Business Commons^™

[Review Of The Books Managing The Human Factor: The Early Years Of Human Resource Management In American Industry And Hired Hands Or Human Resources? Case Studies Of Hrm Programs And Practices In Early American Industry], Rosemary Batt

Rosemary Batt

[Excerpt] Bruce Kaufman has produced two volumes on the early development of human resource (HR) management that should become mainstays in undergraduate and graduate courses in the fields of HR studies and industrial relations. Not since Sandy Jacoby's pathbreaking book on the development of personnel management has such careful attention been paid to the inner workings of American corporations' personnel policies a century ago (Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions and the Transforming of Work in American Industry, 1900-1945, 1985). Unlike Jacoby, who specifically analyzed how and why companies developed these policies in response to union movements and external pressures, Kaufman's purpose …

[Review Of The Book Sustainable Prosperity In The New Economy? Business Organization And High-Tech Employment In The United States], Rosemary Batt, Jae Eun Lee

Rosemary Batt

[Excerpt] Best known as a business and economic historian, William (Bill) Lazonick may often escape the view of academics in human resource studies, organizational behavior, and labor relations. This is a mistake. Lazonick's new book, Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy?, is a must-read for scholars and students in these fields. He has chosen to study an important problem in the real world, has marshaled detailed empirical evidence to support his argument, and has used this evidence to critique conventional theory in economics and management.

Turning Points In Relationships With Disliked Co-Workers, Jon A. Hess, Becky Lynn Omdahl, Janie M. Harden Fritz

Jonathan A. Hess

Although most people begin their employment with the education and on-the-job training to handle the tasks their jobs entail, few long-term employees boast that they feel competent in dealing with all the difficult people they encounter in the workplace. Unpleasant coworkers range from annoying nuisances to major sources of job frustration and career roadblocks. Given that periodic preoccupation with unlovable coworkers is nearly a universal feature of organizational life, it is not surprising that such relationships are given due attention in the media and popular press (e.g., Bramson, 1989; Topchik, 2000). What is surprising is how little scholarly attention has …

Hr Performance Auditing: An Australian Story, Chris Andrews

Dr Chris Andrews

Extract: This explanatory paper covers some of the background to an Australian HR Performance Auditing Case Study (2005 – 2007). The case study was undertaken as a formal component of the 2005 Internal Audit plan for the host organisation, QUT University, located in south-east Queensland, Australia. The literature on human resource performance evaluation identified HR Auditing as an existing (but unpopular) method of evaluating human resource activities. In reality most commentators had difficulty in explaining what HR Auditing actually involved and few differentiated the topic based on an independence criterion.

Organizational Performance In Services, Rosemary Batt, Virginia Doellgast

Rosemary Batt

The question of performance in service activities and occupations is important for several reasons. First, over two-thirds of employment in advanced economies is in service activities. Second, productivity growth in services is historically low, lagging far behind manufacturing, and as a result, wages in production-level service jobs remain low. In addition, labor costs in service activities are often over 50% of total costs, whereas in manufacturing they have fallen to less than 25% of costs. This raises the question of whether management practices that have improved performance in manufacturing, such as investment in the skills and training of the workforce, …

Financial Intermediaries In The United States: Development And Impact On Firms And Employment Relations, Eileen Appelbaum, Rosemary Batt, Jae Eun Lee

Rosemary Batt

[Excerpt] Private equity (PE), hedge funds (HFs), sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), and other private pools of capital form part of the growing shadow banking system in the United States, where these new financial intermediaries provide an alternative investment mechanism to the traditional banking system. PE and HFs have their origins in the USA, while the first SWF was created by the Kuwaiti Government in 1953. While they have separate roots and distinct business models, these alternative investment vehicles have increasingly merged into overarching asset management funds which encompass all three alternative investments. These funds have wielded increasing power in financial …

Service Strategies Marketing, Operations, And Human Resource Practices, Rosemary Batt

Rosemary Batt

Over the last three decades, the principles of service management have become widely accepted. These call for an integrated approach to marketing, operations, and human resource management (HRM). The scholarly and business press routinely point to the importance of customer loyalty and customer relationship management for corporate profitability. Advances in marketing concepts and information systems make it possible to capture more precisely the demand characteristics of customers and to tailor solutions to meet their needs. Why is it, then, that measures of customer satisfaction have declined steadily in the last decade, websites for consumer complaints have proliferated, and media accounts …

Performance And Growth In Entrepreneurial Firms: Revisiting The Union-Performance Relationship, Rosemary Batt, Theresa M. Welbourne

Rosemary Batt

[Excerpt] A substantial body of research has examined the relationship between unions and firm performance. It generally has found a positive relationship between unions and productivity and a negative relationship between unions and financial performance (Freeman & Medoff, 1984; Addison & Hirsch, 1989; Belman, 1992; Freeman, 1992). The exit/voice model is most commonly used to explain this paradox (Freeman & Medoff, 1984). Freeman and Medoff argued that the “monopoly power” of unions leads to high union wages and restrictive work rules, both of which raise the costs of production and lower profit margins. The presence of unions, however, also lowers …

Innovation In Isolation: Labor-Management Partnerships In The United States, Kirsten S. Wever, Rosemary Batt, Saul Rubinstein

Rosemary Batt

In the United States, as in other advanced industrial countries, worker participation in management has taken on increasing importance, placing pressures on employers and unions to change how they deal with employees/members, and with each other. This paper examines two of the most impressive cases in the U.S.: the partnerships between General Motors (G.M.) and the United Autoworkers union (U.A W.) at Saturn and between BellSouth and the Communication Workers union (C.W.A.). We outline the evolution and the basic features of these innovations, as well as highlighting certain ongoing problems. These problems, we argue, confront the parties to employment relations …

Introduction To Part 1: The Division Of Labor, Rosemary Batt

Rosemary Batt

The changing nature of work, technology, and the division of labor in the last quarter of the twentieth century has been a central preoccupation of scholarship on organizations. Debate has centered on the extent to which a fundamental shift in employment systems has occurred—from so-called Fordist to post-Fordist models. The stylized facts portray the former as characterized by internal labor market systems in large organizations, narrow jobs in hierarchical career ladders, and long-term employment relations. The latter include decentralized organizations, flatter hierarchies, team-based forms of work organization, and shorter employment relations that reflect external market pressures. The accumulated body of …

We're All In This Together: Mentoring In Academic Libraries (Poster), Matt Ruen, Cara Cadena, Betsy Williams

Matt Ruen