Search results

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an integrated three‐phase methodology for forecasting future competency requirements more effectively than existing methods.

The methodology is demonstrated with reference to empirical research conducted by the authors. The methodology consists of three phases: phase 1 – preliminary interviews, phase 2 – questionnaire, and phase 3 – critical incident technique interviews. Outputs from phases 1 and 2 are used to generate a framework through which to elicit future competency requirements during phase 3.

The empirical findings, although included, are incidental to the current paper; they serve solely to illustrate the methodology. As such, the development and demonstration of this methodology are the main “findings” of the paper.

Methodologies for forecasting future competency requirements should adopt structured integrated approaches to improve predictive accuracy.

The methodology is described in sufficient detail so as to enable its practical application by HR professionals and academic researchers alike. Both groups will find this methodology extremely useful.

The paper seeks to improve upon existing methods for forecasting future competency requirements. By addressing the limitations of existing methods, and also by merging previously independent approaches, it provides an innovative integrated methodology of significant value.

In the last four years, since Volume I of this Bibliography first appeared, there has been an explosion of literature in all the main functional areas of business. This wealth of material poses problems for the researcher in management studies — and, of course, for the librarian: uncovering what has been written in any one area is not an easy task. This volume aims to help the librarian and the researcher overcome some of the immediate problems of identification of material. It is an annotated bibliography of management, drawing on the wide variety of literature produced by MCB University Press. Over the last four years, MCB University Press has produced an extensive range of books and serial publications covering most of the established and many of the developing areas of management. This volume, in conjunction with Volume I, provides a guide to all the material published so far.

Most managers would agree that the calibre of an organisation′s employees is vital to its business success. However, to many managers, selection is a headache: job descriptions have to be written, advertisements placed, a shortlist of candidates agreed, assessments of candidates carried out, and a final decision reached. The process is time‐consuming, costly and an unwanted interruption of critical business activities. Throughout the 1980s, many advances have been made in personnel selection by occupational psychologists in the US, Canada and Europe. Unfortunately, the substantial developments have not been taken up by many practising managers in Britain. This article attempts to review and summarise the critical trends and themes in the advances in systematic staff selection over recent years.

THE appointment of a Vice‐Chancellor for the University of Warwick was announced towards the end of 1962. The Registrar was next appointed and then the librarian, who arrived on the scene in July 1963. The building which is described in this article was envisaged in a programme handed to the architects, Messrs. Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall, early in December 1963.

Evidence to date shows a divergence in the methods and approaches used by companies to introduce empowerment and indeed a wide debate as to the meaning and appropriateness of the term itself. The popularity of the concept has led many organisations to “dive in at the deep end”, wanting to experience the benefits of empowerment without perhaps stopping to consider the wider implications and consequences. This paper reports on the approach that one hotel company adopted to re‐introduce empowerment, a previous attempt having failed. It provides an insight into differing perceptions of the meaning of empowerment between employees and managers; the positive and negative experiences of those working in an empowerment culture and the changes required for a renewed attempt at introducing empowerment to be successful. The authors conclude that “quick fix” strategies will rarely be successful and urge the development of a longer‐term, more sustainable, approach.

THERE was a rather remarkable statement made at the Royal Institute of British Architects by Mr. Berwick Sayers last month. He affirmed that so far as the recorded issues of the reference libraries in the municipal libraries of London were concerned, only 8,880 books were consulted daily. This, as the statistical account of twenty‐nine public libraries, shows an average of a fraction over 302 books daily. To some this may seem not an inadequate issue, if all the books recorded are books which the student and the searcher for information have used. The point of the meeting at which the remark was made was that the reference libraries of London should do more in co‐operation with industry, and it was argued by the representatives of ASLIB who took part in the conference that our London reference libraries should be strengthened in the science and technology departments, even at the expense of the lending libraries. The experience of the public librarian seemed to be that few people lived in London near their work; and that they had command of the special libraries in London in a way that provincial industrialists had not, and therefore they did not make any use that mattered of London reference libraries. The Chambers of Commerce in the various boroughs of London consist of small traders as a rule whose main purpose is “to keep down the rates,” and who have very little connection with industry on the scale in the minds of the ASLIB representatives. In short, the chief function of the London public libraries is mainly that of home reading. Ultimately the solution of the reference problem may be the establishment of one or two great regional reference libraries supported by the co‐operation of the boroughs. Co‐operation, however, is in its initial stages yet, and it will probably be some time before such an ideal, if it be an ideal, is achieved.

This article seeks to explore forms of selection practice, focusing on role‐play techniques, which have been introduced in many organizations in an attempt to “objectivize” the selection process by offering a means of assessing task‐specific aptitudes.

This article draws upon an ethnographic study of a call centre in which the researcher underwent the recruitment and selection process to secure work as a precursor to conducting fieldwork within the organization. Whilst there is little precedent for the employment of ethnographic techniques in researching recruitment and selection, we argue such techniques are appropriate to explore the social processes involved in practices such as role‐play. The discussion draws upon fieldwork which was conducted at “CallCentreCo”, who continuously recruit customer service representatives (CSRs) to work in their call centre. CallCentreCo uses role‐playing exercises extensively in the selection of all grades of staff and are argued by CallCentreCo's Human Resource Manager to be essential in the recruitment of CSRs to ensure the selection of suitable candidates and minimize initial attrition rates.

This article makes two contributions: first it provides empirical evidence to explore the basis of structured interviews by revealing how the view that role‐play can “objectivize” the selection process is potentially built upon false assumptions. Second, the article argues that supposedly “objective” practices such as role‐play seek to legitimize the overwhelmingly subjective interview process in order that it may serve purposes beyond initial selection: namely the control of future employees before they even enter the organization.

Although we make no attempt to generalize from such a limited case study, this article raises issues that are likely to be relevant to organizations as they increasingly search for more “effective” selection procedures, and to academic endeavors to critically theorize the purpose and effects of selection for the employment relation.

The originality of this approach lies in the ethnographic study of the interview as a social interaction, the richness of which may be lost in the quantitatively dominated approach to analyzing selection.

The Howard Shuttering Contractors case throws considerable light on the importance which the tribunals attach to warnings before dismissing an employee. In this case the tribunal took great pains to interpret the intention of the parties to the different site agreements, and it came to the conclusion that the agreed procedure was not followed. One other matter, which must be particularly noted by employers, is that where a final warning is required, this final warning must be “a warning”, and not the actual dismissal. So that where, for example, three warnings are to be given, the third must be a “warning”. It is after the employee has misconducted himself thereafter that the employer may dismiss.

The transition from a product driven to market driven culture has enforced changes in management style in previously nationalised companies. This article examines the background to the phenomenon of privatisation in the United Kingdom and explores current practice. The transition to change over two decades has brought about more demanding and value conscious customers along with a technological revolution in information technology. Corporate culture is seen as the litmus test in shaping changes in performance, and a strong culture is an important factor in unifying the social dimensions of an organisation. Privatisation has seen changes emerge in some companies more dominantly than in others. The principal purpose of this paper is to use this background as a building block to describe the detailed empirical research that has been conducted within three previously nationalised companies. This research is reported in the next issue of this journal.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.