Managers play a significant role in the adoption, modification, and even discontinuation of pay for performance. However, there has been no existing literature on the contributions of line managers to pay for performance practices in the Chinese context. This paper explores line managers' perception of pay for performance and the key supports and barriers to their involvement in pay for performance design and implementation. A multi-case study approach was conducted in 12 non-public sector knowledge intensive firms, aligned with semi-structured interviews with HR and line managers. The findings show that project intensification could be an important factor that impacted on line managers' understanding and responsibility in pay for performance.

What are the similarities between a defined benefit pension plan and a football team? On the face of it there may not seem to be many. After all, the football world is populated by overpaid, badly behaved, play acting prima donnas. A far cry from the sober and serious world of defined benefit pensions, where trustees devote huge amounts of their time in the interests of others, for little of no financial reward. However, Professor Andrew Clare draws some interesting analogies between the two.

The impact of trade unions on discrimination and labour market inequality has been a matter of public concern for many years. Recently, however, observers have suggested that unions have increasingly sought to prioritise equality matters. There is a growing expectation, for example, that they will actively bargain over equality and encourage employers to adopt equality practices in order to protect workers from discrimination. Hence, unions may now have a central role to play in advancing the equality agenda and ultimately helping promote a more inclusive society. This article provides an empirical assessment of the relationship between unionisation and the adoption of equal opportunities policies and practices in British workplaces, using data from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey.

Private equity firms are accused of increasing the short-term performance of buyouts by reducing investments in human capital. To explore this issue, this paper presents findings from the first representative pan-European survey of managers' perceptions of the impact of private equity on management practices in buyouts. Managers report that private equity investment results in an overall increase in high performance work practices (HPWPs), and the increase is greater where private equity firms anticipate a late exit. Anglo-American private equity buyouts are just as likely to introduce new HPWPs as non-Anglo-American private equity backed buyouts, and also extend financial incentives to cover a greater proportion of employees.