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This paper reviews the literature on the implementation of quality programs in the Irish hotel industry. Through a review of the literature in service quality, empowerment, and strategy implementation, key issues that affect the achievement of quality are identified. Many quality programs fail from lack of commitment on the part of senior management, middle management, and front‐line employees. Quality management is focused on involvement, communication, and teamwork; but studies show that the management of quality in contemporary hospitality organisations is lacking in these dimensions. The integrative nature of the European Foundation for Quality Management model for business excellence might provide a useful framework for quality implementation in Irish hotels, and it is concluded that further research should be conducted to consider the potential of such frameworks in an Irish context.

Over the past decade, the accountability of nonprofit organizations has been a concern. Our paper reports one form of accountability, the "A-133" or "single" audit, which is required for nonprofits receiving substantial federal funding. We report on 11,841 audits from 1997 to 1999. Overall, compliance appears to be quite high. Our study indicates that smaller nonprofits, those that are new to government grants, and those with prior audit findings have a significantly higher rate of adverse audit findings. One policy implication of our work might be to provide federal funding specifically for Single Audit Act compliance to these nonprofits.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of industrial relations (IR), and IR conflict in the Irish healthcare sector.

The paper is based on a thematic analysis of Labour Court cases concerning hospitals over a ten‐year period.

The findings of the paper indicate that the nature of IR conflict is changing in healthcare. The paper suggests that alternative manifestations of IR conflict evident in the Irish healthcare sector include: absenteeism as a form of temporary exit; and resistance. The key groups in the sector are discussed in the context of their contrasting disputes. The themes which characterise negotiations are identified as precedent, procedure and partnership.

The research was conducted in the healthcare sector, and thus its transferability is limited. Caution is also required as the research pertains to one national setting, which despite sharing some structural similarities with other health and IR systems, is a unique context. The paper highlights the importance of recognising IR conflict in its various forms. It is further suggested that managing the process of IR conflict may be significant in furthering change agendas.

The value of the paper centres on the investigation of alternative manifestations of IR conflict in the healthcare sector.

International human resource management (IHRM) research is becoming an increasingly important topic in light of the relentless pace of globalisation. Three strands of research contribute to our understanding of IHRM, the most dominant being research on human resource management in multinational companies. This paper categorises the literature in the field, highlighting disciplinary introspection within and between each strand. Argues that, by neglecting to embrace the contributions of research from cross‐cultural management and comparative human resource management, the field lacks the necessary conceptual and methodological tools to advance. Concludes by suggesting areas where collaboration and cross‐fertilisation between disciplines can occur before embarking on the integrative process of theory building.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the role of the HR function in the management of professional and non‐professional staff in the acute hospital sector.

A qualitative approach was adopted. Empirical data from three hospital case studies is utilised to explore the role of the hospital HR function. Cases were compiled from 45 interviews, observation and secondary data analysis.

The paper finds that in two of the three cases the human resource (HR) function predominantly provides services to non‐professional workforce groups. However, the effective and strategic management of professionals is undertaken in the third case, without a professional HR function.

The findings of this paper require some caution in extrapolation, being based on research in one national context. The authors suggest the delivery of service as a useful lens to explore the enacted practice of HRM in hospitals.

The paper draws attention to a significant deficit in the role of the HR function in managing core professional staff.

The paper applies an existing conceptual framework to explore the role of the HR function in hospitals. It identifies a significant deficit in the management of core professional staff. On this basis the paper suggests alternative research methodologies to investigate the management of all hospital staff.

This paper reviews the literature on the implementation of quality programs in the Irish hotel industry. Through a review of the literature in service quality, empowerment, and strategy implementation, key issues that affect the achievement of quality are identified. Many quality programs fail from lack of commitment on the part of senior management, middle management, and front‐line employees. Quality management is focused on involvement, communication, and teamwork; but studies show that the management of quality in contemporary hospitality organisations is lacking in these dimensions. The integrative nature of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model for business excellence might provide a useful framework for quality implementation in Irish hotels, and it is concluded that further research should be conducted to consider the potential of such frameworks in an Irish context.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate Greenberg's perspective on the connection between injustice and stress in order to clarify the role of organisational justice, burnout and organisational commitment in the understanding of absenteeism.

The study was carried out among 457 workers of a large healthcare establishment in the Canadian public healthcare sector. The model was tested using structural equation methods.

The results reveal that procedural and interactional justices have an indirect effect on exhaustion through distributive injustice. Moreover, it was found that distributive injustice is indirectly linked to short‐term absences through exhaustion. By contrast, the relationship between distributive injustice and long‐term absence can be explained by two mediating variables, namely, exhaustion and psychosomatic complaints.

In spite of the non‐longitudinal nature of this study, the results suggest that the stress model and the medical model best explain the relationship between organisational injustice and absenteeism, while the withdrawal model via organisational commitment is not associated in this study with absenteeism.

Healthcare managers should consider the possibility of better involving employees in the decision‐making process in order to increase their perception of procedural and interactional justice, and indirectly reduce exhaustion and absenteeism through a greater perception of distributive justice.

For the healthcare sector, the need to reduce absenteeism is particularly urgent because of budget restrictions and the shortage of labour around the world.

This is one of the first studies to provide a complete model that analyses the stress process in terms of how organisational justice affects short‐ and long‐term absences, in a bid to understand the specific process and factors that lead to shorter and longer episodes of absence.

While there has been substantial discussion about the potential for clinical leadership in improving quality and safety in healthcare, there has been little robust study. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a qualitative study with clinicians and clinician managers to gather opinions on the appropriate content of an educational initiative being planned to improve clinical leadership in quality and safety among medical, nursing and allied health professionals working in primary, community and secondary care.

In total, 28 clinicians and clinician managers throughout the state of Victoria, Australia, participated in focus groups to provide advice on the development of a clinical leadership program in quality and safety. An inductive, thematic analysis was completed to enable the themes to emerge from the data.

Overwhelmingly the participants conceptualised clinical leadership in relation to organisational factors. Only four individual factors, comprising emotional intelligence, resilience, self‐awareness and understanding of other clinical disciplines, were identified as being important for clinical leaders. Conversely seven organisational factors, comprising role clarity and accountability, security and sustainability for clinical leaders, selective recruitment into clinical leadership positions, teamwork and decentralised decision making, training, information sharing, and transformational leadership, were seen as essential, but the participants indicated they were rarely addressed. The human resource management literature includes these seven components, with contingent reward, reduced status distinctions and measurement of management practices, as the essential organisational underpinnings of high performance work systems.

The results of this study propose that clinical leadership is an organisational property, suggesting that capability frameworks and educational programs for clinical leadership need a broader organisation focus.

The paper makes clear that clinical leadership was not perceived to be about vesting leadership skills in individuals, but about ensuring health care organisations were equipped to conceptualise and support a model of distributive leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to examine National Health Service (NHS) employee perspectives of how high performance human resource (HR) practices contribute to their performance.

The paper draws on an extensive qualitative study of the NHS. A novel two‐part method was used; the first part used focus group data from managers to identify high‐performance HR practices specific to the NHS. Employees then conducted a card‐sort exercise where they were asked how or whether the practices related to each other and how each practice affected their work.

In total, 11 high performance HR practices relevant to the NHS were identified. Also identified were four reactions to a range of HR practices, which the authors developed into a typology according to anticipated beneficiaries (personal gain, organisation gain, both gain and no‐one gains). Employees were able to form their own patterns (mental models) of performance contribution for a range of HR practices (60 interviewees produced 91 groupings). These groupings indicated three bundles particular to the NHS (professional development, employee contribution and NHS deal).

These mental models indicate employee perceptions about how health services are organised and delivered in the NHS and illustrate the extant mental models of health care workers. As health services are rearranged and financial pressures begin to bite, these mental models will affect employee reactions to changes both positively and negatively.

The novel method allows for identification of mental models that explain how NHS workers understand service delivery. It also delineates the complex and varied relationships between HR practices and individual performance.