Sunday, May 18, 2003		Books

Handling conflict at work
P. K. Vasudeva

Organisational Commitment and Conflict: Studies in Healthy Organisational Processes.
by Omer Bin Sayeed, Sage Publications New Delhi.
Pages 335. Rs 295.

ORGANISATIONAL commitment and conflict management strategies have become important for the smooth running of a corporate. The author maintains that the hallmark of a healthy and truly proactive organisation is the level of the employees’ commitment to the organisation and their ability to handle conflict situations.

The author begins with a critical appraisal of key concepts like employee alienation, organisational identification and occupational commitment. He goes on to establish links between these constructs and other concepts such as employee performance, effectiveness, productivity, and satisfaction and turnover, absenteeism, organisational growth and development. The theoretical strength of these constructs is then statistically tested and verified through factor analysis, and by using an organisational commitment scale especially developed for this study. Finally, the relationships between organisational commitment, organisational health and conflict management are discussed.

The main strength of the study lies in the fact that it integrates Indian and western approaches in a common framework encompassing the defining attributes and fundamental issues associated with organisational commitment and conflict.

This volume will be of great importance for all those who are working and studying human resource management and carrying out research on different aspects of HRM, especially organisational behaviour and conflict management.

Understanding Business Systems in Developing Countries
edited by Gurli Jakobsen and Jens Erik Torp, Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages 260. Rs 225.

The highlight of this volume is the concept of a ‘business system’ as defined by Richard Whitley and his associates. This approach assumes that there are some features of economic systems which are characteristic of and peculiar to a given country and/region. Rather than dwelling on the general features of economic systems across countries, this approach studies how the constitution of firms differs in different market contexts.

The volume elaborates on this approach by drawing on insights from other theoretical approaches and by reporting results of studied conducted on the business systems of Malaysia, South Korea, India, Indonesia and Ghana. It covers a wide range of issues like new ways of doing business in India and critical assessment of studying business systems through case studies.

This volume is useful for those interested in international economics and in conducting research on the topic. It is also useful for those business enterprises, including MNCs, which want to be more competitive in the world of business.