Assessment and Selection in Organizations [antikvár]

Preface The first Edition of Selection and Assessment in Organizations established itself as a popular reference for text for HRM practitioners and academics active in the areas of personnel selection and appraisal. Published in 1989, it contains 44 chapters written by 49 academics and practitioners originating from seven European and North American countries. These include Holland, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and the UK. But time does not stand still and this has been especially the case in relation to selection and appraisal research procedures and practices. Indeed, since the publication of the First Edition in 1989, developments in selection and assessment have been rapid and diverse. The onset of the 1990s has brought considerable change in the social and economic context of selection in most industrialized countries; the painful impact of an international recession across many business sectors has been felt by all countries represented by contributors to the First Edition; legislative frameworks governing assessment, and to a lesser extent, appraisal procedures have continued to develop in fundamentally differing ways across different countries; and finally, but perhaps most important of all, exponential pressures upon organizations in both the private and pubhc sectors to become more efficient, more cost-conscious, more flexible and more innovative have sharpened the sights of selection practitioners and researchers alike. The winds of change have indeed forced advances in selection practice and theory and there are few meteorological signs that this gale is likely to wane, at least for the foreseeable future. So, when we were approached by our publisher, John Wiley & Sons, to commence work on a Second Edition of Selection and Assessment in Organization our thoughts turned immediately to the enormity of the task at hand. How to commission and edit a Second Edition text representative of all the developments in selection and appraisal over this period? Should we focus primarily upon practitioners or research interests, or should we attempt to balance the two, much like a market trader would weigh products for sale on a set of balance scales? Could we feasibly integrate concerns across national and even continental boundaries to include contributions from European, North American and Australasian countries? Given these dilemmas, compromise was of course inevitable, but our intention was always to extend the 'internationalization' of the First Edition, and