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This paper offers a new perspective on international management by examining the role of culture and management development in creating international expertise, a sense of identity and realizing organizational control. A critical analysis of the culture transmission and management development philosophy and practice of a UK-based transnational reveals how the transmission of culture accomplishes management development objectives, while management development itself serves as a vehicle for the transmission of the desired corporate values. This recursiveness is sustained by a corporate ideology that urges the creation of integrative values and, in turn, is legitimized by the quest for favorable functional and symbolic consequences.

Reveals that the public sector in Africa is increasingly coming under pressure to justify its very existence through calls for financial accountability, operational efficiency, improvements in product and service quality, and so forth. Takes the view that any attempt to achieve meaningful reform in public sector management will have to consider seriously the question of skill development and the management of expertise. Ultimately, the effectiveness of the public sector product and service delivery will depend not only on economic and financial parameters but also on the availability of sufficiently skilled personnel. Focuses, therefore, on skill management in the public sector and, in particular, on the creation of competences which are based on the organization's core strategic activities. Introduces recent developments in the management of organizations to the public sector debate.

This paper posits an interpretivist approach to the study of human resource management (HRM) by examining how organizational members construct meanings of HRM in everyday life through ritualistic behavior and the use of language. Concepts from language philosophy and socio-anthropology are brought together to develop an analytical premise upon which we can begin to appreciate the seemingly complex issues associated with expressive and ritualistic behavior in organizations. Propositions are posited and subsequently examined through an analysis of statements about teamwork in a Kenyan firm. A thematic analysis reveals that teamwork is a totemic device created by organizational members in everyday life. Through shifts in language games ranging from rhetoric to plain speaking, management uses the totem of teamwork to create and legitimize the desired pattern of power and social relations.

Pit sense is a form of knowledge constituted by tunnellers as a way to navigate and assess risk. We discuss how this form of tacit knowledge that was situated in everyday practices came under threat when management introduced more bureaucratic procedures rationalized on the basis of commercial outcomes and health and safety. Yet, while managers were prone to vilify pit sense even though they had grown up with it earlier in their career, they were prepared to turn a blind eye to it as long as it delivered 'yardage'. We examine the implications of this managerial ambivalence towards pit sense, and demonstrate how, rather than seeking to codify tacit knowledge in order to ensure its diffusion as the literature proposes, the bureaucratization of procedures and work practices not only challenged the legitimacy of pit sense, but also cast pit sense and formalized procedures into an uneasy alliance.