Knowledge that Transforms

It is nearly unanimous that HR can and should add more value to corporations. The best way to do this is by being a business partner—by directly improving the performance of the business. This can be accomplished by effective talent management, helping with change management, influencing strategy, and a host of other value‐added activities that impact effectiveness. But HR does not seem able to position itself as a business partner in many cases. To analyze the problem HR has in transitioning to a new role, think of HR as a business and what products it should offer.

In the “managerial knowledge” marketplace, there is little evidence of much diffusion of ideas, innovative business models, or management practices. In organizations not implementing what they know they should be doing based on experience and insight, and in companies not acting on the basis of the best available evidence, one main factor explains the difficulties—the mental models or mind‐sets of senior leaders. How they are formed, what they are about, and a multitude of examples that show how those mind‐sets can be improved are presented here.

This study explores the role of compensation strategies in promoting organizational learning capability. By analyzing a sample of 111 Spanish firms from the chemical industry, we highlight how compensation strategies can be used to influence employees' commitment to learning and shape their understanding of the overall purpose of the organization. We also show that inappropriate strategies can lead to short-term efficiencies but damage longer-term learning.

HR outsourcing as an organizational strategy has increased substantially over the last decade. However, this trend has attracted little academic attention regarding how outsourcing decisions are made, the manner in which these decisions are implemented, how outsourcing effectiveness is measured, and its impact on organizational performance. In this article, we provide a critical review of the reasons for, the processes involved in, and the perceived effectiveness of HR outsourcing.We investigate the implications of HR outsourcing for the role of the HR function and for the various groups of people affected by this strategy. We argue that organizations should apply both the resource-based view and institutional theory when making outsourcing decisions.

Today, employees are encouraged to become more career-resilient and engage in career development activities to deal with changes in required knowledge, skills, and abilities, and to facilitate their mobility. This study found that participation in decision making (PDM) and autonomy, along with supervisory career support (information, advice, and encouragement), fostered this career adaptability. These practices were also positively associated with commitment and negatively with intentions to leave. However, career adaptability was positively associated with both commitment and intentions to leave, suggesting some unintended consequences for management approaches supporting career adaptability. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Two paradigm shifts are discussed here: talentship and sustainability. First, the traditional service‐oriented HR focus must be extended to a “decision science” that enhances decisions about human capital. We call this decision science talentship . It includes talent segmentation, or identifying pivotal talent pools where the quality and/or availability of human capital makes the biggest difference to strategic success. Second, HR and business leaders increasingly define organizational effectiveness beyond traditional financial outcomes to encompass sustainability—achieving success today without compromising the needs of the future. A common strategic human capital decision science can reveal pivotal talent under both traditional and sustainability‐based definitions, and thus uncover important insights about the talent implications of the shifting definition of strategic success.

Voluntary employee turnover is expensive. Companies that successfully retain the best and brightest employees save money and protect their intellectual capital. Traditional approaches to understanding turnover place accumulated job dissatisfaction as the primary antecedent to voluntary turnover. However, we show that precipitating events, or shocks, more often are the immediate cause of turnover. Using data from more than 1,200 “leavers,” we describe the nature, content, and role of shocks in turnover decisions. We then provide strategies to help organizations manage shocks, and thereby control turnover.

This study empirically examines the relationship between the perceived employee involvement (EI) climate and organizational effectiveness. Using a sample of insurance companies, results indicate that organizations with high levels of perceived EI climate lead to organizational effectiveness as measured through financial performance, turnover rate, and workforce morale. Implications of the results for research and practice are discussed.