Linking rewards to commitment:an empirical investigation of four UK call centres

Rewards being an important component of exchange theory, this research examines relationships among frontline employees' perceptions of rewards (extrinsic and intrinsic) and the three components of organizational commitment (i.e. affective, normative and continuance). The investigation is conducted by the help of a large survey in four call centres of a major retail bank in the UK. The results of the study support the contentions of exchange theory, and highlight the significance of both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to develop affective, normative and continuance commitment in call centre employees. This research also helps to identify the antecedents that develop each component of commitment. The findings of this research have key messages for practitioners, and contribute to the fields of HRM, rewards, commitment and exchange theory.

Bridging difference - national and organisational adaptation for responsible performance

This special issue draws together a selection of articles built around a theme of bridging difference. We argue that the effective transfer of learning across boundaries is crucial in enabling the dissemination of good, and ethical, HR practice. How that transfer might occur, with respect both to the mechanisms to enable or inhibit transfer and to the nature of learning that underpins that transfer, provides the focus of what is discussed here. This is framed against a concern for the nature and future of HRM, in particular its role in ensuring responsible organisational performance. © 2013 Taylor & Francis.

Is there a global model of learning organizations? An empirical, cross-nation study

This paper develops and tests a learning organization model derived from HRM and dynamic capability literatures in order to ascertain the model's applicability across divergent global contexts. We define a learning organization as one capable of achieving on-going strategic renewal, arguing based on dynamic capability theory that the model has three necessary antecedents: HRM focus, developmental orientation and customer-facing remit. Drawing on a sample comprising nearly 6000 organizations across 15 countries, we show that learning organizations exhibit higher performance than their less learning-inclined counterparts. We also demonstrate that innovation fully mediates the relationship between our conceptualization of the learning organization and organizational performance in 11 of the 15 countries we examined. It is the first time in our knowledge that these questions have been tested in a major, cross-global study, and our work contributes to both HRM and dynamic capability literatures, especially where the focus is the applicability of best practice parameters across national boundaries.

Human resource alloctaion in a call centre

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Human resource allocation in a call centre

DUE TO COPYRIGHT RESTRICTIONS ONLY AVAILABLE FOR CONSULTATION AT ASTON UNIVERSITY LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SERVICES WITH PRIOR ARRANGEMENT

Sierra : cooperative request-response for resource management in disasters using semantic web principles

Disasters cause widespread harm and disrupt the normal functioning of society, and effective management requires the participation and cooperation of many actors. While advances in information and networking technology have made transmission of data easier than it ever has been before, communication and coordination of activities between actors remain exceptionally difficult. This paper employs semantic web technology and Linked Data principles to create a network of intercommunicating and inter-dependent on-line sites for managing resources. Each site publishes available resources openly and a lightweight opendata protocol is used to request and respond to requests for resources between sites in the network.

HR outsourcing:the impact on HR role, competency development and relationships

The business benefits of an outsourcing strategy are well documented, and HR is encouraged to outsource in order to add value. Yet little is known about how HR outsourcing affects the HR role, competencies and relationships with senior management. These issues are examined through 27 semi-structured interviews with senior HR professionals, comparing HR departments engaged in HR outsourcing with those maintaining full in-house HR provision. The findings indicate that HR outsourcing stymies HR role transformation. HR outsourcers experienced limited skill development and an increased focus on cost reduction at the expense of their strategic position. In contrast, non-HR outsourcers actively engaged in other parts of the business, developing competencies that garnered trust and support of senior managers. The benefits of an external HR community appear limited. The study suggests that an 'internal' HR community is better placed to enhance HR departmental roles. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Integrating skills profiling and purchasing portfolio management:an opportunity for building purchasing capability

Kralijc’s (1983) purchasing portfolio approach holds that different types of purchases need different sourcing strategies, underpinned by distinct sets of resources and practices. The approach is widely deployed in business and extensively researched, and yet little research has been conducted on how knowledge and skills vary across a portfolio of purchases. This study extends the body of knowledge on purchasing portfolio management, and its application in the strategic development of purchasing in an organization, and on human resource management in the purchasing function. A novel approach to profiling purchasing skills is proposed, which is well suited to dynamic environments which require flexibility. In a survey, experienced purchasing personnel described a specific purchase and profiled the skills required for effective performance in purchasing that item. Purchases were categorized according to their importance to the organization (internally-oriented evaluation of cost and production factors) and to the supply market (externally-oriented evaluation of commercial risk and uncertainty). Through cluster analysis three key types of purchase situations were identified. The skills required for effective purchasing vary significantly across the three clusters (for 22 skills, p<0.01). Prior research shows that global organizations use the purchasing portfolio approach to develop sourcing strategies, but also aggregate analyses to inform the design of purchasing arrangements (local vs global) and to develop their improvement plans. Such organizations would also benefit from profiling skills by purchase type. We demonstrate how the survey can be adapted to provide a management tool for global firms seeking to improve procurement capability, flexibility and performance.

Performance management and high performance work practices in emerging markets

In this chapter, we discuss performance management systems (PMSs) and high performance work systems (HPWSs) in emerging economies. We start by discussing PMSs, with specific emphasis on PMSs in global organizations. We follow this up with an introduction of HPWSs, and then discuss PMSs and HPWSs in emerging economies. While the list of emerging economies keeps changing, and is rather long, as one might expect, in this chapter we have concentrated on five key emerging economies – China, India, Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey. Performance management is the process through which organizations set goals, determine standards, assign and evaluate work, coach and give feedback, and distribute rewards (Fletcher, 2001). In this connection, organizations all over the world face the challenge of how best to manage performance, including finding ways to motivate employees to sustain high levels of performance. In other words, organizations must develop and implement PMSs that are appropriate for their environment in such a way that high levels of performance can be achieved and sustained over time (DeNisi, Varma and Budhwar, 2008). While all organizations need to address these issues, the way a firm decides to go about addressing these issues is dependent on its location and context. In other words, differences in local norms, culture, law, and technology, make it critical that organizations develop and/or adapt techniques, policies and practices that are appropriate to the setting (see for example, Hofstede, 1993).

A qualitative analysis of the congruency of Jungian psychological preferences identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the human resource development role of instructor/facilitator

The purpose of this ethnographic study was to describe and explain the congruency of psychological preferences identified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the human resource development (HRD) role of instructor/facilitator. This investigation was conducted with 23 HRD professionals who worked in the Miami, Florida area as instructors/facilitators with adult learners in job-related contexts.^ The study was conducted using qualitative strategies of data collection and analysis. The research participants were selected through a purposive sampling strategy. Data collection strategies included: (a) administration and scoring of the MBTI, Form G, (b) open-ended and semi-structured interviews, (c) participant observations of the research subjects at their respective work sites and while conducting training sessions, (d) field notes, and (e) contact summary sheets to record field research encounters. Data analysis was conducted with the use of a computer program for qualitative analysis called FolioViews 3.1 for Windows. This included: (a) coding of transcribed interviews and field notes, (b) theme analysis, (c) memoing, and (d) cross-case analysis.^ The three major themes that emerged in relation to the congruency of psychological preferences and the role of instructor/facilitator were: (1) designing and preparing instruction/facilitation, (2) conducting training and managing group process, and (3) interpersonal relations and perspectives among instructors/facilitators.^ The first two themes were analyzed through the combination of the four Jungian personality functions. These combinations are: sensing-thinking (ST), sensing-feeling (SF), intuition-thinking (NT), and intuition-feeling (NF). The third theme was analyzed through the combination of the attitudes or energy focus and the judgment function. These combinations are: extraversion-thinking (ET), extraversion-feeling (EF), introversion-thinking (IT), and introversion-feeling (IF).^ A last area uncovered by this ethnographic study was the influence exerted by a training and development culture on the instructor/facilitator role. This professional culture is described and explained in terms of the shared values and expectations reported by the study respondents. ^

System design and resource management in the next-generation integrated WLAN and 3G cellular networks

Next-generation integrated wireless local area network (WLAN) and 3G cellular networks aim to take advantage of the roaming ability in a cellular network and the high data rate services of a WLAN. To ensure successful implementation of an integrated network, many issues must be carefully addressed, including network architecture design, resource management, quality-of-service (QoS), call admission control (CAC) and mobility management. ^ This dissertation focuses on QoS provisioning, CAC, and the network architecture design in the integration of WLANs and cellular networks. First, a new scheduling algorithm and a call admission control mechanism in IEEE 802.11 WLAN are presented to support multimedia services with QoS provisioning. The proposed scheduling algorithms make use of the idle system time to reduce the average packet loss of realtime (RT) services. The admission control mechanism provides long-term transmission quality for both RT and NRT services by ensuring the packet loss ratio for RT services and the throughput for non-real-time (NRT) services. ^ A joint CAC scheme is proposed to efficiently balance traffic load in the integrated environment. A channel searching and replacement algorithm (CSR) is developed to relieve traffic congestion in the cellular network by using idle channels in the WLAN. The CSR is optimized to minimize the system cost in terms of the blocking probability in the interworking environment. Specifically, it is proved that there exists an optimal admission probability for passive handoffs that minimizes the total system cost. Also, a method of searching the probability is designed based on linear-programming techniques. ^ Finally, a new integration architecture, Hybrid Coupling with Radio Access System (HCRAS), is proposed for lowering the average cost of intersystem communication (IC) and the vertical handoff latency. An analytical model is presented to evaluate the system performance of the HCRAS in terms of the intersystem communication cost function and the handoff cost function. Based on this model, an algorithm is designed to determine the optimal route for each intersystem communication. Additionally, a fast handoff algorithm is developed to reduce the vertical handoff latency.^