Faculty Research in Progress, 2018-2019

The production of scholarly research continues to be one of the primary missions of the ILR School. During a typical academic year, ILR faculty members published or had accepted for publication over 25 books, edited volumes, and monographs, 170 articles and chapters in edited volumes, numerous book reviews. In addition, a large number of manuscripts were submitted for publication, presented at professional association meetings, or circulated in working paper form. Our faculty\u27s research continues to find its way into the very best industrial relations, social science and statistics journal

Globalisation of HR at Function Level: Exploring the Issues Through International Recruitment, Selection and Assessment Processes

Much of the debate around convergence-divergence is based around comparative analysis of HR systems. However, we need now to combine these insights with work in the field of IHRM on firm-level motivations to optimise, standardise and export HR models abroad. A series of the changes are being wrought on a range of IHRM functions – recruitment, global staffing, management development and careers, and rewards - by the process of globalisation highlighting the difference between globally standardised, optimised or localised HR processes. This paper reports on a study of firm-level developments in international recruitment, selection and assessment, drawing upon an analysis of four case studies each conducted in a different context. Organisations are building IHRM functions that are shifting from the management of expatriation towards supplementary services to the business aimed at facilitating the globalisation process, and this involves capitalising upon the fragmentation of international employees. As HR realigns itself in response to this process of within-function globalisation (building new alliances with other functions such as marketing and IS) the new activity streams that are being developed and the new roles and skills of the HR function carry important implications for the study of convergence and divergence of IHRM practice. Globalisation at firm level revolves around complexity, and this is evidenced in two ways: first, the range of theory that we have to draw upon, and the competing issues that surface depending on the level of analysis that is adopted; and second, the different picture that might emerge depending upon the level of analysis that is adopted. This paper shows that although the field of IHRM has traditionally drawn upon core theories such as the resource-based view of the firm, relational and social capital, and institutional theory, once the full range of resourcing options now open to IHRM functions are considered, it is evident that we need to incorporate both more micro theory, as well as insights from contingent fields in order to explain some of the new practices that are emerging

Introduction to Special Section: Careers in Context

[Excerpt] Career scholars regularly cite Hughes’ (1937: 413) dictum that the study careers as “the moving perspective in which persons orient themselves with reference to the social order, and of the typical sequences and concatenations of office – may be expected to reveal the nature and \u27working constitution\u27 of a society.” Yet the greater part of the careers literature typically ignores this by focusing, largely, on the careers of individuals and influencing factors mainly linked to the person and his or her immediate context, to the neglect of the broader context within which the careers are lived. However, large-scale economic and organizational changes that have affected most industrial societies in recent decades – the rising amount of business activity across national borders (Anderson & Cavanaugh, 2005), the increasingly global arena for entertainment and media, the influence of the internet in economic, social and political affairs, increased labor force participation by women and concomitant changes in family roles, and the emergence of distinctive forms of employment relations across countries (Whitley, 1999; Barley & Kunda, 2004) – make neglect of the social and political contexts in which careers unfold very problematic. These developments have reshaped the multitude of settings in which work careers are lived: the communities of organizations, occupations, geographical areas, and so on. Specifically, the broad social context that provides the canvas on which work careers are painted, rather than the immediate organizational context as discussed, for example, by Johns (2001), is an important, yet partly neglected factor for understanding work careers. The immediate context may, of course, form a link between career and the broader context. However, it is the latter and not the former type of context that is a primary object of interest in this respect. We suggest that research exploring the broad context within which work careers are lived helps us understand better the nature of career in an Internet-based, globalised economy and how these careers, in turn, influence developments in the context

Complexity in daily life – a 3D-visualization showing activity patterns in their contexts

This article attacks the difficulties to make well informed empirically grounded descriptions and analyses of everyday life activity patterns. At a first glance, everyday life seems to be very simple and everybody has experiences from it, but when we try to investigate it from a scientific perspective, its complexity is overwhelming. There are enormous variations in interests and activity patterns among individuals, between households and socio-economic groups in the population. Therefore, and in spite of good intentions, traditional methods and means to visualize and analyze often lead to over-simplifications. The aim of this article is to present a visualization method that might inspire social scientists to tackle the complexity of everyday life from a new angle, starting with a visual overview of the individual's time use in her daily life, subsequently aggregating to time use in her household, further at group and population levels without leaving the individual out of sight. Thereby variations and complexity might be treated as assets in the interpretation rather than obstacles. To exemplify the method we show how activities in a daily life project are distributed among household members and between men and women in a population.household division of labour, time-geography, 3D method, visualization, diaries, everyday life, activity patterns. Complexity in daily life – a 3D-visualization showing activity patterns in their contexts

Intra-family time allocation to housework - French evidence

We analyse new time diary data from France to explore the relationship between economic variables and husbands’ share of housework time. Consistent with both bargaining and specialization models of the family, we find that the greater the husband’s share of labor income, the lower his share of housework time; the greater the wife’s market hours, the lower his housework time, but the larger his share of housework time. Treating market work as endogenous substantially lowers the size of these estimates, but they remain statistically significant. A parsimonious specification based on the specialization model generates estimates for housework share wage elasticities. The own wage elasticity of wives’ housework is -0.3 and the elasticity of husbands’ housework share with respect to wives’ wages is +0.25.Time allocation, intra-family, time use, home production, bargaining, elasticities

Career Development as a Determinant of Organizational Growth: Modelling the Relationship between these Constructs in the Nigerian Banking Industry

Background: Career development is argue to be “an ongoing, formalized effort” engage by organizations in enriching the organization’s human resources in alignment with employees’ and the organization’s needs. Methods: A sample was drawn from First City Monument Bank (FCMB) with two hundred and sixty five respondents. SPSS was used to analyze demographic characteristics of the respondents, while AMOS 21 was adopted for the Structural Equation modeling of the survey model. Results: Many of the associations between the tested variables were strong and positive. However, all the tested independent variables such as reward, recognition, skills, promotion had positive impact on organizational growth, while experience had negative impact. Conclusion: Results support the literature, in terms of the relationships between independent and dependent variables with the exception of experience, which had negative impact on organizational growth. Therefore, management should employ better strategies in retaining their experienced employees, which tends to effect on the organizational growth

The golden handcuffs? Choice, compliance and relocation amongst transnational professionals and executives

People who routinely cross borders for their jobs are often cast as beneficiaries of globalization. But in a world of economic downturns, un- or underemployment as well as political unrest access to an increasingly global market becomes the personal and organisational solution to a host of unwanted happenings. In these circumstances, it therefore becomes less clear whether the heightened mobility of transnational workers is a benefit or indeed a choice. This article examines the onus placed on employees to be geographically mobile for their jobs. Relocation enables organisations to operate in expanding transnational markets and fields; it is therefore a prerequisite of jobs in an increasing number of sectors. Through systematic comparison of the attitudes to mobility of highly skilled employees in a ‘market’ (corporate) and a ‘moral’ (UN) case-study organisation, this article makes a contribution to our understanding of work orientations in transnational institutions. It interrogates the myth of choice of highly skilled movers and identifies the aspirations, contradictions and dilemmas that are associated with relocating for their jobs. Analysis of biographical interviews in tandem with online survey data elucidates the complex ways that the competing repertoires of choice and compliance are woven into transnational narratives