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The purpose of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the key antecedents of leave intention demonstrated by nurses employed in UK National Health Service (NHS).

Survey assessment of a sample of 433 nurses employed within the NHS was undertaken, potential relationships relating to both affective commitment and leave intention and work-place experiences assessed through leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived organisational support (POS) have been evaluated quantitatively, using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equations modelling (SEM).

The study indicates that both LMX and POS act as direct antecedents to nurses’ leave intention. Additionally, both LMX and POS in combination, significantly effect employees’ affective commitment, the latter further impacting on employee leave intention. This would suggest that both LMX and POS have a significant role to play in employee leave intention that is partially mediated by affective commitment, further analysis confirming this to be the case.

The sample of nurses is large in absolute terms, permitting the CFA/SEM analysis undertaken, although the data represented only two NHS trusts, hence generalisation across the NHS should be done so cautiously. Various other drivers of leave intention, personal and organisational, have not been assessed here.

The implications of these results are that to safeguard nurse retention, appropriate line manager engagement is crucial, but this requires organisational support that is recognised by the employees, especially to enhance their levels of affective commitment.

This is given by providing NHS-based assessment of the role of both POS and LMX in the realisation of both affective commitment and desire to remain with their current organisations amongst members of the UK nursing profession.

This paper aims to analyse individual experiences of learning evaluation in UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and identify areas for improvement as part of an HEFCE LGM funded project.

Eight focus groups were included in two universities with staff in similar roles. After transcription, the data were analysed using template analysis to identify and compare key themes from across both universities.

The context of UK higher education is clearly important due to the diverse job roles and on-going sectoral changes. Three key themes emerged; first was a lack of clarity from the learners on learning evaluation. The second key theme centres on the format, method and timing of capturing evaluation data and the perception that a “one size fits all” approach is not appropriate. The third finding suggests that line managers do not currently fulfil their critical roles in the process.

Small number of research participants and a focus on two universities. In addition, participants were relying on their memories of past evaluation experiences.

Ensuring learners understand reasons for evaluating their learning is important. HEIs should utilise a more diverse range of tools at the design stage to collect evaluation data. All stakeholder roles need to be clarified, and line managers require additional support.

First, we address a gap in the existing sector-specific literature identified by Burgoyne et al. (2009) who contend that there is a lack of research in this area. Second, we contribute to the development of research in the journal by analysing evaluation from the perspective of the participants, and third, we offer recommendations for practice.

Drawing upon an eight-year-long study of two of the global accounting firms, this chapter suggests that a key aspect of professionalism is networking. Networking within these firms is crucial to achieving and demonstrating professional competence and to career advancement. It involves sophisticated forms of social practice and permeates a range of organizational processes. It is argued that networking also implies and potentially creates and regulates a particular kind of identity, namely that of the networked self or, more specifically, the networked professional.

This paper seeks to explore the attitudes of lesbian mothers towards same‐sex marriage, focusing in particular on how they perceive the relationship between marriage and children's best interests.

The paper draws on 36 semi‐structured interviews with lesbian mothers living in British Columbia and Alberta, comparing their views on marriage and children's best interests with those articulated by lesbian and gay litigants during the Canadian same‐sex marriage campaign.

It was found that few of the mothers made any positive link between having married parents and children's best interests. Only a quarter of the couples had married or intended to marry.

Whether the views expressed in this research will be embraced by the next generation of lesbian mothers is difficult to predict. Prospective lesbian mothers will be able to marry before having children, will likely experience greater societal pressure to marry, and may have weaker ties to feminist politics. The issue should be revisited to see whether the views expressed in the research resonate with the next generation of mothers.

Law reform directed at same‐sex families should not presume that lesbians perceive there to be any positive relationship between marriage and children's best interests.

The paper provides empirical data on how lesbian mothers understand the relationship, if any, between having married parents and children's best interests. It challenges the universality of the very traditional views expressed in the same‐sex marriage litigation, and argues that amongst the wider lesbian mothering community attitudes towards the relationship between marriage and parenting are considerably more diverse.

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the findings of research into the different means of motivating knowledge workers to participate in and contribute to knowledge exchange and creation.

A survey was conducted among more than a quarter of the 2,500+ strong lawyer multinational law firm with 25+ offices in 15+ countries and analysed to provide insight into the differences on motivation and value perception across the cultural dividing lines. The results were analysed at regional level as well as organisational/generation level and analysed by statistical means and descriptive statistics. The key outcomes were analysed against literature to provide an in‐depth understanding on how to foster knowledge sharing.

Respondents showed distinct reactions towards the means to motivate them to share knowledge. Career prospects, authority, provision of charge codes, recognition among peers or one‐time incentives have a very diverse impact around the world.

This survey itself was limited to one law firm. Thus, even though this firm is among the largest three firms in the world and considered a leader in knowledge management, this research is therefore not representative of the entire professional service sector or the law firm sector.

The results have been used within the case study organisation to improve the efficiency in motivating lawyers to share knowledge and lessons can be drawn for comparable organisations operating on a global scale.

Prior to this paper there has been little research into the motivation of global knowledge workers within the professional service environment.

The purpose of the article is to show, through a case study, that the reasons motivating members and non‐members of a quality circle to improve quality are not limited to those formulated in the literature. We thereby concur with Fiona Wilson who, in an article published in a recent issue of Employee Relations, showed that the psychological reward is not enough. In the workshops under study, members and non‐members obtained better working conditions – for example lay‐offs have stopped, transfer of employees from one workshop to another or from one job station to another is a thing of the past – by improving quality through the direct impact that their action was having on the organisation′s position in the market and, consequently, on the increase of production volumes.

In elite professional firms, minorities are actively recruited but struggle to move upward. The authors argue that initiatives aimed at general skill development can have unintended consequences for firm diversity. Specifically, the authors contend that approaches that win partner support through motivational significance and interpretive clarity provide a more effective avenue to skill development for minorities, who have less access than White peers to informal developmental opportunities. The authors also argue that a longer “partnership track,” which imposes a time limit on skill development, will benefit minority professionals. Using data on 601 offices of large US law firms in 1996 and 2005, the authors investigate the effects of five developmental initiatives and partnership track length on the representation of African-Americans, Latinxs, and Asian-Americans among partners. Observed effects are consistent with expectations, but patterns vary across racial-ethnic groups.