demographic information. Analysis Data are analysed using SPSS, Version 11, using matched employer and aggregated employee data from 37 organisations. Correlations, using Pearsons r, are completed to explore the relationships between HRM practice and employee attitudes. The multiple linear regression technique is used to explore the differential impacts of the three approaches being tested. The sample In total, 234 organisations were originally contacted to participate in this study. A total of 40 organisations agreed to participate. The person most responsible for operationalising HRM practice was requested to complete the employer survey. Employee participation was voluntary, and the company fully endorsed their participation. The employer participant was requested to distribute the surveys to a representative sample of their workforce, in terms of occupational classification, ethnicity and gender. The targeted population of employees consisted of a total of 1,075 full- and part-time employees from the 40 participating organisations. A total of 626 employees responded (a response rate of 58 per cent) by completing the survey and returning it in the reply-paid envelope provided. In total, 37 usable matched sets of data were obtained. These 37 matched data sets comprise one completed employer questionnaire (total usable employer responses=37) and on average 15 employee questionnai res for each organisation (total usable employee responses=572). The number of actual employee responses received for each organisation varied with workplace size, and ranged from eight to 31. The demographics for the employer and employee samples are reported in Table I. New Zealand is a relatively small country and organisations employing in excess of 100 employees are usually classified as large, with those having between 50 and 99 employees classified as medium and organisations with under 50 employees as small. Three-fifths of the organisations participating in this study can be classified as large; one-fifth are medium, and the remaining five small. Of the 37 participating organisations, 19 are located in the private sector, 18 in the public sector. Around 35 per cent of the participating organisations are located in the service industry, with this group being evenly represented across both sectors. All other organisations are classified in the manufacturing, transport, retail, sales, education and health industries. Both the employer and the employee samples are reasonably a representative of organisations and the composition of the workforce in New Zealand, with the only notable exception being the employee sample is skewed in terms of occupation towards professional and semi-professional groups. Results The first analysis examines the relationship between additive measures of HRM practice and attitudes. The number of practices for each functional area varied considerably between organisations. Generally it is found that there are relatively high levels of practice for the areas of good and safe working conditions (M=15.95, SD=3.22), training and development (M=16.77, SD=2.76), along with recruitment and selection (M=16.52, SD=2.50). EEO is the one area, on the other hand, where a considerably lower mean level of practice exists (M=12.17, SD=5.96). According to prior research, high numbers of HRM practice are associated with positive employee attitudes (Guest, 1999). The results of the analysis for this relationship are reported in Table II. These findings differ from those previously reported. Using aggregated employee means, when levels of organisational commitment (M=3.72, SD=0.78), job satisfaction (M=3.72, SD=0.79) and organisational fairness (M=3.70, SD=0.86) are correlated with the combined additive measure of HRM practice, the results show that higher index scores in the number of HRM practices are not related to higher levels of organisational commitment (r=0.155, df=35, p=>0.05), job satisfaction (r=0.085, df=35, p=>0.05) or organisational fairness (r=0.146, df=35, p=>0.05). When this relationship is examined by functional area the correlations are also found not to be significant. Next the relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes is examined using first employer self-reports, and second employee self-reports. These results are also reported in Table II. Statistically significant correlations are found to exist between the three attitudes measured and employee assessments of HRM practice for all the functional areas examined. However, no significant correlations are found between employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice and employee attitudes. Data are then analysed using a regression technique, enabling the predictive qualities of each of the three approaches for assessing HRM practice to be explored. The model used for regressions is shown in Figure 1. All the measures of HRM practices were entered into a multiple regression[1] equation so that the character of the relationship between different measures of HRM practice and employee attitudes could be explored. It is found that nearly 51 per cent of the variance in organisational commitment (R 2=0.506, p The results of the regressions for the three measures of HRM practice, along with the three measures of employee attitudes, are presented in Table III. When the results of the regression for the three different measures of HRM practice are analysed it becomes evident that employee assessments have the greatest level of predictive power for attitudes. The regression reveals that numbers of HRM practice and employer assessments about the strength of HRM practice account for very little of the variance in attitudes. On the other hand, employee assessments of HRM practice appear to be very influential. Around 47 per cent of the variance in organisational commitment is explained by employee assessments of practice across the four HRM areas examined, with even larger and equally significant levels of variance being explained by this for job satisfaction and organisational fairness. If we exclude employee assessments related to EEO from the analysis, as it uniformly records the lowest ÃŽ ² across all three attitudes, the ÃŽ ² statistic for the remaining three functional areas of HRM practice implies that for every increment in employee assessments, levels of attitudes increase by between 0.17 and 0.34. The most statistically significant and consistent increments are in relation to employee assessments of good and safe working conditions, along with training and development, and these are found to apply to all aspects of work-related attitudes measured. Also worth noting is that, not surprisingly, assessments of recruitment and selection practices accounted for the largest variance in levels of organisational fairness. Discussion and concluding remarks Consistent with the work of Appelbaum and Berg (2000), Cully et al. (2000) and Guest (1999), this study also finds that a significant relationship exists between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes. There is a strong statistically significant relationship when HRM is researched from the employee perspective. However, there was no significant relationship when HRM practice was measured using the additive approach or employer self-reports. These results have implications for current approaches used to assess the HRM practice-employee work-related attitudes relationship. This study demonstrates that by far the greatest correlate of employee attitudes are employees own assessments of the strength of HRM practice. Interestingly, higher levels of HRM practice, using an additive measure, are not found to be significantly associated with attitudes across any of the four functional areas of HRM examined. In fact, it is revealed that higher levels of HRM practice are in some cases related to decreased levels of job satisfaction and organisational fairness. For example, looking at the data for each functional HRM area, it is possible that higher levels of EEO practice may actually have no, or even a negative, effect on employee attitudes, with a strong inverse relationship being found for job satisfaction. Similarly, weak relationships are found when the relationship between employer assessments about operationalised practice and attitudes are examined. So while Guest and Peccei (1994) suggest these areas are important aspects of best practice HRM, this study finds them to be unrelated to attitudes when data are collected from employers. Put together these results suggest that if managers want to maximise employee attitudes, then implementing lots of practices is not sufficient. Practitioners need to be aware that the way they implement their HRM practices may be a more important determinant of employee attitudes than the number of practices they put in place. This builds on the research findings of other recent studies (Armstrong, 2001) that suggest it is possible that it is the quality of the practice that counts and not the quantity. It may be that practitioners may need to undertake regular attitudinal surveys to assess employee reactions to current HRM practice and assess these on a longitudinal basis to identify what is working and what is not. It was beyond the parameters of this study to examine the complex relationship between HRM practice, employee attitudes and business performance; it has, however, explored the narrower relationship between HRM practice (for the areas of good and safe working conditions, training and development, EEO and recruitment and selection) and three employee attitudes (organisational commitment, job satisfaction and organisational fairness). While regressions tell us nothing about the cause-effect nature of relationships between assessments of HRM practice and employee attitudes, these findings strongly suggest that incorporating the employees experience of HRM into analyses exploring the HRM practice, employee attitudes relationship will contribute further to our understanding about what aspects of HRM have the potential to yield the greatest performance outcomes. Arguably, more so, it would appear, than exploring this particular relationship solely using additive measures or employer self-re ports. This study has some limitations. This study found the standard deviations for assessments of HRM practice and work-related attitudes amongst employee groups within each organisation to be reasonably low, showing close agreement. Nonetheless the aggregated data has been developed from a relatively small sample, thus it may not be representative of the bulk of employee views. The evaluative nature of the questions used introduces the possibility of common method variance (i.e. an artificial correlation across questions due to mood or other contaminants (Fiorito, 2002)). Also, the HRM practices used in this study are supposedly best practice; however, there is still insufficient evidence available to confirm that they are indeed best practice. Finally, Gibb (2001) suggests effective HRM is about implementing best practice. While this may very well be true, it is clear from this study that simply introducing best practice, or even assessing the effectiveness of practice from the employers viewpoint, is no guarantee that they have been successfully implemented. If the organisations objective is to improve employees workplace attitudes, then possibly a better way to confirm which HRM practices are having the greatest impact, and hence are effective, is to correlate employees assessment of them with employees attitudes. Further studies in this area are now required. References Appelbaum, E., Berg, P. (2000), High performance work systems: giving workers a stake, in Blair, M., Kochan, T. (Eds),The New Relationship: Human Capital in the American Corporation, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Armstrong, G. (2001), The Change Agenda: Performance through People, The New People Management, CODE, London, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P.R., Mills, D.Q., Walton, R.E. (1984), Managing Human Assets, Free Press, New York, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Browne, J.H. (2000), Benchmarking HRM practices in healthy work organizations, American Business Review, Vol. 18 No.2, pp.54-61. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Cully, M., Woodland, S., OReilly, A., Dix, G. (2000), Britain at Work: As Depicted by the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, Routledge, London, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Delaney, J.T., Huselid, M.A. (1996), The impact of human resource management practices on perceptions of organizational performance, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 39 No.4, pp.949-69. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Ehrlich, C.J. (1994), Creating an employer-employee relationship for the future, Human Resource Management, Vol. 33 No.3, pp.491-501. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Fiorito, J. (2002), Human resource management practices and worker desires for union representation, in Bennett, J., Kaufman, B. (Eds),The Future of Private Sector Unionism in the United States, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] (1984), in Fombrun, C., Tichy, N., Devanna, M. (Eds),Strategic Human Resource Management, Wiley, New York, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Gibb, S. (2001), The state of human resource management: evidence from employees view of HRM systems and staff, Employee Relations, Vol. 23 No.4, pp.318-36. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Greenberg, J. (1990), Organisational justice: yesterday, today and tomorrow, Journal of Management, Vol. 16 pp.399-43 Relationship Between HRM and Employee Attitude Relationship Between HRM and Employee Attitude The relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes Introduction The concept of human resource management (HRM) has received focussed attention for around 20 years, with the catalyst being that many US companies found they were being rivalled and in some instances overtaken, in markets they had dominated (Ehrlich, 1994, p. 492). As Lodge (1985, p. 319) observes: By the early 1980s there was still little disagreement that US corporate managers, employees and trade unions would have to change their ways in order to compete successfully for markets in America and abroad. Harvard university academics introduced a new compulsory component of HRM into their MBA syllabus and reinforced this so-called Harvard Model with influential books and articles (Beer et al., 1984; Walton, 1985b; Walton and Lawrence, 1985). While there would surely have been a genuine desire to help US business, US society, and even US employees, there was also a long-term effort to ensure that the Harvard Business School faculty provided leadership in human resource management (Walton and Lawrence, 1985, p. xx). The Harvard concept stresses that HRM should lead to employee commitment not simply as a means to employer objectives of improved productivity and profits, but because the fulfilment of many employee needs is taken as a goal rather than merely a means to an end (Walton, 1985a, p. 49). At about the same time as the Harvard concept was being developed another viewpoint was being promulgated by academics who supported a strategic concept of HRM, with the major work edited by Fombrun et al. (1984). This work emphasises that the four generic human resource activities of all organisations: selection/promotion/placement process; reward process; development process; and appraisal process (Tichy et al., 1984, p. 26) need to be strategically aligned with the organisations overall strategic objectives. Hard and soft HRM British writers have focused on the differences between the Harvard commitment concept of HRM and the strategic HRM concept. Keenoy (1990, p. 368) sees the Harvard concept as philosophically grounded in the recognition of multiple stakeholders and the belief that the practice and benefits of HRM can be achieved through neo-pluralist mechanisms, while the strategic concept is almost uniformly unitarist in orientation and displays a quite singular endorsement of managerial values. The former is frequently referred to as soft HRM, while the latter is hard HRM. In theory, soft HRM fulfils employee needs as an end in itself, and the favourable attitudes generated from the use of appropriate HRM practices (Guest, 1997) together with communication, motivation and leadership (Storey, 1987, p. 6), result in commitment to the organisation and improved performance. Hard HRM is only concerned with the effective utilisation of employees (Guest, 2002) and emphasises the quantitative, calculative and business strategic aspects of managing the head count resource in as natural a way as for any other economic factor (Storey, 1987, p. 6). If the reality of soft HRM practice was that it produced the benefits referred to in the rhetoric of academic evangelists such as Richard Walton then it should be highly favoured by both employees and employers. Questions have been raised by a number of researchers, however, about the ability of soft HRM to achieve these benefits. There are two concerns. The first is that the real motive behind its introduction is to undermine unions (Sisson, 1994). Indeed, going back to the introduction of the Harvard concept of soft HRM, Lawrence (1985, p. 362) writes about a seminal colloquium on HRM between 35 senior executives and Harvard academics. He claims that the question as to whether HRM was designed to keep the union out was emphatically denied, and he protested that all but three of the firms represented were at least partially unionised, with several having had a significant number of units of both kinds, with their older plants unionised and the newer ones not. An unreasonable interpr etation therefore would be that these leaders of commitment HRM will happily dispense with unions given the opportunity. Indeed, Lawrence (1985, p. 362) admits that there was a general view that in a well-managed unit with decision-sharing, a union was not needed to represent employee interests. Guest (1990, p. 389) concludes, the main impact of HRM in the United States may have been to provide a smokescreen behind which management can introduce non-unionism or obtain significant concessions from trade unions. The second concern is that meeting the needs of employees has never been an objective in itself, and has simply been the normative view of what Harvard academics would like to see as the employment relationship. Truss et al. (1997, p. 70) in a study of soft and hard models of HRM, concluded that even if the rhetoric of HRM is soft, the reality is almost always hard, with the interests of the organisation prevailing over those of the individual. Similar conclusions have been reached by Keenoy (1990), Poole and Mansfield (1992), Guest (1995) and Legge (1995a, b, 1998). If the soft model of HRM has validity, then there should be a clear relationship between the experience of soft HRM practice and positive employee attitudes (reflecting their needs are being met) and increasing employee commitment as well as improved productivity. Surprisingly, however, most of the research and reporting on HRM has ignored the views of employees. Legge (1998, p. 14) points out: when reading accounts of HRM practice in the UK and North America it is noticeable the extent to which the data are (literally) the voices of management. Guest (1999, p. 5) agrees, claiming that from its conception human resource management reflected a management agenda to the neglect of workers concerns. Some studies have considered employee reactions to HRM (Gibb, 2001; Appelbaum and Berg, 2000; Mabey et al., 1998) but Guest (2002, p. 335) is perceptive in his criticism that a feature of both advocates and critics of HRM is their neglect of direct evidence about the role and reactions of w orkers. Even the exceptions noted which gave employee reactions to HRM did not relate the employee experience of HRM practices to their reactions, and Guest (1997) argues for a research agenda that addresses this gap. This paper aims to contribute to this gap by fulfilling two major objectives. The first is to add to the limited number of studies which have tested to see if there is a relationship between HRM practice and positive employee attitudes. The second objective is to see if there is a significantly stronger relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes if employee perceptions of HRM practice are taken as the measure of HRM rather than employer perceptions, which has been the approach taken in general by previous researchers. HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes The soft model of HRM, as stated previously, suggests a relationship exists between the use of appropriate HRM practices and positive employee attitudes, and while theoretically these relationships remain poorly developed (Guest, 1997, 2001), a number of attitudes are nonetheless widely considered to be an outcome of soft HRM. For example, levels of job satisfaction, which is the affective perception that results from the achievement of desired outcomes (Harber et al., 1997), are found to be related to levels of HRM practice (Guest, 2002; Ting, 1997). High levels of employee commitment have also been found to be related to the use of appropriate HRM practice (Guest, 2002), and results from investing in HRM practices which benefit employees. For example, the provision of opportunities for training and skill development benefits the employee by equipping them with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to function autonomously and responsibly (Guest, 2002). Furthermore, it impro ves retention and enables them to cope with change in the work environment (Guest, 2002). Organisational fairness is the term used to describe the role of fairness as it directly relates to the workplace and is concerned with the ways employees determine if they have been treated fairly in their jobs and the ways in which those determinations influence other work-related variables (Moorman, 1991, p. 845). The HRM systems, policies, and procedures that operate in an organisation have been identified as impacting on an individuals perceptions of bias and fairness (Kurland and Egan, 1999; Greenberg, 1990). Studies show that where employees believe they are treated fairly in the workplace then they hold positive attitudes towards the organisation (Moorman, 1991), whereas HRM practices that are perceived to be unfair have been found to result in the employee feeling bewildered and betrayed and thus less committed (Schappe, 1996). As far as the relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes is concerned, the HRM practice dimension has been measured by collecting data from employers in one of the two ways using additive measures of HRM practice or self-reports about the extent to which particular HRM practices have been operationalised. A possible third approach would be to collect employee views about the operationalisation of HRM practice and then relate these reactions to their attitudes. These approaches are described below. The additive approach To date the most common approach for assessing the relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes is the additive approach. This involves employers indicating, using a yes/no response format, which HRM practices from a predetermined list currently operate in their organisations. The yes responses are then added together, and the assumption is that a higher sum indicates better HRM. Researchers using the additive approach usually correlate the total number of practices with the HRM outcomes being examined. Research exploring this relationship show a strong correlation between high numbers of HRM practice and positive employee attitudes (Fiorito, 2002; Guest, 1999; Guest and Conway, 2002; Appelbaum and Berg, 2000). While this approach is frequently used, it has attracted criticism (Fiorito, 2002; Guest, 1997, 2002). The additive approach is very simplistic. If an employer claims a practice is utilised there is no differentiation on the basis on how well, or to what extent the practice exists. For example, there could be token training and development, or a high level of commitment to a professional and effective training and development programme. Both examples are credited as a yes. This perceived weakness has led some researchers to use employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice. Employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice Guest and Peccei (1994) suggest that an improvement on the additive approach is to assess the extent or strength of practice using response bands such as those contained in Likert scales. Such an approach sees employers self-reporting, either on the extent they consider particular HRM practices to be effective (Delaney and Huselid, 1996), or alternatively on the extent to which HRM practices have been operationalised (i.e. to what extent practices are practised) in their workplace (Kane et al., 1999). Guest (2001, p. 1099) claims further research is needed to test the extent that employer and employee views on HRM practices coincide or differ. Specifically he suggests: There is now a need for more research comparing the responses of managers responsible for developing and overseeing HRM practice and employees to identify levels of agreement about the operation of practices such evidence as it is possible to glean from reports about levels of autonomy and consultation suggest that levels of agreement might be quite low. Support for this assertion has already been found. For example, Appelbaum and Bergs (2000) study comparing supervisor and employee perceptions about participative initiatives in US organisations found wide differences. Similarly, Kane et al. (1999) also found evidence of perceptual differences about HRM between different organisational stakeholders. While managers and employers are important stakeholders, so too are employees. This has led to a strong call for employee voice to be heard in HRM research (Guest, 2001). Employee self-reports about the strength of HRM practice Given the apparent perceptual differences between employers and employees perceptions of HRM then a third approach that could be used would see employees reports on the strength of operationalised HRM practice analysed in relation to their levels of work-related attitudes. There is now growing support for assessing HRM from the employee perspective emerging in the literature (Fiorito, 2002; Gibb, 2001; Guest, 2001), and given that where the concern is employee attitudes, then it is intuitively logical to relate that to employee rather than employer perceptions of the effectiveness of HRM policies and practices. Method The most common approach employed in studies assessing the relationship between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes is the survey (Cully et al., 2000; Guest, 1999), and this is the method of data collection used in this study. Four areas of HRM practice are examined good and safe working conditions, training and development, equal employment opportunities (EEO), and recruitment and selection. These areas of HRM have been selected because they have previously been identified as those likely to have the greatest impact on employee behaviour and attitudes (Guest, 2001). Three employee work-related attitudes are examined organisational commitment, job satisfaction and organisational fairness. These attitudes are generally considered to be desirable outcomes that result from the use of soft HRM (Meyer and Smith, 2000; Guest, 1997). Measurement Three approaches are used to measure HRM practice an additive measure completed by the employer, and two perceptual measures, one completed by employers and one completed by employees. All three measures relate to practices characterised in the literature as soft HRM or best practice HRM (Guest, 1999; Guest and Peccei, 1992; Johnson, 2000; Kane et al., 1999). They are employee-centred (i.e. they should produce benefits for employees when operationalised), and thus should impact on employee work-related attitudes. The additive measure, as stated, is the one most commonly used in research of this type. The additive measure used in this study asks employers to indicate, using a yes/no response format, which practices, from a comprehensive list of 80 practices (20 for each functional area covered), currently operate in their organisation (for example, Do you consult employees on their training needs?). A 20-item scale consisting of statements about HRM practice is used to assess the strength of HRM practices (five items for each of the four functional areas). Respondents are asked to indicate, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree, the extent they consider each practice occurs in their organisation, for example, EEO is promoted within this organisation (see Appendix 1 for a full list of statements). The same scale is used for both the employer and the employee groups, with the wording amended to reflect their different perspectives. Employer and employee assessments of HRM using this measure are, therefore, concerned with the judgements these groups make about the extent a particular HRM practice has been operationalised in the workplace. The ÃŽ ± coefficients for the five item measures relating to each of the four areas of HRM practice examined ranged from 0.83 to 0.88, suggesting high internal consistency exists (Browne, 2000). The s tatements about HRM practice on the perceptual measure closely reflect the ones used in the additive measure, but there is not a direct correspondence as that would have resulted in an excessively long measure. Three widely accepted measures of employee attitudes are used. Guest (1997) suggests organisational commitment should be measured using the standard measure developed by Mowday et al. (1979) the organisational commitment questionnaire (OCQ) because this scale captures the extent the employee identifies with the organisation, their desire to remain in the organisation and their willingness to exert effort on behalf of the organisation. An adapted and shortened version of the OCQ is used in this study to measure organisational commitment. Again, respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with each of the statements using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree (ÃŽ ±=0.8535). To measure job satisfaction, an adapted and shortened form of the Minnesota satisfaction questionnaire (Weiss et al., 1967) is used. The scale has six items and respondents are asked to indicate how satisfied they are with respect to each of the statements, using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=very dissatisfied to 5=very satisfied (ÃŽ ±=0.8664). While organisational fairness has two dimensions distributive and procedural this study is concerned only with procedural fairness and HRM policy and practice. The measure used is an adapted and shortened six-item version of the procedural justice scale used by Moorman (1991). This measures employees perceptions about the way formal procedures are carried out. Respondents are asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with each of the statements using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree (ÃŽ ±=0.9160). Employer and employee respondents were also asked to provide a range of demographic information. Analysis Data are analysed using SPSS, Version 11, using matched employer and aggregated employee data from 37 organisations. Correlations, using Pearsons r, are completed to explore the relationships between HRM practice and employee attitudes. The multiple linear regression technique is used to explore the differential impacts of the three approaches being tested. The sample In total, 234 organisations were originally contacted to participate in this study. A total of 40 organisations agreed to participate. The person most responsible for operationalising HRM practice was requested to complete the employer survey. Employee participation was voluntary, and the company fully endorsed their participation. The employer participant was requested to distribute the surveys to a representative sample of their workforce, in terms of occupational classification, ethnicity and gender. The targeted population of employees consisted of a total of 1,075 full- and part-time employees from the 40 participating organisations. A total of 626 employees responded (a response rate of 58 per cent) by completing the survey and returning it in the reply-paid envelope provided. In total, 37 usable matched sets of data were obtained. These 37 matched data sets comprise one completed employer questionnaire (total usable employer responses=37) and on average 15 employee questionnai res for each organisation (total usable employee responses=572). The number of actual employee responses received for each organisation varied with workplace size, and ranged from eight to 31. The demographics for the employer and employee samples are reported in Table I. New Zealand is a relatively small country and organisations employing in excess of 100 employees are usually classified as large, with those having between 50 and 99 employees classified as medium and organisations with under 50 employees as small. Three-fifths of the organisations participating in this study can be classified as large; one-fifth are medium, and the remaining five small. Of the 37 participating organisations, 19 are located in the private sector, 18 in the public sector. Around 35 per cent of the participating organisations are located in the service industry, with this group being evenly represented across both sectors. All other organisations are classified in the manufacturing, transport, retail, sales, education and health industries. Both the employer and the employee samples are reasonably a representative of organisations and the composition of the workforce in New Zealand, with the only notable exception being the employee sample is skewed in terms of occupation towards professional and semi-professional groups. Results The first analysis examines the relationship between additive measures of HRM practice and attitudes. The number of practices for each functional area varied considerably between organisations. Generally it is found that there are relatively high levels of practice for the areas of good and safe working conditions (M=15.95, SD=3.22), training and development (M=16.77, SD=2.76), along with recruitment and selection (M=16.52, SD=2.50). EEO is the one area, on the other hand, where a considerably lower mean level of practice exists (M=12.17, SD=5.96). According to prior research, high numbers of HRM practice are associated with positive employee attitudes (Guest, 1999). The results of the analysis for this relationship are reported in Table II. These findings differ from those previously reported. Using aggregated employee means, when levels of organisational commitment (M=3.72, SD=0.78), job satisfaction (M=3.72, SD=0.79) and organisational fairness (M=3.70, SD=0.86) are correlated with the combined additive measure of HRM practice, the results show that higher index scores in the number of HRM practices are not related to higher levels of organisational commitment (r=0.155, df=35, p=>0.05), job satisfaction (r=0.085, df=35, p=>0.05) or organisational fairness (r=0.146, df=35, p=>0.05). When this relationship is examined by functional area the correlations are also found not to be significant. Next the relationship between HRM practice and employee attitudes is examined using first employer self-reports, and second employee self-reports. These results are also reported in Table II. Statistically significant correlations are found to exist between the three attitudes measured and employee assessments of HRM practice for all the functional areas examined. However, no significant correlations are found between employer self-reports about the strength of HRM practice and employee attitudes. Data are then analysed using a regression technique, enabling the predictive qualities of each of the three approaches for assessing HRM practice to be explored. The model used for regressions is shown in Figure 1. All the measures of HRM practices were entered into a multiple regression[1] equation so that the character of the relationship between different measures of HRM practice and employee attitudes could be explored. It is found that nearly 51 per cent of the variance in organisational commitment (R 2=0.506, p The results of the regressions for the three measures of HRM practice, along with the three measures of employee attitudes, are presented in Table III. When the results of the regression for the three different measures of HRM practice are analysed it becomes evident that employee assessments have the greatest level of predictive power for attitudes. The regression reveals that numbers of HRM practice and employer assessments about the strength of HRM practice account for very little of the variance in attitudes. On the other hand, employee assessments of HRM practice appear to be very influential. Around 47 per cent of the variance in organisational commitment is explained by employee assessments of practice across the four HRM areas examined, with even larger and equally significant levels of variance being explained by this for job satisfaction and organisational fairness. If we exclude employee assessments related to EEO from the analysis, as it uniformly records the lowest ÃŽ ² across all three attitudes, the ÃŽ ² statistic for the remaining three functional areas of HRM practice implies that for every increment in employee assessments, levels of attitudes increase by between 0.17 and 0.34. The most statistically significant and consistent increments are in relation to employee assessments of good and safe working conditions, along with training and development, and these are found to apply to all aspects of work-related attitudes measured. Also worth noting is that, not surprisingly, assessments of recruitment and selection practices accounted for the largest variance in levels of organisational fairness. Discussion and concluding remarks Consistent with the work of Appelbaum and Berg (2000), Cully et al. (2000) and Guest (1999), this study also finds that a significant relationship exists between HRM practice and employee work-related attitudes. There is a strong statistically significant relationship when HRM is researched from the employee perspective. However, there was no significant relationship when HRM practice was measured using the additive approach or employer self-reports. These results have implications for current approaches used to assess the HRM practice-employee work-related attitudes relationship. This study demonstrates that by far the greatest correlate of employee attitudes are employees own assessments of the strength of HRM practice. Interestingly, higher levels of HRM practice, using an additive measure, are not found to be significantly associated with attitudes across any of the four functional areas of HRM examined. In fact, it is revealed that higher levels of HRM practice are in some cases related to decreased levels of job satisfaction and organisational fairness. For example, looking at the data for each functional HRM area, it is possible that higher levels of EEO practice may actually have no, or even a negative, effect on employee attitudes, with a strong inverse relationship being found for job satisfaction. Similarly, weak relationships are found when the relationship between employer assessments about operationalised practice and attitudes are examined. So while Guest and Peccei (1994) suggest these areas are important aspects of best practice HRM, this study finds them to be unrelated to attitudes when data are collected from employers. Put together these results suggest that if managers want to maximise employee attitudes, then implementing lots of practices is not sufficient. Practitioners need to be aware that the way they implement their HRM practices may be a more important determinant of employee attitudes than the number of practices they put in place. This builds on the research findings of other recent studies (Armstrong, 2001) that suggest it is possible that it is the quality of the practice that counts and not the quantity. It may be that practitioners may need to undertake regular attitudinal surveys to assess employee reactions to current HRM practice and assess these on a longitudinal basis to identify what is working and what is not. It was beyond the parameters of this study to examine the complex relationship between HRM practice, employee attitudes and business performance; it has, however, explored the narrower relationship between HRM practice (for the areas of good and safe working conditions, training and development, EEO and recruitment and selection) and three employee attitudes (organisational commitment, job satisfaction and organisational fairness). While regressions tell us nothing about the cause-effect nature of relationships between assessments of HRM practice and employee attitudes, these findings strongly suggest that incorporating the employees experience of HRM into analyses exploring the HRM practice, employee attitudes relationship will contribute further to our understanding about what aspects of HRM have the potential to yield the greatest performance outcomes. Arguably, more so, it would appear, than exploring this particular relationship solely using additive measures or employer self-re ports. This study has some limitations. This study found the standard deviations for assessments of HRM practice and work-related attitudes amongst employee groups within each organisation to be reasonably low, showing close agreement. Nonetheless the aggregated data has been developed from a relatively small sample, thus it may not be representative of the bulk of employee views. The evaluative nature of the questions used introduces the possibility of common method variance (i.e. an artificial correlation across questions due to mood or other contaminants (Fiorito, 2002)). Also, the HRM practices used in this study are supposedly best practice; however, there is still insufficient evidence available to confirm that they are indeed best practice. Finally, Gibb (2001) suggests effective HRM is about implementing best practice. While this may very well be true, it is clear from this study that simply introducing best practice, or even assessing the effectiveness of practice from the employers viewpoint, is no guarantee that they have been successfully implemented. If the organisations objective is to improve employees workplace attitudes, then possibly a better way to confirm which HRM practices are having the greatest impact, and hence are effective, is to correlate employees assessment of them with employees attitudes. Further studies in this area are now required. References Appelbaum, E., Berg, P. (2000), High performance work systems: giving workers a stake, in Blair, M., Kochan, T. (Eds),The New Relationship: Human Capital in the American Corporation, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Armstrong, G. (2001), The Change Agenda: Performance through People, The New People Management, CODE, London, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P.R., Mills, D.Q., Walton, R.E. (1984), Managing Human Assets, Free Press, New York, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Browne, J.H. (2000), Benchmarking HRM practices in healthy work organizations, American Business Review, Vol. 18 No.2, pp.54-61. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Cully, M., Woodland, S., OReilly, A., Dix, G. (2000), Britain at Work: As Depicted by the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey, Routledge, London, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Delaney, J.T., Huselid, M.A. (1996), The impact of human resource management practices on perceptions of organizational performance, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 39 No.4, pp.949-69. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Ehrlich, C.J. (1994), Creating an employer-employee relationship for the future, Human Resource Management, Vol. 33 No.3, pp.491-501. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Fiorito, J. (2002), Human resource management practices and worker desires for union representation, in Bennett, J., Kaufman, B. (Eds),The Future of Private Sector Unionism in the United States, M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] (1984), in Fombrun, C., Tichy, N., Devanna, M. (Eds),Strategic Human Resource Management, Wiley, New York, NY, . [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Gibb, S. (2001), The state of human resource management: evidence from employees view of HRM systems and staff, Employee Relations, Vol. 23 No.4, pp.318-36. [Manual request] [Infotrieve] Greenberg, J. (1990), Organisational justice: yesterday, today and tomorrow, Journal of Management, Vol. 16 pp.399-43