It is recognised and accepted by business leaders and academic scholars alike that people (human resources) are an organisation's most critical assets in the contemporary knowledge economy. While this may be true, this rhetoric is often not matched by the reality of employment practices related to this important yet ambiguous resource. In times of bottom line financial pressures, it is this resource that is often the first to be marginalised because of the dominance of the cost as opposed to the value mentality of human resources in