ABSTRACT
Introduction In our causal chain model outlined in Chapter 1 we drew attention to the need to distinguish between the intended practices that are designed by senior management and the practices experienced by employees, indicating that any differences between the two will be influenced by the action of front line managers (FLMs) who put the intended practices into operation. We also highlighted the importance of employee discretionary behaviour in any analysis of the people managementperformance link, suggesting that line management behaviour could influence the likelihood of employees engaging in discretionary behaviours. Despite this, however, a detailed examination of the role of FLMs has tended to be overlooked in the literature and it appears rare for organisations to identify line managers, especially FLMs, as an occupational group worthy of special care or attention. This was perhaps understandable in the 1970s and 1980s when there was talk of ‘forgotten supervisors’ (Thurley and Wirdenius 1973) and ‘lost managers’ (Child and Partridge 1982) but this was before the substantial growth in people management roles of FLMs.
