Chapter 1 introduced the basic ‘tools’ of performance and reward management, including key aspects of purpose and practice. In this chapter we introduce two overarching concepts of alignment that recur throughout this book: ‘strategic alignment’ and ‘psychological engagement’. The design, implementation and maintenance of effective performance and reward management systems requires simultaneous, systematic and constant attention to both of these dimensions of alignment.

‘Strategic alignment’ refers to the plans, processes and actions involved in establishing and maintaining an alignment between an organisation’s overarching purpose or intent and how it manages employee performance and reward, as well as all other aspects of people management.

− ESG–Agency scholarship highlights the fragmented, expanding, and complex forms of authority that prescribe, steer, and govern behaviour on environmental issues. − Agency scholarship on earth system governance covers interdisciplinary debates in four broad areas: the types of agents, the ways authority is exercised, the nature of agents’ influence, and the varieties of governance structures or architectures within which agents act.− Even with increasing scholarship into the fragmentation of authority and multiplication of the types agents to include nonstate, transnational, and subnational actors, states continue to be the centre of agency scholarship. Future research is needed on agency theory and the theoretical nature of relationships between actors and within differing geographic, economic, and political contexts.

In this chapter, we examine employee share ownership (ESO) as an example of a collective long-term incentive. An employee share plan is any type of plan that allows some or all employees to acquire shares in the organisation that employs them (Klein 1987). We begin with an overview of the nature and extent of employee share ownership in Western countries. We investigate the theoretical rationale for employee share ownership before examining the empirical research on impact of share plans on organisational performance and employee attitudes and behaviours. Finally, we consider the relationship between employee share ownership and other HR practices, with a particular focus on other forms of performance-related pay.

− Agency is one of five core analytical problems in the Earth System Governance (ESG) Project’s research framework, which offers a unique approach to the study of environmental governance. − Agency in Earth System Governance draws lessons from ESG–Agency research through a systematic review of 322 peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2008 and 2016 and contained in the ESG–Agency Harvesting Database.− ESG–Agency research draws on diverse disciplinary perspectives with distinct clusters of scholars rooted in the fields of global environmental politics, policy studies, and socio-ecological systems. − Collectively, the chapters in Agency in Earth System Governance provide an accessible synthesis of some of the field’s major questions and debates and a state-of-the-art understanding of how diverse actors engage with and exercise authority in environmental governance.

− ESG-Agency scholarship on accountability is linked to legitimacy and agency theories and to research on architecture and power. − ESG-Agency scholars often consider accountability as an isolated, static and normative property, with relatively little critical reflection on its broader, evolving role in earth system governance. − Greater theoretical development is needed on how accountability operates between extremes of governance level (individual to international) and how this relates to international environmental governance initiatives.

This is a book about two of the core activities integral in the field of human resource management: managing employee performance and managing how employees are rewarded. As we shall see throughout the book, there is a close and complex inter-dependence between these two activities; so much so that it makes little sense to consider them in isolation from each other. Equally, while the book’s central concerns are with performance and reward practices and processes, attention is also paid throughout to recognising and analysing the interconnectedness of these and other aspects of human resource management. Performance management systems provide inputs into other HR functions such as training and employee development, as well as evaluating HR decisions such as recruitment and selection.

In this final chapter, we explore emerging trends – the new horizons – in business, technology and society with a particular focus on how these developments are influencing ideas, practice, employee experience and academic research in the field of performance and reward management. We begin with emerging trends and practices that have already begun to impact the design of performance and reward management systems and academic research in the field. We focus on three interconnected global trends that have already started to change performance and reward management practice; an impact that is very likely to increase in the years ahead. The first of these trends is the technological revolution associated with ‘Industry 4.0’; the second is the economic disruption and employment uncertainty associated with what has come to be called the ‘gig economy’; and the third is the social transformation flowing from generational change around the world.

Sometimes employee performance will be below that established or expected by the organisation in the first stages of the performance management process. In this chapter we examine how to diagnose the causes of underperformance. Having identified the primary causes of performance deficits, we then investigate the mechanism through which an employee is given feedback about their performance (the formal performance ‘review’). We focus on the provision of negative performance feedback: why it is problematic for supervisors and employees as well as tactics for the effective delivery of negative feedback. The chapter concludes with a discussion of performance development strategies and practices. We examine mentoring and coaching and their impact on employees and organisations.