British Journal of Management

... and acquisitions, as they repre-sent sudden and major change, generate employee uncertainty, particularly ... acts of sabotage, increased staff turnover and absenteeism rates and concomitantstress (Sinetar, 1981 ... the effects of which are likely to have an adverse impact not only ...

Managers have often heard it said that “people are your most important resource”. Despite the ubiquity of this truism, examining recent issues of many of the key management journals reveals that a great deal of researcher and practitioner attention currently focuses on subjects such as firm-level innovation, strategy, knowledge management, corporate reputation, and organisational learning, without necessarily bringing in the ‘human factor’ stressed by organisational psychology. The aim in putting together this thematic issue, Individual, group, leader, and company performance: Responses to intra- and interpersonal dynamics, was to present a collection of papers that underscore the importance of psychological processes in determining human and ultimately organisational performance.

In recent years the traditional method of distributing profits on the basis of seniority in professional firms has come under attack because of its poor incentive properties. Using data on large law firms, this paper examines the extent to which new forms of profit-sharing based on individual performance have been introduced and whether these are associated with the more systematic control of the core of professional staff and more ‘business-like’ methods of managing, as has been argued in the American literature. The results suggest profit-sharing innovations are limited in scope and only loosely associated with wider changes in partnership management. Explanations for the persistence of traditional methods of sharing are developed from the data and it is argued that existing accounts present an over-rational model of change in which too much emphasis has been placed on the importance of individual incentives to achieve performance. Profit-sharing policies are driven by concerns to sustain cooperation and professional values about the appropriate way to distribute rewards.