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Strategic Human Resource Management (strategic + human_resource_management)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	85%

Selected Abstracts

Skills under threat: the case of HIV/AIDS in the mining industry in Zimbabwe

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 5 2006
Caroline N. Matangi
Abstract The Zimbabwe mining industry is currently battling to arrest further spread of the HIV/AIDS crisis in workplaces, especially its impact on labour productivity. Labour in the closed community of mines has been greatly susceptible to HIV/AIDS infection. The current AIDS incidence in the mine sites is estimated at a weighted average of 15,per,cent amongst miners, with the largest category of workers,the 30,39 years age group,also constituting the worst affected category. Given the current state of the country's economy and consequently its adverse impact on the lifestyle of miners, the pandemic is expected to increase. This paper builds on the work of the ILO (1995) involving a survey of 18 various firms/institutions. The survey was carried out in Zambia in order to assess the impact of HIV/AIDS on the productive labour force. The survey revealed that many of the firms are experiencing irregular work attendance, ,wasted' training as some of the trained workers are constantly ill or die, high medical bills, funeral costs and reduced productivity and profits. An analysis of data on the main causes of death in 1993 shows that at least 61.8,per,cent of deaths could be attributed to causes that are very closely related to HIV/AIDS complications. Based on points highlighted by respondents and analysis of symptoms suffered, it was observed that HIV/AIDS tended to affect most general workers (36.8,per,cent), followed by the lower management (30.9,per,cent) and the middle management (20.6,per,cent). Comparatively, 11.8,per,cent of the deaths in 1993 belonged to the top management. Although it is hard to appreciate the meaning of the figures without knowledge of the number of people in each category, it nevertheless helps to form a clear picture of the impact of HIV/AIDS on industry. This paper seeks to further investigate the impact of HIV/AIDS on the productive labour force, by focusing on one particular industry,mining,using a blend of research methods to collect the data. This paper examines the impact of HIV/AIDS on the productive labour force and management responses. It forms part of the findings of data gathered in 2001 in the mining industry in Zimbabwe, to examine factors affecting management responses to HIV/AIDS in the mine sites. Zimbabwe is a country with a complex historical legacy of mine labour. This phenomenon can largely be attributed to the production oriented nature of the mining industry. Mines focus mainly on mineral extraction and as a result the bulk of mine workers tend to be production workers whose skills have developed over long periods of time. Production workers on mines have a tradition of long-term employment. This phenomenon has meant that labour in the mines is hard to replace as a result of skills, especially tacit knowledge, acquired over many years. Thus while the recent closure of some gold mines, largely due to low commodity prices, has meant that more miners are available in the labour market, this situation has not necessarily eased the process of replacing labour lost to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as certain skills are firm specific. Production workers are predominantly male with the bulk falling in the 35,39 years age group. Most mine workers reside in mine villages, a colonial legacy that ensured miners were close to the workplace. The village system is a system of housing labourers, which demonstrates capitalistic methods of controlling labour and minimising costs. Of significance in this study's background is how the village system has come to be viewed as a factor in the spread of HIV/AIDS in the mining communities, because of its ,closed' nature. It is against this complex historical backdrop that the paper turns to examine the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic on production workers and management responses to the crisis using the Resource Based View of the Firm model (RBV), one of the theories in the Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) tradition. RBV was chosen for this study out of many HRM models that exist, because this theory, in particular, explains why it is advantageous for sites to use their ,unique' firm based resources in order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. Given this rationale it was, therefore, presumed that this theory would best apply in mines battling with the adverse impact of HIV/AIDS on productivity, especially in the light of the harsh national economic climate, which would likely place limitations on response mechanisms. Further, the issue of firm-specific skills was also taken into consideration as an important factor in the mines, limiting their ability to resort to external solutions. Thus, given these factors, RBV was deemed the most appropriate model. The study finds that the pandemic depresses labour productivity through a number of significant ways: increased rate of HIV/AIDS induced absenteeism gradual labour turnover as a result of AIDS induced morbidity; and consequently declining skills availability, particularly firm-specific skills. Maintaining labour productivity in the face of gradually diminishing skills and indisposed labour will be key to softening the adverse economic consequences of the pandemic in the mines. To reduce the threat to labour productivity, mines must find ways of utilising, to the maximum extent practicable, existing skills. Results indicate that a move towards the utilisation of existing miners is the most favoured response mechanism in most mines. Utilising existing miners enables mines from spending financial resources on avoidable recruitment and training and quite often mechanisation, which may not necessarily be compatible with the old infrastructure in certain mines. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

International Strategic Human Resource Management: A Comparative Case Analysis of Spanish Firms in China

MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION REVIEW, Issue 2 2009
Yingying Zhang
abstract This study examines the role of human resources in strategy formulation processes in China's emerging market. Employing a qualitative data driven thematic analysis, we present evidence collected from six comparative case sites of Spanish firms in China. Our findings suggest that high performing firms use a dynamic adaptive logic while lower performing firms use a static structural logic. A dynamic adaptive model of strategic human resource management is identified, emphasizing a fluid and informal process between strategy, human resources and international management. [source]

The glass ceiling in human resources: Exploring the link between women's representation in management and the practices of strategic human resource management and employee involvement

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2008
Shaun Pichler
Research on sex stereotypes suggests that gender bias is an invisible barrier,the so-called glass ceiling,preventing women from breaking into the highest levels of management in business organizations. Using data from a state-based professional HR organization, we investigated this phenomenon in the field of HR management. Building on the lack of fit model of gender discrimination and previous research, we tested two hypotheses: that women in HR are more likely to be concentrated in lower-level managerial positions in organizations that emphasize employee involvement (because of a related emphasis on stereotypically feminine managerial abilities) and that women in HR also are more likely to be concentrated in lower-level managerial positions in organizations that emphasize strategic human resource management (because of a related emphasis on stereotypically masculine characteristics). Our results support the first but not the second hypothesis. Theoretical and practical implications related to the glass ceiling are discussed. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

How leveraging human resource capital with its competitive distinctiveness enhances the performance of commercial and public organizations

HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2005
Abraham Carmeli
Although scholars agree that complex relationships between organizations' actual human resources (i.e., human capital stock) and means of leveraging these resources may influence performance, little empirical work has tested such propositions directly. We collected two primary data sets from privateand public-sector organizations in Israel. The multiplicative interaction between perceived human resources capital and distinctive value derived from that HR capital was significantly related to various measures of perceived and objective organizational performance. Having higher levels of human resources capital was strongly associated with performance only when top managers perceived that these resources provided distinctive value in terms of being highly valuable, inimitable, rare, and nonsubstitutable. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on strategic human resource management and the resource-based view of competitive advantage, as well as for practical efforts to develop firm-specific human resource capital that is inherently distinctive. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source]

The management of managers: A review and conceptual framework

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT REVIEWS, Issue 2 2007
Peter Boxall
The management of managers is an important contemporary concern, but the literature on the issue is not well integrated. This paper reviews key sources on the topic across organizational economics, human resource development and strategic human resource management. It presents a novel interdisciplinary framework for analysing how firms manage senior managers and for guiding future research, arguing that firms adopt different styles to attract,defend, develop,renew and motivate,harvest their senior managerial resource, depending on their contexts and choices that are made in the firm over time. The notion that some styles draw on early identification of élites while others treat management identification as more of an emergent problem is central to the typology. Within each of the styles identified, effectiveness in the management of managers hinges on recognizing and handling certain strategic tensions and problems. [source]