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This paper examines the relationships between firm size and employees' experience of work stress. We used a matched employer-employee dataset (Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2011) that comprises of 7182 employees from 1210 private organizations in the United Kingdom. Initially, we find that employees in small and medium-sized enterprises experience lower level of overall job stress than those in large enterprises, although the effect disappears when we control for individual and organizational characteristics in the model. We also find that quantitative work overload, job insecurity and poor promotion opportunities, good work relationships and poor communication are strongly associated with job stress in the small and medium-sized enterprises, whereas qualitative work overload, poor job autonomy and employee engagements are more related with larger enterprises. Hence, our estimates show that the association and magnitude of estimated effects differ significantly by enterprise size. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the state of the field of the sub-disciplines within UK management research, based upon the submissions of 94 UK higher education institutions to the Business and Management Studies Panel in the UK's 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It offers observations on the UK model of the assessment of quality in, and funding of, research conducted in publicly funded higher education institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marks & Spencer (M&S) was one of the world's great retailers, enjoying legendary and iconic status, being often held up as one of the best managed and admired businesses in the world. Its ‘fall from grace’ has been spectacular and dramatic and the company is currently fighting for its life. Based on extensive in-depth interviews with company managers and utilizing a case-study approach, this paper provides an exploratory study into failure at M&S and presents this in the context of the wider literature on organizational and managerial failure. It concludes that whilst external factors in the various trading environments affected the business, there were internal aspects of the crisis which exacerbated the situation and the problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy PointsNudges steer people toward certain options but also allow them to go their own way. "Dark nudges" aim to change consumer behavior against their best interests. "Sludge" uses cognitive biases to make behavior change more difficult.We have identified dark nudges and sludge in alcohol industry corporate social responsibility (CSR) materials. These undermine the information on alcohol harms that they disseminate, and may normalize or encourage alcohol consumption.Policymakers and practitioners should be aware of how dark nudges and sludge are used by the alcohol industry to promote misinformation about alcohol harms to the public. Context: "Nudges" and other behavioral economic approaches exploit common cognitive biases (systematic errors in thought processes) in order to influence behavior and decision‐making. Nudges that encourage the consumption of harmful products (for example, by exploiting gamblers' cognitive biases) have been termed "dark nudges." The term "sludge" has also been used to describe strategies that utilize cognitive biases to make behavior change harder. This study aimed to identify whether dark nudges and sludge are used by alcohol industry (AI)–funded corporate social responsibility (CSR) organizations, and, if so, to determine how they align with existing nudge conceptual frameworks. This information would aid their identification and mitigation by policymakers, researchers, and civil society. Methods: We systematically searched websites and materials of AI CSR organizations (e.g., IARD, Drinkaware, Drinkwise, Éduc'alcool); examples were coded by independent raters and categorized for further analysis. Findings: Dark nudges appear to be used in AI communications about "responsible drinking." The approaches include social norming (telling consumers that "most people" are drinking) and priming drinkers by offering verbal and pictorial cues to drink, while simultaneously appearing to warn about alcohol harms. Sludge, such as the use of particular fonts, colors, and design layouts, appears to use cognitive biases to make health‐related information about the harms of alcohol difficult to access, and enhances exposure to misinformation. Nudge‐type mechanisms also underlie AI mixed messages, in particular alternative causation arguments, which propose nonalcohol causes of alcohol harms. Conclusions: Alcohol industry CSR bodies use dark nudges and sludge, which utilize consumers' cognitive biases to promote mixed messages about alcohol harms and to undermine scientific evidence. Policymakers, practitioners, and the public need to be aware of how such techniques are used to nudge consumers toward industry misinformation. The revised typology presented in this article may help with the identification and further analysis of dark nudges and sludge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of human resource management (HRM) have been conducted within the context of the single employing organization, which is strange given the recent growth in multi-employer networks. In this study, the authors examine whether alignment, integration, and consistency-concepts central to or implicit in most analyses of HRM-has meaning and relevance in the multi-employer context. They focus specifically on networks in which collaboration is intended to deliver high levels of product quality or customer service, precisely where one might expect employers would be attracted to 'strong' HRM systems. Data was collected via interviews and document analysis in four networks, spanning both the public and private sectors in the United Kingdom. Despite a set of potentially favorable conditions within these networks to promote alignment, integration, and consistency, implementation was impeded by other equally powerful forces, including differences in employer goals within networks, especially between public and private sector organizations; intraorganizational tensions within internal labor markets for organizations involved in networks; using divergent HR policies between organizations within multi-employer networks; and contradictions between the pursuit of 'among employee' or 'temporal' consistency for workers. Rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all solution for these problems, it is argued that detailed analysis of each network is necessary. ©2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report examines the relevance gap in management research. Its focus is the nature of knowledge created by research at the interface between business and academia in the context of major changes likely to affect the nature of demand for such knowledge. Management research has been accused of a lack of relevance to managerial practice and of too narrow a discipline base. The report examines the conditions giving rise to this criticism, in the UK and elsewhere, and identifies an important strategic need to increase the stakeholding of users in various aspects of the research and knowledge creation and dissemination process. The report concludes with recommendations concerning new forms of research partnership and research training that will address the relevance gap. However, bridging this gap does not only require changes in the academic mind-set. Managers and firms too need to rethink their involvement in the research process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]