BOOKS FOR MANAGERS

rendered such assumptionsincreasingly questionable.

These changes are addressed inconsiderable detail in the 8chapters of the book. The first 5chapters concentrate on the majorthemes identified by the expertgroup: work and private power;work and membership of thelabourforce; work and time; workand collective organisation; workand public authorities. The other 3chapters consider genderdiscrimination, economicperformance and finally asummary statement concerningtheir analysis andrecommendations.

The major substantive discussionof the book concerns the labourmarket changes underway, andhow labour law in individualcountries or at the EU level isseeking to respond to these, andwhere, in the group’s views, thisresponse needs to go further. Thebook is not explicitly written formanagers; rather it is a reportprepared for policy makers.However, any human resourcemanagement professionals couldusefully gain from reading thisbook, particularly if some of theirrecommendations (which are wellset out in the final chapter) beginto be taken up in policy makingcircles. I certainly found much oftheir analysis persuasive, althoughthe extent to which some of thelabour market trends identified arefully and adequately documentedvia nationally representative datais somewhat limited in places.However, this sort of quibble asidethe group have performed avaluable service by raisingimportant questions which need tobe increasingly addressed.

Phillip B. BeaumontUniversity of Glasgow

PII: S0263-2373(01)00096-2

Essentials of HRM, 4thEdition, Tyson S & York A.2000.

This book provides a succinctaccount of organisational

European Management Journal Vol. 19, No. 6, pp. 682–684, December 2001 683

behaviour and human resourcemanagement. Key theories andpractice areas are discussed in adirect, no-nonsense mannerperhaps at the cost of a morecritical and less prescriptiveaccount. However, forpractitioners and students new tothe subject area, the book may beinvaluable in guiding themthrough a wide range of humanresource management issues,particularly in this revised andupdated format. Newdevelopments including popularissues such as emotionalintelligence, as well as legislativechanges (e.g. Data Protection Act1998), are covered. In addition,chapters on the key practice areashave been updated with keyempirical data such as that fromthe Workplace Employee RelationsSurvey (WERS) (1998).

The book is made up of 22chapters split into 6 sectionscovering a spectrum of areas frommotivation through to humanresource strategy. Each of the sixsections is preceded by a list ofsuggestions for further reading,which direct the student and tutorto a broader range of literature.Each chapter ends with a selectionof key questions, which may beuseful for the tutor in directingteaching and learning. In additionto a number of illustrativediagrams and tables, the bookprovides some case studyexamples.

Overall, students studyingprofessional qualifications andgeneral business or social sciencedegrees are likely to find the bookof some value.

Carol BoydUniversity of Glasgow

PII: S0263-2373(01)00097-4

The International Handbookof Organizational Cultureand Climate, C.L. Cooper, S.Cartwright and P.C. Early(eds). Wiley, Chichester. 2000.

This is an expensive handbookpriced at £95. The book is divided

into six sections on organizationalculture – conceptual issues,assessment and research methods,implications for individuals andorganizations, change, theinternational dimension and thefuture of organizational cultures.A different person edits eachsection and 49 different authorsmainly from Europe and the US,contribute each of the 27 chapters.The handbook aims to be adefinitive work in the area oforganizational culture and climateto provide new directions for thefuture.

The book contents cover a widespectrum of ways of looking atculture. Culture is a complexconstruct. In the first section, Jonesand Goffee look at culture from asociological perspectivedifferentiating organizationalcultures by looking at theirdistinctive ‘social architectures’,their sociability and solidarity. Theimportance of time inorganizational culture isexamined – the norms, theartefacts and the assumptionsabout time, particularly in thelight of time horizons of ‘dot com’companies and other organizationsaffected by technology. Giddens’Structuration Theory is used tolook at how multiculturallydiverse groups of employees relateto the nature of organizationalculture.

In the second section PaulSparrow considers somequantitative approaches todiagnosing high performanceorganizational cultures. A modelof organizational features that adiagnostic of high performanceculture needs to tap is developed.Roy Payne reviews differentquantitative traditions that havebeen used to make assessments ofclimate and culture. Payne arguesthat features such as pervasivenessand psychological intensity ofcultures have been overlooked inculture and climate research and ahypothetical Cultural IntensityQuestionnaire is developed. Aclimate approach can be used asan indicator of culture, as adiagnostic approach tounderstanding individualorganizations and monitoringchange within them.