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The purpose of this study is to explore factors that help to determine employee trust in and affective commitment toward the organization.

Data for this study were collected using surveys administered to employees of a company located in the southeastern United States. The final sample included 391 matched supervisor–subordinate dyads.

We found organizational signals of trustworthiness led to affective commitment through increased levels of employee trust. Employees and supervisors who perceived HR professionals to be competent, who felt organizational information distributions were of high quality and who felt the organization disclosed relevant information exhibited higher levels of trust in the organization. Employees showed higher affective commitment when they trusted the organization. We found that supervisor trust directly impacted subordinate affective commitment as well.

These findings help extend signaling theory from the attraction of employees to their retention and help researchers and practitioners alike to understand the organizational trust- and commitment-building process.

The goal of this chapter is to explore the requirements modern companies expect of HR professionals’ competences.

Departing from the widely acknowledged HR competence studies of Ulrich and associates, we extended them with the continuous learning competence profile and HR professionals’ individual job performance. The empirical study is built on open interviews with HR leaders of ten large Dutch companies.

The study offers a new set of HRM competences. This set includes six HRM profiles: Business Focus, Learning Focus, Strategic Focus, HR Technology, HR Delivery, and Personal Credibility. Several contingency factors are thought to play a role in supporting these HRM competences: company culture, strategy, size, sector, scope, and position of HR professionals.

Based on these contributions, we recommended conducting a quantitative study to gain understanding of the relevance of the individual HRM job performance and to find associations between the HRM competences and the individual HRM job performance.

The focus of this chapter is a combination of HRM competences and the individual job performance of HR professionals.

The Rank Organisation has been attempting to become focused on business needs by rethinking the roles and competences required by practitioners. Details the organization’s background and system of management and human resource management. Concludes with a brief overview of future human resource requirements.

Based on seven chapters in this volume and a broader literature review, we present a research agenda where research challenges are identified with the relevant research questions. In the second place, this chapter presents the implications of NWW for HR, in particular the required competences for HR-professionals. We elaborate on several research questions that, in our view, help to address challenges to advance our understanding of NWW. The need for more theory-driven research is stipulated, including some possible directions for appropriate methods, such as configurational analysis. we argue that it is essential for HR-professionals to know the required HR-competences for managing and coaching those who are involved in NWW-practices. This chapter provides crucial insights for these competences.

In this article, the area of interest is an emerging type of organisation called human resource intermediaries (HRIs), which focus on delivering human resource (HR) services to public sector organisations and private companies. The purpose of this article is, thus, to explore HRIs as deliverers of HR services. More specifically, the article will seek to analyse and discuss how employees in HRIs understand their role as providers of HR services to their clients and what characterises the HRIs' work and the nature of their assignments.

The empirical foundation of this article comprises a longitudinal case study of three Swedish HRI organisations. The data consist of interviews with 19 managers and consultants from the three HRIs.

The results indicate that HRIs want to take on a broad, strategic and proactive role in relation to their customers. However, due to external and internal constraints, such as the HRIs' internal work processes, the nature of their assignments and the client's HR competence level, the roles that HRIs play in practice tend to be more specific, operational and reactive.

An important challenge for HRIs is to avoid being overwhelmed by short‐term and reactive assignments that deliver value to their clients through the use of standard solutions. Long‐term relationships, the structures of ownership and membership, and the availability of unique networks can also prove to be valuable for clients.

This study explores HRIs as an emerging type of organisation within the area of human resources. Compared with HR consultants who specialise in handling specific HR‐related problems, HRIs target the entire flow of human resources in, within, and out of client organisations.

This paper uses data from interviews with HRM managers of the Australian operations of overseas multinational companies to critically question the analytical utility of a number of standard factors that have traditionally been claimed, in the international HRM literature, to influence decisions concerning the appropriate balance between centralization and localization in HRM. The variables reviewed are primarily structural: industry sector, strategic role of the subsidiary, administrative heritage and formal organizational structure. The data suggest that the firms modify their formal structures frequently in response to environmental turbulence and have evolved towards structural forms that are radically asymmetrical. Two variables that have received limited academic attention to date but which critically mediate the pattern of intended changes are identified. First, the perception by key actors in subsidiaries of HR competence elsewhere in the MNC network, particularly head office. Second, the propensity of the staff in the subsidiary to lobby politically against changes they did not perceive to be rational.

The aim of this paper is to analyse why Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) pursue internationalization (current and future entry modes, motivations, advantages and difficulties) and how they go about it, with reference to four key areas: innovation and technology, networking, environmental approach and human resource (HR) competences.

A questionnaire was distributed to 792 enterprises with a response rate of 24.37 per cent. Data were collected using the computer assisted web interviewing (CAWI) method and processed with Rasch analysis, Principal Components Analysis and Cluster analysis methods.

The paper presents the results of a quantitative research on SMEs located in the Province of Monza and Brianza – one of the most productive territories in Italy. Four different clusters emerged with specific approaches. Briefly, this paper points out that: innovation is mostly linked to the product and is incremental; HR and their competences are crucial for facing complex markets; the green issue is not dominant (it is considered only for saving energy and reducing cost production); and networking is not a key issue (except informal relations, contractual agreements and strategic alliances).

The research could be extended: through a longitudinal survey on the same sample; by covering different territories on the same topics. The cluster analysis identifies potential guidelines for entrepreneurial behaviour in respect to key factors for exiting from the economic and financial crisis: innovation and technology, formal and informal networks, the “green” approach, HR training.

This paper presents a new interdisciplinary approach that may work beyond country boundaries, providing a new basis to the debate on the internationalization of SMEs.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly outsourcing human resource (HR) activities to outside labour market intermediaries. In this paper, the focus is on a specific type of labour market intermediary, the HR intermediary (HRI). The purpose of this paper is to describe and discuss SME outsourcing of HR services to membership-based HRIs, and potential problems and benefits that may arise in this process.

The empirical foundation comprises case studies of three Swedish HRIs and 12 of their SME clients. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews and a document study.

The findings show that social aspects such as trust, shared values, communication and commitment are crucial characteristics of the cooperation between HRIs and SMEs. These social aspects are a result of the owner/membership structure, and a distinguishing feature of the studied HRIs in comparison to other types of labour market intermediaries.

The results of the study underline the need for increased research related to the intermediary concept and its meanings in different contexts. There is also a need for more empirical research on HRIs, e.g. comparisons between different types of HRIs, and studies of the emergence of virtual intermediaries. Future studies should focus on the role of LMIs and HRIs in regional development processes.

Companies that interact with HRIs should reflect on the different pros and cons that this cooperation may result in, both in the short term and in the longer term.

The study provides an enhanced understanding regarding the relations between SMEs and HRIs, based on the two broad types of SMEs (with low/high internal HR skills) and two types of HRIs (with short/long-term orientation).

This article aims to describe partial results of the 2012 Global Human Resources Competency Study (HRCS), led by the RBL Group and the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan.

Over the past 25 years, this ongoing research project has provided the most global, comprehensive, and empirical identification of the competencies expected of HR professionals, and the impact of these competencies on both individual HR professional effectiveness and business performance.

This article points out a number of the key findings of the research – including the six fundamental competency domains that HR professionals must demonstrate to impact business performance – and identifies implications of the study findings for HR talent planning, assessment and development.

HRCS findings have influenced thousands of HR departments, from global giants to smaller organizations in every continent.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of opportunity recognition and entrepreneurial self-efficacy on the entrepreneurial intention of Indian university students. This paper also examines the moderating role of entrepreneurship education and gender on the opportunity recognition–intention and self-efficacy–intention relationships.

The data were collected through a comprehensive questionnaire from 334 students having business and management background. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to ensure the reliability and validity of all the constructs, and structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

This study unveils three important findings. First, opportunity recognition and self-efficacy both show a significant positive impact on the entrepreneurial intention of students. Second, education positively moderates “self-efficacy–intention relationship”, and third, gender negatively moderates “opportunity recognition–intention” and “self-efficacy–intention” relationships.

This study has been carried out using a sample of students from only one university, and the study included only business and management background students. Similar studies can be conducted by adding more motivational and contextual factors with an increased sample size of students having different educational backgrounds.

This study provides pragmatic support to formulate new educational initiatives that can support students in their present or future entrepreneurial projects.

This study adds to the scarce literature on opportunity recognition and entrepreneurial intention and also highlights the moderating role of entrepreneurship education and gender on opportunity recognition–intention and entrepreneurial self-efficacy–intention relationships.