One of the significant changes witnessed in the labour markets in India has been the entry of women IT professionals in the rapidly growing software services sector. As the women take on the role of working professional in addition to their traditional role of the homemaker, they are under great pressure to balance their work and personal lives. This study attempts to understand how work and family related factors influence the workefamily balance of Indian women IT professionals. The study is based on an exploratory qualitative study of 13 women IT professionals in the software sector in Bangalore, India. The narratives reveal six major themes: familial influences on life choices; multi-role responsibilities and attempts to negotiate them; self and professional identity; workelife challenges and coping strategies; organisational policies and practices; and social support.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore employee voice and silence in the mobile telecommunication industry in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach An exploratory qualitative case study methodology was employed in this study. Participant selection was done through a purposeful intensity sampling technique, which resulted in 30 employees from two different multinational organizations and an indigenous organization taking part in in-depth interviews. Findings Findings show the presence of fear of victimization in the Nigerian workplace embellished by the Sub-Saharan culture and the state of the labor market, which resulted in employee silence. The study revealed that the implementation of culturally adapted employee voice mechanisms within organizations in the mobile telecommunication industry in Nigeria promotes employee voice and organizational performance, whereas a lack thereof results in organizational failure. Research limitations/implications A limitation is that the purposive sample of employees from three organizations in the mobile telecommunications industry only permits theoretical and analytic generalization. Practical implications A focus on the co-creation of a high-performance work environment and the development of a powerful employee value proposition would foster employee voice. Social implications It will enable multinationals operating in Nigeria understand better how to operate employee voice in order to obtain optimal performance from workers in Sub-Sahara Africa. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature on employee/industrial relations by showing that a high-power-distance national culture and a high unemployment rate affect employee voice and silence, which brings to the fore the importance of adequate employee voice mechanisms through which employees express their voice in order to arrive at beneficial individual and organizational outcomes.

Disability is an issue of concern for policymakers across the world. In terms of human resource practices and disability research, much has been done regarding factors relating to employability and employment prospects of people with disabilities. Not as much research has focused on human resource practices that enable people with disabilities to achieve their potential within organisations. Specifically, more attention is focused on job access and accommodation of people with disabilities but not on treatment once on the job. The present paper explores how employees with physical disabilities and their human resource managers perceive practices aimed at organisational entry, integration, and development of disabled employees. A sample of twenty four people with disabilities and fourteen human resource managers employed by various organisations in the Netherlands were interviewed. The results indicate, among other things, that people with disabilities are not aware of special mechanisms to recruit, select, and retain people with disabilities. Furthermore, organisations do not have a specific recruitment policy for people with disabilities mainly because they do not want to stigmatise people with disabilities. Overall, the results indicate that both sets of respondents want to treat people with disabilities as 'regular' employees and not focus attention and organisational practices on disability. Some respondents spoke of the potential benefits of additional help that could be aimed at disability related issues, but were hesitant to ask for such help. Employers also did not offer additional support unless asked, not wanting to highlight the disability based on fears of stigmatisation. Given this reluctance from both employees and employers, or an inadvertent 'don't ask, don't tell' situation, it is possible that people with disabilities remain an underutilised resource. Future research can systematically examine what employers mean by an inclusionary context, if this is what employees truly want, and how they can collectively implement diversity initiatives.This paper uses a history of US mutual funds from 1970-2007 to provide a comprehensive taxonomy. As assets under management grew from $43 billion to $11 trillion during this period, new fund products catering to a wide range of investor risk appetites were offered. Product diversification by asset class (stocks, bonds, currencies, options), by region (global, international, sector, developed, developing, frontier, country), by investment style (balanced, taxefficient, target data) and more recently by investment strategy (long-short, market neutral and bear) became available. Mutual fund providers in emerging (and emerged) market economies have begun to replicate some of these business models, often in partnership with US fund families. Academic research on mutual funds in the US has focused more on equities, but our paper provides results for many more asset classes and fund types. For each, we start by reporting statistics on the number of funds and their tot...