 The 1990s witnessed significant changes in organizational design philosophy. Unique to the 1990s were prescriptions for restructuring involving delayering (the planned vertical compression of managerial levels of hierarchy) (Keuning and Opheij, 1994;Peters, 1992). What did this mean in practice? The current understanding of delayering can be encapsulated in a 'delayering thesis'. However, outside of the USA and UK there has been limited study and measurement of the extent and effects of delayering. This paper delineates trends in delayering based on surveys of 2964 organizations across three countries and assesses the effects in terms of management structures, workloads, productivity, and the notion of 'survivor syndrome'. The extent of a subsequent phase of 'relayering' is examined. It concludes that delayering has been widespread as an organizational strategy; that there are few signs of a delayering-relayering cycle, but the effects in relation to managers was a collapse of commitment in Australia and South Africa. However, there were significant differences in New Zealand. A downsizing/delayering model is discussed.

While there is extensive management and academic literature on the topic area of high performance management internationally, research on high performance management practices in the Aus

This article aims to develop a model for managing change toward environmental sustainability (ES) within small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by investigating the main ES change management actions evident from the ES journeys of SME ES champions. Using in-depth face-to-face interviews, the article draws from the ES change management experiences of a sample of 12 ES champions from the SME sector, as well as secondary organization–specific data. A multicase design was adopted to develop the proposed model. A thematic content analysis identified 10 main change management actions along with a number of associated actions. The findings provide an empirically developed ES change management model and practical managerial ES change management guidelines to SMEs embarking on an ES journey.

This study fills the gaps in existing research on HRM in Australian SMEs by considering a wide range of standard human resource (HR) practices and some industrial relations practices. The small business sector has been regarded as the natural home for 'bleak house' human resource management practices typified by low uptake of human resource practices, little or no collective representation of employees and little or no employee participation. The results, reporting a national study (n = 1435) on human resource management practices in Australian SMEs, reveal a moderate take-up of human resource management practices. These findings by themselves do not support what Storey has called the 'bleak house' scenario in Australian SMEs. However, there are factors that may have a negative impact on the relative positive picture portrayed in this study, when the impact of organisational size, the presence of a HR manager and prevalence of a strategic plan on the uptake of HR practices in SMEs are considered, together with low unionisation, low employee participation and a low incidence of collective practices.

Prior research on high performance management practices (HPMP) has primarily examined the relationship between HPMP and firm performance in the context of large organisations. However, this study examines the relationship between HPMP and Sustainability outcomes (firm performance) in small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) and also within a specific cultural background which is under researched. This research study is related to both theory and practice. The main relevance lies in analyzing the relationship between HPMP and sustainability outcomes in SMEs. This research study relates to theory by applying the resource-based view and configurational approaches used in this study. The study employed a quantitative methodology. Data were collected through a self-administered survey questionnaire. The questionnaire was adopted from a previous validated survey measuring HPMP in Australian SMEs. The target population consisted of SMEs operating in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. Stratified random sampling was applied to collect data from two stratums i.e. manufacturing and service-sector SMEs. A total of 703 firms were selected, contacted by phone, and invited to participate in this survey. Of these firms, 357 SMEs (50.78 percent response rate) accepted the invitation to fill out the survey questionnaire. Most of the respondents who agreed requested that the researcher to visit their organizations personally. The data were analyzed by using Structural Equation Modeling techniques including exploratory factor analysis. The findings indicate a positive significant relationship between HPMP and sustainability outcomes. The link between these HPMP and the sustainability of SMEs demonstrates the value and importance of HPMP in achieving sustainability.