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The purpose of this paper is to conceptually define and empirically investigate the density of work experience along with individual characteristics (cognitive ability, conscientiousness and openness to experience) and examine their influence on human resource (HR) competencies.

Regression analysis was used to analyze the data. In total, 140 HR professionals from service industry background and their supervisors participated in the data collection efforts.

Data analyses revealed three key findings. Employees’ density of work experience positively relates to HR competencies. Cognitive ability is the strongest predictor of the positive relationship to HR competencies, and density of work experience.

The author did not assess learning from each role (individual contributor, team lead and manager). Another limitation stems from the measure of density of work experience. The author did not consider the feedback that each incumbent might have received while dealing with challenging activities and the course corrections that may have been made.

Using an approach of gradually increasing the level of responsibility and involvement in challenging tasks may also help incumbents develop who may not be intellectually gifted. In the process of gradually increasing the level of involvement in challenging tasks, incumbents could develop a nuanced view of the field expertise required to deal with challenges, gain an in-depth understanding of the business, and acquire change management skills.

The author attempts to know which aspects of personality influence density of work experience the most. In addition, which personality characteristic predicts HR competencies more strongly?

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The hypotheses were supported by the evidence in that 1. Cognitive ability had a direct positive relationship both with HR competencies and density of work experience 2. Openness to experience had a direct positive relationship both with HR competencies and density of work experience 3. Conscientiousness had a direct positive relationship with their density of work experience 4. There is a direct positive relationship between density of work experience and HR competencies.

The briefing saves busy executives, strategists and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The review is based on “Predicting human resource competencies” by P. B. Sankrith, published in Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal.

This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

In the context of organisation studies, Shotter and colleagues have used the notion of practical authorship of social situations and identities to explain the work of managers and leaders. This notion and contemporary theories of authorship in literary scholarship can be linked to the authoring of documents in the context of document studies to explain the impact and use of documents as instruments of management and communication. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The conceptual discussion is supported by an empirical interview study of the information work of N=16 archaeologists.

First, the making of documents and other artefacts, their use as instruments (e.g. boundary objects (BOs)) of management, and the practical authorship of social situations, collective and individual identities form a continuum of authorship. Second, that because practical authorship seems to bear a closer affinity to the liabilities/responsibilities and privileges of attached to documents rather than to a mere attribution of their makership or ownership, practical authorship literature might benefit of an increased focus on them.

This paper shows how practical authorship can be used as a framework to link making and use of documents to how they change social reality. Further, it shows how the notion of practical authorship can benefit of being complemented with insights from the literature on documentary and literary authorship, specifically that authorship is not only a question of making but also, even more so, of social attribution of responsibilities and privileges.

This paper shows how the concepts of documentary and practical authorship can be used to complement each other in elaborating our understanding of the making of artefacts (documentary) BOs and the social landscape.

This study explored the relationship between employees' cognitive capabilities and firm performance by exploring the moderating role of decision-making style and the mediating effect of knowledge creation. Understanding the role of cognitive capabilities in value creation is crucial for human resource management to achieve the anticipated organizational performance.

Structural equation modeling, cognitive skills theory, cognitive skills acquisition theory and a knowledge creation framework were applied.

The first finding suggests that only A-shaped skills predict higher knowledge creation, while T-shaped skills do not. Second, knowledge creation predicts higher financial performance and a lower level of financial uncertainty. Third, T-shaped skills have no indirect effect on financial performance or financial uncertainty. Fourth, A-shaped skills exerted significant indirect effects on financial performance and uncertainty. Fifth, the rational decision-making style did not moderate the link between knowledge creation and financial performance, as opposed to the intuitive decision-making style.

A review of existing research indicates a lack of studies examining the effect of cognitive skills on organizational outcomes and contingencies under which cognitive skills lead to superior outcomes. This study advances research on T-shaped and A-shaped skills and knowledge creation by empirically exploring their interrelationships with financial performance. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research are also highlighted.

The purpose of this paper is to explore innovations in customer experience at the intersection of the digital, physical and social realms. It explicitly considers experiences involving new technology-enabled services, such as digital twins and automated social presence (i.e. virtual assistants and service robots).

Future customer experiences are conceptualized within a three-dimensional space – low to high digital density, low to high physical complexity and low to high social presence – yielding eight octants.

The conceptual framework identifies eight “dualities,” or specific challenges connected with integrating digital, physical and social realms that challenge organizations to create superior customer experiences in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets. The eight dualities are opposing strategic options that organizations must reconcile when co-creating customer experiences under different conditions.

A review of theory demonstrates that little research has been conducted at the intersection of the digital, physical and social realms. Most studies focus on one realm, with occasional reference to another. This paper suggests an agenda for future research and gives examples of fruitful ways to study connections among the three realms rather than in a single realm.

This paper provides guidance for managers in designing and managing customer experiences that the authors believe will need to be addressed by the year 2050.

This paper discusses important societal issues, such as individual and societal needs for privacy, security and transparency. It sets out potential avenues for service innovation in these areas.

The conceptual framework integrates knowledge about customer experiences in digital, physical and social realms in a new way, with insights for future service research, managers and public policy makers.

Learning theory explains how organizations change as a result of experience, and can be used to predict the competitive strength of individual organizations and competitive pressures in organizational populations. We review extant learning theoretical propositions on how competitive strength is affected by experienced competition, founding conditions, and observed failures of other organizations. In addition, we propose that niche changes are an important source of learning. We test these propositions on data from the Norwegian general insurance industry. We find that historical density increases failure rates, contrary to some earlier findings, and also that the effect of founding density supports the density delay rather than trial-by-fire hypothesis. We find that failures of others before and during the lifetime of the organization reduce failure rates, and niche changes reduce failure rates for joint-stock companies but not for mutual firms. Overall the findings suggest that organizations learn more cheaply from the failures of others than from their own experiences, and that the stresses of competition can overwhelm the learning effects of competition.

Work experience is increasingly seen as an important complement to traditional higher education. There are a variety of forms of these educational programs, such as internships, sandwich programs, field work, and cooperative education, that are referred to generically as Work-Integrated Learning (WIL). As yet, however, there is relatively little research on the concept of work experience and considerable inconsistency in its definition and measurement. This chapter describes some of the research and writing from the industrial and organizational psychology field and its relevance to WIL. Based on the previous work, a model of work experience, specifically developed to aid our understanding of the role of work experience in WIL, is proposed. Three dimensions are suggested: level of specificity (task, job, organization, and career), measurement mode (number, time, relation to program, density, timing, and type), and version of WIL (cooperative education, sandwich, etc.). The model also includes individual factors and contextual factors as influences on work experience. Both immediate and secondary outcomes are described. Finally, the applicability of the model to several examples of WIL research are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered.

Purpose – In this chapter, we examine individual- and country-level differences in 4 work attitudes (work centrality, work commitment, job satisfaction, and autonomy) among 31 European countries in 1999 using a multilevel framework.

Design/methodology/approach – We utilize the 1999/2000 European Values Study to investigate individual- and country-level determinants of work values and job rewards. Our analysis contains 17 traditionally capitalist and 14 post-socialist countries. At the country level, we consider 11 institutional processes as possible explanations for variations in work values and job rewards: post-socialist status, continuous democracy, contentious politics, state capacity, socialist ideology, union density, economic integration, service employment, income inequality, linguistic heterogeneity, and population density.

Findings – We find that traditionally capitalist countries tend to score lower on work values and higher on job rewards than post-socialist countries. Our analyses show that each of the 11 institutional processes, especially continuous democracy and economic integration, has statistically significant effects on the four dependent variables.

Research limitations/implications – Of the 44 hypotheses we made, 23 were supported by statistically significant effects in the predicted direction, 16 were not significant, and 5 were statistically significant in a direction unanticipated by our theory. We discuss possible reasons for the results that did not conform to our expectations.

Originality/value – The study is one of the most comprehensive multination studies of work values and job rewards in that it examines the impact of 11 institutional processes on four different work attitudes among 31 European countries. It is the only study of this scope to rigorously examine the differences between traditionally capitalist and post-socialist countries.