Lynda Gratton

Most businesses face the choice of either competing on the 'low road' of cost, or the 'high road' of innovation and value. Much the same goes for national economies and the UK is no exception. But how do businesses - and the people who manage them - go beyond the policy prescription and the easy exhortation to make that shift, to manage change and go well beyond business as usual? This ground-breaking book - the combined insight of some of the best minds in management, grouped together in the Advanced Institute of Management Research - does just that. It presents a clear and crisp analysis of the context and the challenge; and offers managers a range of ideas on how to develop the competences, practices and values that can make a difference. It is essential reading for policy makers, analysts, academics, and managers to be who want to make a different future.

Most businesses face the choice of either competing on the 'low road' of cost, or the 'high road' of innovation and value. Much the same goes for national economies and the UK is no exception. But how do businesses - and the people who manage them - go beyond the policy prescription and the easy exhortation to make that shift, to manage change and go well beyond business as usual? This ground-breaking book - the combined insight of some of the best minds in management, grouped together in the Advanced Institute of Management Research - does just that. It presents a clear and crisp analysis of the context and the challenge; and offers managers a range of ideas on how to develop the competences, practices and values that can make a difference. It is essential reading for policy makers, analysts, academics, and managers to be who want to make a different future.

Life is tough in organizations, both for managers and the managed. Negotiating the rapids of restructuring, downsizing, and refocusing the core business brings with it huge upheavals in job security, the smashing of traditional career structures, and a constant imperative for employees to update their skills while working in an environment of great uncertainty. Based on close collaboration with a number of high profile organizations - BT, Citibank, Glaxo Wellcome, Hewlett Packard, Kraft Jacobs, Suchard, Lloyds-TSB Group, the NHS, and WH Smith - this book sheds light on the organizational responses to large scale changes and details the changing demands made of employees in the process. This book goes beyond fashionable management rhetoric to uncover the reality of human resource management. The team of top researchers examines: the organizational strategies pursued in the face of fast-changing circumstances the links between what is intended and what is realised the way in which HR interventions impact on the individual the influence which HR strategies have on everyday management behaviour This book is a key source of new information for both managers and students about the current state of human resource management and its possible future direction.