Search results

Firm-specific human capital (FSHC) has been an integral part of the vocabulary in the strategy field. Many scholars argue that FSHC inhibits employee mobility and drives employee retention at a discount, value appropriation, and firms' competitive advantage. FSHC also plays a central role in the resource-based view of the firm. In recent years, however, a significant debate has emerged on the validity and usefulness of the construct. The purpose of the chapter is to revisit this debate and discuss both challenges and opportunities related to FSHC. In a form of conversation, we take aim at FSHC from different angles and discuss its role as a mobility friction, in value appropriation of established firms, in the context of transitions between paid employment and entrepreneurship, and in the views of practitioners. While we agree that our understanding of the concept of FSHC must evolve, we continue to see its value in our theoretical toolbox.

Integrating interdisciplinary studies with Human Capital Management Accounting (HCMA) refers to the dynamics of organized interdisciplinary action that are transversal or cross-cutting. This approach requires the mastery of a certain number of technical skills and disciplines, as well as the capacity to use them in a process to solve problems of financial performance. This is accomplished through the specific interaction tasks that are performed by each management function and operational unit, which act in real time with others, in the same direction as an organizational team, using a selected risk appetite threshold base.

Putting business fields side by side, (i.e., business disciplines silos, as is normally the case in MBA programs), is not enough to create the transversal interaction dynamic needed for firms to achieve expected financial performance goals. As a result, few graduates today have the cross-cutting or vertical skills required to act, in real time, from their workstation in accordance with the pyramid shape of the organization chart in order to create value.

This chapter presents the results of the interface established by a faculty member in the Accounting Department of the University of San Francisco with a “seasoned leader in the FinTech industry.” It proposes a single portal for employers and HRMs to which the continuing education services of professional training associations, executive education departments of colleges, and MBA schools and universities, can connect to issue the HCMA certificate supplementing their training offerings focused on “Leadership Development”.

Value is one of the most central concepts in mergers and acquisitions (M&As); however, a broad and systematic examination of value’s various connotations and respective uses is yet to be developed. The chapter canvasses wider theory on value and illustrates how its varieties across economics and ethics share common roots through which they supplement each other. It reviews how these forms of value have been used in research on M&As. Studies in strategic management have predominantly used ‘value’ to address shareholder value or have left it undefined by assuming a common understanding of value creation. Research in organisational behaviour and human resources has addressed ‘values’, often through culture, but the focus is largely with the utility of values to value. The authors outline an agenda for future research on value(s) in M&As, whereby it is theorised in integrative, relational, dynamic and pluralistic terms. Studies need to: (i) clearly articulate value(s): for whom? how? and to what effect?; (ii) examine value relations in both social and economic terms, and address the value(s) that are good for a range of internal and external stakeholders; (iii) recognise that at the heart of both value and values are processes and practices of evaluation whereby value(s) are regenerated through multiple contextual positions and contingent relationships, and (iv) explicate the contestation that shapes which values ought to be valued and articulate the ethics inherent in the varieties and values of value and their consequences for a range of M&A constituents.

In the context of worker–firm complementarities, the extant literature has focused primarily on worker–firm dyads that generate additional revenue for the firm. However, we extend the study of worker–firm complementarities by examining matches that create value through the generation of additional nonpecuniary utility for employees. Through this lens, we hypothesize that mobile employees will receive lower wages to offset the benefits they receive from these nonpecuniary complementarities. Further, we hypothesize that star employees who create unique revenue-generating complementarities receive higher wages than otherwise predicted as they can capture a share of the additional revenue they generate. We test this conceptualization using panel data on all US National Basketball Association players from 2000 to 2009. We demonstrate that NBA players accept lower than predicted wages to play for their home teams which reflects worker utility-generating complementarities. We also show that superstars receive higher than predicted wages to play for their home teams, consistent with firm revenue-generating complementarities.

This chapter argues that intra-firm geographic mobility is an understudied mechanism that can help mitigate coordination failures in a geographically distributed organization. The chapter presents an organizing framework on how intra-firm geographic mobility creates value for firms and discusses how intra-firm geographic mobility can create value for individual workers. The chapter concludes by presenting a future research agenda for intra-firm geographic mobility in light of emerging phenomena such as global collaborative patenting by multinationals, temporary colocation of knowledge workers, and nonstandard work.

The past few decades have witnessed a phenomenal progress in our understanding of employee mobility as a critical driver and consequence of various outcomes for individuals, organizations, industries, and economies. In the process, researchers have tackled several important issues in conducting empirical research on employee mobility. This chapter provides a critical discussion of the extant literature focusing on five broad areas: identification of mobility, timing of mobility, outcomes of mobility and their operationalization, model identification, and other related issues. In doing so, this article identifies some of the empirical choices and methodologies adopted in prior mobility studies, evaluates those practices, and suggests areas of improvements for the practice. It is hoped that future studies will benefit from this chapter's insight by building on the best practices from the literature while continuously and successfully tackling the issues that have been challenging the researchers on this increasingly important topic of scholarly inquiry.

In the quest for better construction workforce management, this chapter explored the background of workforce management and related theories, models, and practices. Through a review, the chapter provided meaning to the concept of construction and workforce management. The chapter concluded that while the construction industry worldwide is important to the economic growth of the countries where it operates, the industry’s management of its workforce is challenged by several problems. These problems include the nature of the industry, skill shortage, unhealthy working environment, and poor image of the industry, among others. Also, while the construction industry is rich in diversity, this has been a major source of problems for workforce management. The chapter further revealed that to improve workforce management and attain better-performing construction organisations, careful recruitment, effective training, providing a safe working environment, putting policies to promote diversity, and ensuring innovativeness, among others, are essential.

The multipolar configuration of the current economic context has led management scholars to reconsider the existing theoretical perspectives that explain drivers and effects of mergers and acquisitions (M&As).

The combination of structures, systems, processes and people imposed by M&A is a complex process that needs to be properly managed. This process can be divided into three phases of pre-combination, combination and post-combination. It evidences the dilemma of integrating two distinct firms and preserving their specific identities. In cross-border M&A, differences in organizational cultures increase the complexity of the integrative process and make it difficult for the companies that proceed to the merger to reach the preordained synergies, where the problem linked to the diversity of the national culture is added. A successful integration process allows to treat the elements of diversity as opportunities and not as obstacles.

This chapter aims to make sense of the growing research that examines the role of culture in mergers and acquisitions. We provide a detailed review of the many related but distinct constructs that have been introduced to the literature. While each construct has contributed to our understanding of the role of culture, the lack of connections made among constructs has limited the consolidation of contributions. The review shows what these constructs mean for mergers and acquisitions, what major findings have been discovered, and, most importantly, how constructs interrelate. Our discussion provides several opportunities to foster the needed consolidation of this research.

While there is an increasing understanding of the challenges that can emerge in integration processes of cross-border mergers and acquisitions, there is a scarcity of research on how the different integrative activities should be temporally sequenced. Based on an in-depth analysis of three acquisitions, we find that structural and cultural integration are intertwined. We find that cultural integration will begin only once structural integration is in progress. Cultural differences can, however, impede structural integration if structural integration is done in conflict with the existing culture of the acquired company. Thus, structural integration should come first, but it should be done in appreciation with the acquired company’s existing culture. Cultural change is then facilitated in an iterative manner over time by the new structure. Our chapter contributes to an improved understanding of the temporal dynamics of integration by demonstrating the mutually reinforcing effects of structural and cultural integration in cross-border acquisitions.