Knowledge that Transforms

No abstract.

Commentary on “A Performance‐Based, Minimalist Human Resource Management Approach in Business Schools”

Although growth has occurred in contract employment arrangements both in the public and private sectors, scant research has been conducted on the organizations and employees affected by these arrangements.This study examines the employment relationship of long‐term contracted employees using a social exchange framework. Specifically, we examine the effects of employee perceptions of organizational support from contracting and client organizations on their (a) affective commitment to each organization and (b) service‐oriented citizenship behavior. We also examine whether felt obligation toward each organization mediates this relationship. Our sample consists of 99 long‐term contracted employees working for four contracting organizations that provide services to the public on behalf of a municipal government. Results indicate that the antecedents of affective commitment are similar for the client and contracting organization. Employee perceptions of client organizational supportiveness were positively related to felt obligation and commitment to the client organization. Client felt obligation mediated the effects of client perceived organizational support (POS) on the participation dimension of citizenship behavior. Our study provides additional support for the generalizability of social exchange processes to nontraditional employment relationships. Implications for managing long‐term contracted employees are discussed.

Empirical research and narrative reports from working managers suggest that employee attitudes can be negatively influenced by organizational downsizing, but the potential impact of downsizing on applicants is not well documented. In this study, we investigate the effect of organizational downsizing on job‐seeker attraction to an organization. Respondents were given descriptions of two organizations, coupled with information on workforce reductions in the two organizations. We found that workforce reductions reduced job‐seeker attraction. However, companies that downsized but provided assistance and adequate communication to employees were nearly as attractive to applicants as companies that had not downsized. Managerial implications of these results are provided.

In China, where many multinational companies face a constant shortage of talent and high employee turnover, the Portman Ritz-Carlton Hotel has been able to attract, develop, and retain high-quality talent to deliver excellent customer service and ensure profitable growth. Under the leadership of Mark DeCocinis since 1998, the Portman Ritz-Carlton has not only been named as the “Best Employer in Asia” by Hewitt Associates three consecutive times, but has also rated the highest in employee satisfaction among all of the Ritz-Carlton's 59 hotels worldwide for five consecutive years. How can DeCocinis and his leadership team achieve such remarkable results? In his interview with Arthur Yeung, Mark DeCocinis, general manager of the Port-man Ritz-Carlton and regional vice president, Asia-Pacific, of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, shares his philosophy and practices on talent management in China and elsewhere.

Moneyball (Lewis, 2003), a New York Times bestseller, is a book about baseball. When read through a broader lens, however, Moneyball is also a book about innovation, resistance to change, competitive advantage, achieving excellence, and, of most relevance here, human resource management. While many would agree that the radical innovation described in Moneyball represents a “new vision of management” in baseball, this article describes how Moneyball lessons might contribute to a “new vision of HRM” in various types of organizations. The focus of the article is on what HR executives and scholars can learn from the Moneyball phenomenon. More specifically, the authors address a number questions related to the Moneyball story that have relevance to successfully implementing HRM innovations; these questions have to do with overcoming resistance to the implementation of radical innovation and how HRM innovation can contribute to sustainable competitive advantage.

Employability is a critical requirement for enabling both sustained competitive advantage at the firm level and career success at the individual level. We propose a competence‐based approach to employability derived from an expansion of the resource‐based view of the firm. In this contribution, we present a reliable and valid instrument for measuring employability. This measure is based on a five‐dimensional conceptualization of employability, in which occupational expertise is complemented with generic competences. Two sources of raters (employees and their immediate supervisors) are involved in developing and testing the measure. Since the five dimensions of employability explain a significant amount of variance in both objective and subjective career success, the predictive validity of the tool is promising. This instrument facilitates further scientific HRM research and is of practical value in light of job and career assessments, recruitment, staffing, career mobility, and development practices.