LEADING THOUGHTS

Writing in Human Resource Management Review, Mark Lengnick-Hall and his U of Texas at San Antonio colleagues show how the concept of strategic human resource management (SHRM) has evolved over the past 30 years. SHRM has been defined as “those activities affecting the behaviour of individuals in their efforts to formulate and implement the strategic needs of business.” It is the overall framework that determines the shape and delivery of individual HR strategies — big-picture HR.

Lengnick-Hall’s historical analysis is worthwhile reading for those interested in the evolution of ideas. What is particularly useful for practitioners, though, is his size-up of the crucial SHRM questions that still need answers.

There is not much solid research, for example, showing how organizations fit HR system components into corporate strategies (“vertical fit”). Even less is known about how to move in the opposite direction and convert HR capabilities into strategic competencies.

Measuring “horizontal fit” of an HR system presents special challenges. Figuring this out means teasing apart what is intended with what actually happens. “For example, many organizations have pay-for-performance systems that are sabotaged by managers in implementation,” writes Lengnick-Hall. “Perhaps a better approach to measuring internal fit is by surveying employees regarding whether or not they receive consistent messages across the various levels of the HR system.”

Given that organizations today pursue multiple strategies across many business units, Lengnick-Hall suggests researchers focus on SHRM strategy at the corporate level rather than the business level. Here’s one of his research questions: “How can SHRM contribute to crafting the underlying commonalities that enable diversified firms to leverage their infrastructures and create synergies across products and markets?”

Other areas ripe for research:

• The intersection between knowledge-based advantages and human resource systems
• SHRM applied to the supply chain: “Do organizations in a supply chain coordinate their HR activities in a way that benefits the entire “ecosystem”? Do supply chains that have a SHRM focus gain a competitive advantage over supply chains that have little or no coordination among HR activities across member organizations?”
• The human elements of SHRM: “the impact of diversified HR practices for distinct groups of employees, the fatigue effects associated with a focus on continuous learning and continuous improvement, seeing employees as resources to be leveraged rather than resources to be nurtured, and a number of other related concerns that arise from a limited understanding of the boundaries for popular SHRM practices.”

Strategic Human Resource Management: The Evolution of the Field, Mark Lengnick-Hall et al; Human Resource Management Review (19 (2009) 64–85)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

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In this video interview with The McKinsey Quarterly (biz journal of McKinsey & Company), Stanford U Professor Robert Sutton talks about how, in tough economic times, leaders/supervisors experience the “toxic tandem.” On the one hand, people in power tend to be oblivious to the needs and actions of people with less power. On the other, subordinates are hyper vigilant; they closely watch the boss for cues and clues as to what is really going down (“Am I next on the chopping block?”).

I presented the ideas to a group of executives. And this guy walks up to me and he starts describing his executive vice president and how one of the secretaries walked up to him and said, “When are the layoffs going be?” And he says, “What?” And then she went to explain. She said, “Well, it’s an ‘interesting shoes’ day for you.”

What this guy has a reputation of doing is he can’t look people in the eye when he’s upset about stuff, so he would always be looking at his shoes. They were saying, “The boss is having ‘interesting shoes’ day.” So from just the fact the guy walked around not looking anybody in the eye, she went straight up to him. So that to me is a pretty good sign he was oblivious to that, right?

The antidote for the toxic tandem, says Sutton, is prediction, understanding, control, and compassion. “Prediction”: Give assurance where you can and don’t overpromise. “Understand”: Make the effort to clearly communicate  the situation in ways that people will understand. “Control”: Give people a measure of control over the way layoffs happen. And “compassion”?: Have a heart, buddy.

As for dealing with the psyche of those who survive layoffs, Sutton says the key is fairness. “When they see that it’s fair,,” he says, “they are more likely to stay loyal, suffer less psychological damage, and also feel more guilty and work even harder to help you.”

Link to Bob Sutton’s excellent blog

A good argument can be made that the key reason a new initiative fails is employees’ perception that their organization is not ready for change. If that’s the case, what can change agents do to get employees to believe that the organization is indeed primed and ready? Researchers Inta Cinite and Linda Duxbury (Carleton U) and Chris Higgins (U of Western Ontario) developed an empirically-tested diagnostic to do just that.

As a basis, the researchers started with the concept of PORC, “perceived organizational readiness for change.” Developed back in the 1970s, PORC defines employees’ belief that the organization not only can initiate change but also engages in practices that will lead to successful implementation. They then developed a way to measure PORC in public sector organizations, based on research from five organizations that had initiated transformational change. Projects included a shift in the strategic direction toward a higher degree of transparency, a shift from a command and control management style to one that was based on employee empowerment, a change in reporting relationships, and two organizational restructuring efforts.

This is what they came up with:

“Organizations that want to be perceived by their employees to be ready for change should pay close attention to the behaviours of their leaders, change agents, immediate supervisors at all levels, organizational practices around the change, and how these practices impact people’s daily work.” The researchers suggest that managers who have direct reports should be well equipped to communicate change to their staff and provide the necessary support.

“Organizations are judged to be not ready for change due to poor communication practices when employees perceive that the outcomes, benefits and reasons for the change are not well explained and when employees do not understand the vision behind the change.”

Employees’ perceptions are also informed by the impact the change is thought to have on
their work. They will remain skeptical of change if: old duties are not phased out when new ones are assigned; they are discouraged from saying ‘no’ to work; and they are assigned heavy workloads that hinder them from getting involved in the change initiative.

Measurement of Perceived Organizational Readiness for Change in the Public Sector, by Inta Cinite, Linda E. Duxbury, and Chris Higgins; British Journal of Management, Vol. 20, 265–277 (2009)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

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I was just rereading an interview that the Gallup Management Journal conducted with behavioural economist Alan Krueger, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Krueger was talking about how the pay structure has to be perceived as fair if an organization wants to get maximum performance out of employees.

GMJ: How fair does it have to be if it’s secret?

Krueger: That’s a good question, and I’ve done a little bit of research on how much employees know about what their fellow workers are paid. I once did a survey with employees at a non-union service company. We asked employees to identify another worker and then tell us how much they thought that other worker was paid. Most of the time, they couldn’t or wouldn’t guess. It’s a taboo subject, and not delving into it may be one way in which employees cope with the sensitivity of the issue. By the way, this was a fairly enlightened, progressive company. I think one way in which workers find it easier to work with each other is not to even speculate on those subjects.

GMJ: So do issues of pay hold the same power in companies where people do know how much everyone else is making, such as union shops?

Krueger: I suspect that morale suffers. I think there are probably reasons why the social norms developed that discourage employees from discussing pay and employers from bringing it up. But I think employees do want their pay structure to be perceived as fair in case information leaks out. It is also interesting to note that unionized workers report being less satisfied with their jobs despite their higher pay, on average.

Creating or performing art can be a powerful way to develop managerial and leadership awareness and skills. It can also be a flavour-of-the-month technique that is used as a novelty with little understanding of how it may benefit individuals.

Writing in the Academy of Management Learning & Education, Steven S. Taylor (Worcester Polytechnic) and Donna Ladkin (Cranfield U) offer a model of four unique processes underpinning arts-based management development methods.

Skills transfer: development of artistic skills that can be applied in organizational settings (medical residents being taught theatre skills to increase their clinical empathy). “Arts-based methods allow managers to feel the experience of those skills rather than think about them, such as when theatrical improvisation exercises are used to get managers to feel what it is like to listen deeply and be listened to deeply.”

Projective technique: the output of artistic endeavors allows participants to reveal inner thoughts and feelings that may not be accessible through conventional means (managers building 3-D representations of their org strategy using LEGO bricks). “Two managers can have a discussion in which they differ about what an image that has been created means in a way that doesn’t make them feel defensive but rather fosters learning about each others’ perspective.”

Illustration of essence: participants can apprehend the “essence” of a concept, situation, or tacit knowledge in greater depth than conventional methods (viewing the film Twelve O’Clock High to illustrate key leadership lessons). “Reading and seeing Henry V performed and engaging in extended discussion of leadership as Shakespeare has portrayed it can help a manager have a much more complex and nuanced understanding of leadership in a way that is based in a felt, emotional, personal connection rather than through an abstract, intellectual theorization.”

Making: creating art can foster a deeper experience of personal presence and connection (MBA students taking art classes to enhance their creativity). “It is a form of personal development that is not tied directly to specific organizational outcomes, but rather is undertaken with more generic long-term goals in mind. Thus we can imagine arts-based programs being included as part of wellness initiatives aimed at the long-term health and development of employees.”

The authors caution that not all arts-based techniques are the same. Managers engaging with Shakespearean plays experience something different from those making masks that represent their leadership styles. Using their model, trainers can select the right art form for their learning objective.

Understanding Arts-Based Methods in Managerial Development, by Steven S. Taylor and Donna Ladkin; Academy of Management Learning & Education (2009, Vol. 8, No. 1, 55–69)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

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The immediate days after the mid-March switch to daylight saving time (DST) may be the most perilous of the entire year.

Researchers Christopher Barnes and David Wagner of Michigan State University found that the number of workplace accidents jumps after the DST changes every March, when an hour of sleep is lost as clocks are moved ahead.

Using U.S. Department of Labor and Mine Safety and Health Administration data, they found that the switch to DST resulted in 40 minutes less sleep for American workers, a 5.7 percent increase in workplace injuries, and nearly 68 percent more work days lost to injuries.

But they found no significant increase in workplace accidents or sleep loss when the clocks were set back an hour in November.

The study was presented at the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology’s annual conference in March, and will be published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

photo credit: Phillie Casablanca

It is a classic wedge issue in worker-friendy jurisdictions: do tough labour laws protect the powerless or create inefficiencies by limiting an employer’s ability to negotiate or terminate labour contracts? In the world of public and academic opinion, the latter wins out.

But in a working paper, Viral V. Acharya (London Business School, NYU-Stern, and CEPR), Ramin Baghai-Wadji, and Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian argue that stringent labour laws can actually spur innovation because they make it hard for companies to punish employees for short-term failures.

Using patents and citations as proxies for innovation, they provide empirical evidence that laws governing dismissal of employees motivate firms to pursue value-enhancing innovation.

They find that while the overall effect of stringent labour laws is to dampen economic growth, laws that govern dismissal of employees are an exception: stringent laws governing dismissal actually promote economic growth.

“We know from the tenure-track system for academic appointments that there is a trade-off between promoting innovative research by granting faculty a certain period over which their job is guaranteed and entrenching them for too long,” they write. “This paper showed that this relationship between innovation and ease with which employees can be dismissed by firms exists even in the corporate sector.”

Those who decry the use of stringent labour laws still have plenty of academic evidence to support their cause. Researchers have found, for example, that heavier labour regulations dampen labor market participation, investment, productivity, and output, and increase the likelihood of value-reducing major asset sales.

Labor Laws and Innovation, by Viral V. Acharya, Ramin Baghai-Wadji, and Krishnamurthy V. Subramanian, NYU Working Paper No. FIN-08-034

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

Executive coaching has become a hugely popular management development technique. The International Coaching Federation alone boasts 17,000 professional coaches from more than 95 countries. But research on what makes coaching a successful development process has not kept pace. Not even close.

Louis Baron and Lucie Morin (U of Quebec at Montreal) set out to fill that vacuum. Choosing to focus on the working relationship between coach and “coachee”, the researchers collected survey data from two samples: 73 managers in a large North American manufacturing company who received executive coaching for a period of eight months, and 24 coaches. The coaches were company executives participating in a coaching certification program.

Results indicate that the quality of the coach–coachee relationship is a prerequisite for coaching effectiveness and an important factor in the development of the client’s “self-efficacy.” (Self-efficacy is the belief that one is capable of performing in a certain manner to attain certain goals.) Particularly significant was the coaches’ ability to facilitate learning: establishing a development plan, tracking learning progress, using a structured approach, making connections, and identifying obstacles.

On the client or coachee side, the more a manager is motivated to apply newly developed skills in her work and the higher is her perception of supervisory support, the better the coaching relationship.

“Our results . . . underline the importance, when implementing internal executive coaching programs, of working with future coaches on ways to favor the development of a good working relationship,” the authors write. “Certification programs should sensitize coaches on the working relationship, by making them conscious of how they influence its development and the obstacles they may encounter.”

The Coach–Coachee Relationship in Executive Coaching: A Field Study, by Louis Baron and Lucie Morin; Human Resource Development Quarterly (vol. 20, no. 1, Spring 2009)

Email me for a copy of this paper: Alan [at] AlanMorantz.com

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