Search results

The dynamic environment in which the academic library operates requires explicit links between business strategy and a new management priority including the development of people; this is the focus of human resource development (HRD). It serves the needs of an organization by ensuring that employees’ expertise is state-of-the-art, something that is critical in a period of rapid technological development coinciding with ever-expanding societal needs. HRD can be relied upon to support and shape a wide range of academic library initiatives requiring a competent and engaged workforce by recognizing people as the organization’s most critical asset, one that drives competitive advantage and helps it out-perform the market. Emphasis is placed on developing an organizational context that will attract and develop talented individuals and leaders and keep them engaged. Furthermore, HRD activities must respond to job changes and integrate staff skills sets with the long-term plans and strategies of the organization thus ensuring the efficient and effective use of resources. This chapter explores HRD as a strategic concern of the organization and how it can best serve the organization in the long term. In so doing, it considers how HRD can help the academic library focus resources in those areas where there are strong likelihoods that they can produce substantial improvements in future capacity and performance. This kind of strategic planning helps the organization configure resources within a dynamic competitive environment, thus serving market needs and satisfying stakeholder expectations, helping meet its business purpose and maintain its strategic direction. The case study developed here highlights the need for the effective linkage of HRD and strategic planning for the advancement of the academic library. It suggests the need for developing and implementing both a strategic plan and an HRD plan and developing a culture of strategic human resource development (SHRD) in academic libraries.

This chapter discusses key training challenges that organizations need to confront with the objective of building a robust human resource management system. Given the dynamics of the current business environment, training and development has become an indispensable function in global organizations. Building an effective human capital that contributes to continual organizational growth has become the established norm to survive in a competitive business landscape. However, the training and development function is often rendered ineffective, on account of various bottlenecks existing in the organization. Addressing these bottlenecks is quintessential in ensuring the creation of a performance-driven human capital. The goal of this chapter is to draw attention to the training impediments that hinder organizational growth and to diagnose the underlying causes for the same. This chapter concludes with recommendations that organizational decision-makers can leverage in their quest to strengthen the human capital, by utilizing their training and development infrastructure optimally.

Purpose: Talent management and in particular strategic talent management (STM) has emerged as an important issue for hospitality organisations worldwide. In this chapter, we address some of the complexities evident in hospitality organisations in relation to the practice of STM, the types of internal and external STM issues that arise and both the research and practice implications of pursuing STM in hospitality organisations.

Methodology/Approach: This chapter presents a review of the literature on the wider topic of STM, with particular focus on the integration of issues and themes identified in the hospitality management literature related to STM perspectives.

Findings: We find that STM is a topical issue for hospitality organisations irrespective of size, complexity, or geographic location. However, research that explicitly addresses STM in hospitality is nascent leaving many unanswered questions. The notion of what constitutes STM is shaped by the complexities and values of the hospitality industry itself and its meaning is not necessarily the same as in other industry contexts. However, as yet we do not have sufficient insights to reach conclusions as to what STM truly looks like in hospitality organisations.

Research Implications: Here, we add to the literature, highlighting the need for more research on the many dimensions of STM in hospitality organisations including its antecedents, processes, and outcomes and the extent to which it is different in hospitality organisations compared to multinational corporations and public sector organisations.

Practical Implications: We highlight a number of practical implications around roles, processes, practices, and skillsets to utilise a strategic approach to talent management in hospitality organisations.

Originality/Value: This chapter continues the debate as to the role of STM in hospitality organisations as well as providing a more focussed agenda for both future research and practice. We also analyse and critique the internal and external forces and pressures that shape STM in hospitality organisations.

Human resource is the asset for a nation’s development and growth. The skilful human resource will enhance the nation’s productivity and directly contribute to the economy growth. At the country level, a nation’s human resource development (HRD) policy and human resource trainings schemes will catalyst for the growth of the workforce’s productivity, especially in the Industrial Revolution 4.0 which requires advanced technological knowledge and specialists in particular fields such as digitalisation, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. This chapter discusses the HRD in developed, developing and less-developed countries and raise awareness and attention of organisations as well as nations to develop and train up human resource for the future growth of the countries.

The goal of this study was to test the human capital (HC) theory within the Russian context and explore current HC organizational practices (including training and development, recruitment and selection, compensation, empowerment, diversity, and work/family balance) of Russian enterprises. The data were collected at 270 large, medium, and small enterprises in Moscow and four representative regional centers. The study results suggest that Russian firms tended to emphasize current HC needs, not long-term HC development strategies. The firm size had an effect on differences in training, selection, and compensation practices, with large firms being more long-term oriented. Correlation between elements of the HC management model provided some preliminary evidence that Russian firms tried to coordinate selection, compensation, and training procedures. In addition, firms that empowered their employees were also putting more emphasis on long-term-oriented training, selection, and compensation practices. Finally, there were signs that diversity was gradually becoming an important issue for Russian enterprises of all sizes. However, compared to diversity, companies’ emphasis on helping their employees to deal with the work/family balance issue was much stronger.

The understanding of competency development has changed to learning toward a higher degree of self-organization of the learning process. This shift leads to increased requirements on the communication processes of employees and superiors. It is postulated that the coordination between self-organization and external organization is deficient, so competency development activities often do not lead to the desired outcomes. An empirical study was undertaken in which a total of 106 companies were involved. The study investigated various expectations surrounding self-organization and external organization in large companies as opposed to SME, together with the conditions under which self-organization and external organization occur in these companies. The empirical study comes to the conclusion that large enterprises emphasize the central role of HR development for the innovation capacity of an organization more than SME. There are also different ways of combination of self- and external organization of competency development depending on the enterprise size. In contrast to the given assumption, it could not be identified that managers as HR developers can improve the success of competency development.

Natural disasters represent an increasing threat to businesses, putting at risk their continuity in light of sustainable performance conditions. The present chapter explores the role of organizational resilience and of human capital in manufacturing companies hit by a natural disaster, an earthquake in the current study, by considering performance in the long run. In doing so, a survey has been performed on a sample of 131 manufacturing companies hit by the Emilia earthquake (Italy) in 2012, considering both perceptual data and balance sheet data. This represents a key contribution of this chapter, as extant literature on the impact of resilience on business performance has mainly used perceptual data; conversely, our study, considering balance sheet data, enables a more comprehensive and realistic view of the phenomenon. The sample was selected from the AIDA database, as it includes revenue data that we could add to the perceptual measures obtained by administering a structured questionnaire. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was then employed. The results show the importance of developing adaptive processes that leverage on the organization’s human capital and resilience to respond to adverse exogenous events. More specifically, it has been found that human capital and organizational resilience are profitable to post-disaster economic performance in the long run, supporting the economic sustainability of affected businesses. The implications are related to reinforcing new business solutions and adaptive strategies, looking at both organizational resilience and human capital investment to reach a stable economic business performance in the long-run after a detrimental event.