Federal personnel management : views on selected NPR human resource recommendations : briefing report to the Ranking Minority Member, Subcommittee on Civil Service, Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, House of Representatives /

"B-265839"--P. 1.

The management of workplace conflict: Contrasting pathways in the HRM literature.

This paper reviews the human resource management literature on the management of workplace conflict. It suggests that workplace conflict is commonly viewed in the literature as a symptom of management failure: the notion that conflict may be intrinsic to the nature of work because employees and managers have hard-to-reconcile competing interests is given short-shrift. At the same time, the paper identifies important differences in the literature, which the authors call ‘pathways’, about the best methods to manage problems at the workplace. It is argued that four contrasting pathways can be detected in the literature with regard to how organizations approach workplace conflict management practices. Each pathway is examined fully and their respective strengths and weaknesses are assessed.

The politics of reintegrating Australian Aboriginal and American Indian indigenous knowledge into resource management: The dynamics of resource appropriation and cultural revival

As the United States and Australia struggle with contemporary crises over competing uses of rapidly depleting natural resources, there are striking parallels between American Indian and Australian Aboriginal communities demanding a place at the management table and offering culturally based understandings of and solutions for the ecosystems at risk. These efforts to integrate indigenous knowledge into mainstream natural resource management are part of larger legal and political debates over land tenure, the locus of control, indigenous self-governance, and holistic ecosystems management.

Give some to get some - Analysing the relationship between worker satisfaction with human resources management and perceived individual performance in a Portuguese hospital

The purpose of this study is to investigate the association between the satisfaction with HRM practices in an organization and the workers' perceived performance. We are interested in learning if indeed workers that are more satisfied with the organization’s practices will also perceive themselves as more hardworking than others, thus confirming the happy-productive worker hypothesis, from an individual perception standpoint. Data originates from a large Portuguese hospital, with a sample of 952 clinical and nonclinical hospital workers. Data was originally explored using SPSS software and later tested in AMOS software where a multiple regression model was constructed and tested. Results indicate that overall satisfaction with HRM practices are related with the workers’ perceived performance; most of the HRM satisfaction subscales also relate, except for pay and performance appraisal, that do not seem to be good predictors of the workers perceived performance. The present study is based on a single large public hospital, and thus, these findings need to be further tested in other settings. This study offers some clues regarding the areas of HRM that seem to be more related with the workers’ perceived performance, and hence provide an interesting framework for managers dealing with healthcare teams. This study contributes to the happy-productive worker hypothesis research, by including seldom used variables in the equation and taking a different perspective. Results provide new clues for investigation and practice regarding the areas of action in HRM that seem to be more prone to elicit perceived effort from the workers.

HRM specificities’ on Portugal hotel units

This paper presents the main Human Resources Management (HRM) specificities’ on Portuguese hotel units. We try to understand the role of HRM on behavior of co-workers and quality service in hotel units and to know the future tendency of human capital profile on Portuguese hotel units and the role of HRM function on management of their staff. We, also, try to explore if Portuguese culture has influence on HRM specificities’ of hotel units. This phenomenon has a special relevance in the Portuguese context, because this country is known a growing process of tourism industry in recent years. Furthermore, little is known about HRM department’ contributions to their human capital management and development. This paper is one of the first to focus specifically on Portuguese hotel units and it also seeks to present findings that stem from the Human Resources Managers’ perspective. The paper is based on qualitative case studies. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews of 12 human resource managers from 12 hotel units located in Portugal. The results show that although there is not an effective HRM, current HRM practices are enough to encouraging pro-environmental behavior in their staff and they have a direct effect on customer satisfaction and competitiveness of sector. However, managers recognize there is need introduce some change on short-term to promote a better performance of staff with effect on customers satisfaction and competitiveness on sector in Portugal. According to these results, the paper discusses the major theoretical and practical implications.

Developing and validating a measure of the strength of the HRM system: Operationalizing the construct and relationships among its dimensions

The four studies in this article introduce a questionnaire to measure Strength of the HRM System (HRMSQ), a multidimensional construct, theoretically developed by Bowen and Ostroff (2004). Strength of the HRM System is a set of process characteristics that lead to effectiveness in conveying signals to employees that allow them to create a shared meaning of desired and appropriate work behaviours. Nine characteristics are suggested, grouped in three features: Distinctiveness, Consistency and Consensus. Study 1 developed and tested a questionnaire in a sample of workers from five different sectors. Study 2 cross-validated the measure in a sample of civil servants in a municipality. These two studies used performance appraisal as the reference HRM practice and led to a short version of the HRMSQ. Study 3 and Study 4 extend the HRMSQ to several common HRM practices. The HRMSQ is tested in two samples, of call center and several private and public organizations‟ workers (study 3). In study 4 the questionnaire is refined and tested with a sample from a hotel chain and finally cross-validated with two other samples, in the insurance and batteries sectors, leading to a longer version of the HRMSQ. Content analysis of several interviews with human resource managers and the Rasch model (1960, 1961, 1980), were used to define and select the indicators of the questionnaire. Convergent, discriminant and predictive validity of the measure are tested. The results of the four studies highlight the complexity of the relationships between the proposed characteristics and support the validity of a parsimonious measure of Strength of the HRM System.

Multi-level SLA-driven resource management on Cloud Providers

Nowadays, service providers in the Cloud offer complex services ready to be used as it was a commodity like water or electricity to their customers with any other extra effort for them. However, providing these services implies a high management effort which requires a lot of human interaction. Furthermore, an efficient resource management mechanism considering only provider's resources is, though necessary, not enough, because the provider's profit is limited by the amount of resources it owns. Dynamically outsourcing resources to other providers in response to demand variation avoids this problem and makes the provider to get more profit. A key technology for achieving these goals is virtualization which facilitates provider's management and provides on-demand virtual environments, which are isolated and consolidated in order to achieve a better utilization of the provider's resources. Nevertheless, dealing with some virtualization capabilities implies an effort for the user in order to take benefit from them. In order to avoid this problem, we are contributing the research community with a virtualized environment manager which aims to provide virtual machines that fulfils with the user requirements. Another challenge is sharing resources among different federated Cloud providers while exploiting the features of virtualization in a new approach for facilitating providers' management. This project aims for reducing provider's costs and at the same time fulfilling the quality of service agreed with the customers while maximizing the provider's revenue. It considers resource management at several layers, namely locally to each node in the provider, among different nodes in the provider, and among different federated providers. This latter layer supports the novel capabilities of outsourcing when the local resources are not enough to fulfil the users demand, and offering resources to other providers when the local resources are underused.

State of Iowa Department of Administrative Services Human Resource Enterprise: Review of State Hiring Practices, April 30, 2007

The State of Iowa and the Hiring Practices Working Group commissioned this review of the State’s hiring practices in response to recent concerns about these practices involving racial discrimination claims against the Departments of Human Services, Transportation, and Iowa Workforce Development. The State of Iowa should be commended for undertaking this review. The State has a longstanding Affirmative Action Program and commitment to diversity – they instituted their Affirmative Action Program in 1973, and continue their commitment to its success by making the changes necessary to ensure the program is viable and sustainable. Iowa Department of Administrative Services In July 2003, the State created the Iowa Department of Administrative Services (DAS) as a way to manage and coordinate the major resources of state government. DAS provides human resource services through an entrepreneurial management model. Entrepreneurial management is a customer-focused approach to delivering services. The customer departments have input about what services and products they want from DAS and in turn DAS is funded by the customer departments through purchases of DAS services and products. DAS looks to offer new and additional services (for example recruitment support and coordination) to various customers on a fee-for-service basis. A customer council is charged with approving the DAS business plan, establishing the rate for services, and reviewing service delivery and complaints. Under this entrepreneurial model, human resource services are provided by DAS-HRE (Human Resources Enterprise) central staff, 12 DAS-HRE Personnel Officers located at the customer departments, and customer agency staff. The majority of the recruitment and hiring functions are done by the customer (hiring) departments and their staff. Applications for employment are submitted using the BrassRing system with applicants being qualified by DAS-HRE employees. Since the creation of Human Resources Enterprise, DAS-HRE has strived to provide human resource tools to the departments. The Screening Manual and the Supervisor’s Manual are just two examples of the resources created for the hiring departments. They also provide Supervisor Training for newly appointed supervisors. Larger departments have dedicated staff assigned to human resource activities. The staff at the departmental level may or may not have a human resources background. Iowa Population and Workforce The 2000 U.S. Census indicated that Iowa’s population was 2,926,324. According to this census, 92.6 percent of Iowa’s population identified their race as white (alone). The nonwhite alone or minority population (including Black or African American, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, two or more races, or some other race) was 7.4 percent.

The consequences of e-HRM on line managers

The purpose of this research was to provide a deeper insight into the consequences of electronic human resource management (e-HRM) for line managers. The consequences are viewed as used information system (IS) potentials pertaining to the moderate voluntaristic category of consequences. Due to the need to contextualize the research and draw on line managers’ personal experiences, a qualitative approach in a case study setting was selected. The empirical part of the research is loosely based on literature on HRM and e-HRM and it was conducted in an industrial private sector company. In this thesis, method triangulation was utilized, as nine semi-structured interviews, conducted in a European setting, created the main method for data collection and analysis. Other complementary data such as HRM documentation and statistics of e-HRM system usage were utilized as background information to help to put the results into context. E-HRM has partly been taken into use in the case study company. Line managers tend to use e-HRM when a particular task requires it, but they are not familiar with all the features and possibilities which e-HRM has to offer. The advantages of e-HRM are in line with the company’s goals. The advantages are e.g. an transparency of data, process consistency, and having an efficient and easy-to-use tool at one’s disposal. However, several unintended, even contradictory, and mainly negative outcomes can also be identified, such as over-complicated processes, in-security in use of the tool, and the lack of co-operation with HR professionals. The use of e-HRM and managers’ perceptions regarding e-HRM affect the way in which managers perceive the consequences of e-HRM on their work. Overall, the consequences of e-HRM are divergent, even contradictory. The managers who considered e-HRM mostly beneficial to their work found that e-HRM affects their work by providing information and increasing efficiency. Those managers who mostly perceived challenges in e-HRM did not think that e-HRM had affected their role or their work. Even though the perceptions regarding e-HRM and its consequences might reflect the strategies, the distribution of work, and the ways of working in all HRM in general and can’t be generalized as such, this research contributed to the field of e-HRM and it provides new perspectives to e-HRM in the case study organization and in the academic field in general.

Tietoperustaisten HRM-käytäntöjen, luottamuksen ja suorituskyvyn suhde suomalaisessa organisaatiokontekstissa

Henkilöstöjohtamisen käytännöillä on merkittävä vaikutus organisaation johtamiseen ja tätä kautta menestymiseen. Hyvin suunnitellut ja toteutetut käytännöt ovat osaltaan vaikuttamassa yrityksessä vallitsevaan luottamukseen. Hyvä sisäinen luottamustaso puolestaan heijastuu myös organisaation ulkoiseen luottamukseen. Tietoperustaiset HRM-käytännöt ovat keskeisessä roolissa juuri nyt, koska työelämä ja työn tekeminen ovat murrosvaiheessa ja muutosten nopeus kiihtyy entisestään tietointensiivisten työtehtävien lisääntyessä. HRM-käytäntöjä on tutkittu paljon aiempien vuosikymmenten aikana. Tietoperustaisten henkilöstöjohtamisen käytäntöjen tutkimusta on ollut jonkin verran 2000-luvun alun jälkeen. Henkilöstöjohtamisen käytäntöjen suhdetta luottamukseen ja suorituskykyyn on myös tutkittu. Sen sijaan vielä ei ollut tehty tutkimusta, jossa yhdistetään tietoperustaisten henkilöstöjohtamisen käytäntöjen, luottamuksen ja suorituskyvyn suhde. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoitus on selvittää tietoperustaisten HRM-käytäntöjen, luottamuksen ja suorituskyvyn yhteyttä. Tutkimuksen pääpaino on tietoperustaisten henkilöstökäytäntöjen suhde luottamukseen. Tutkittavat tietoperustaiset henkilöstöjohtaminen käytännöt liittyvät rekrytointiin, osaamisen kehittämiseen, suoritusarviointiin ja palkitsemiseen. Tutkimukseen osallistui 246 Suomessa toimivaa yritystä. Kyselytutkimuksen lisäksi tutkimuksessa käytettiin taloudellisia tietokantoja yritysten suorituskykyä kuvaavien tunnuslukujen määrittämisessä. Tutkimus on määrällinen ja se perustuu tilastollisten menetelmien ja analyysien käyttöön. Tutkimuksessa saatiin selville, että tietoperustaisilla osaamisen kehittämisen ja suoritusarviointien HRM-käytännöillä on positiivinen vaikutus luottamukseen. Tietoon pohjautuvilla henkilöstöjohtamisen käytännöillä voidaan siis rakentaa parempaa luottamustasoa organisaatioissa.

Development of an instrument to assess Human Resource Quality (HRQ) and measuring the impact of TQM efforts on HRQ using the instrument

This research is aimed at developing an instrument for measuring human resource quality in organizations. The researcher has developed the instrument for measuring HRQ based on extensive literature survey and expert opinion. Statistical validity of the Instrument has also been established. This instrument was used to measure the changes in Human Resource Quality in selected organizations wherein quality management practices are being implemented. Data collected was analyzed and presented in this thesis. It has been found that there are significant changes in all the indicators of Human Resource Quality. There is improvement in Cultural Change Index(CCI), Quality of Work Life Index(QWLI) and Employee Satisfaction Index(ESI). The Human Resource Quality index has also increased significantly in all the organizations. It has been observed from the study that implementation of TQM leads to significant changes in Human Resource Quality. This instrument is capable of measuring minor variations in each indicator of HRQ and can be used to identify areas of weakness and strength in the case of Human Resource Quality. The instrument can further be modified by future research. This research work provided excellent opportunities for the researcher for self-development and has made him confident to undertake such activities for the benefit of the learning community.

Continuation and discontinuation of local institution in community based natural resource management

Currently the push toward frontier areas, which until twenty years ago were still largely untouched by commercial agriculture, is taking place on a massive scale. This push is being driven not the least by global economic developments, such as the price increase of agriculture commodities like coffee and cocoa. In most cases the indigenous communities become trapped between the state monopoly in natural resource management and the competition for resources by external actors. In this processes the indigenous communities start to lose their access to resources. Another victim in this process is the environment where the natural resources are imbedded. International and national organizations working to conserve environment have became conscious of the important role that indigenous people could fulfill as partners in this endeavour. This partnership in struggle has produced a new discourse on the relationship between indigenous people and their environment. As a further consequence, programs were set up to develop what became known as Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) with its numerous variations. Based on a case study in a village on the eastern border of the Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi, this study questioned the basic assumption behind the concept of Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM). Namely the assumption that communities living at the margin of forest are socially and culturally homogenous, still more or less egalitarian, and basically living in harmony with their natural environment. This study was inspired by the persistent critique – although still a minority – on the basic assumption the CBNRM from academicians and practitioners working through the Entitlement perspective. Another inspiration was the mounting critique toward the participatory approach. In its effort the study explore further the usefulness of certain approaches. One of the approach much relied on in this study was the local history of the community studied, through exerting oral and local written documents on local history, legends and local stories. These sources proofed quite capable in bringing the local history into the light. Another was the actor oriented approach, which later came to be supported by the concept of Social Pool Resources. The latter concept proofed to be useful as analytical instrument to integrate social institutions and the common pool resources, as a field of action for the different actors as human agencies.

Supporting co-operative work in apron control and resource management offices on airports

A high demand exists to increase the efficiency of present airport ground facilities and the co-ordination of traffic and services. The Traffic Office plays a crucial role in managing the airport. The main tasks of the Traffic Office is management of equipment, services, and ressources based on the flight schedule and resolving conflicts arising from deviations from the schedule. A new tool will support information exchange between Traffic Office and other facilities on the airport.