The Role of Human Resource Management in Achieving Organisational Agility

Whilst uncertainty and change has always been the focal point of strategic management theories, the increasing rate of change and uncertainty that organisations have been experiencing during the past few decades has stimulated new approaches to the strategic management of firms. ‘Agility’ has been introduced as an appropriate paradigmatic approach to integrative strategy making ((Doz and Kosonen, 2008, 2010; McGrath, 2013a, 2013b; Sharifi, 2014). The concept has been considered as providing a comprehensive and cohesive platform for addressing the new conditions in the business environment, epitomised in notions such as hyper-competition, hyper-turbulence, and the continuously morphing business environment, through the perpetual process of altering and adjusting the firm’s direction and courses of action (Doz and Kosonen, 2008). The main aim behind the concept is to maintain strategic supremacy and competitiveness by anticipating and taking advantage of change ((D'Aveni, 1994; Thomas, 1996; Doz and Kosonen, 2007; Jamrog et al., 2006), and coping with and surviving unexpected changes (Zhang and Sharifi, 2000). Agile organisations rely on a series of agility capabilities such as strategic sensitivity, decision making prowess, learning aptitude and resource fluidity and flexibility (Hamel and Prahalad, 1993; Dyer and Shafer, 2003; Doz and Kosonen, 2008; Lengnick-Hall and Beck, 2009), many of which are human-related. A review of the agility literature revealed that achieving agility, similar to other value-based management philosophies, is heavily dependent upon various human factors such as Human Resources (HR) strategy, management approach and the prevailing culture of an organisation (Harper and Utley, 2001; Street et al., 2003; Dyer and Ericksen, 2006). However, the review of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) literature indicated that the SHRM studies have not responded to the agility agenda, thus, little is known about human resource management strategies and systems enabling organisational agility. In an effort to fill this gap, this research has focused on exploring the people aspects of organisational agility aiming at: 1. Identifying the HRM critical roles in developing organisational agility 2. Developing a theoretical model for crafting and implementing a HR Strategy which assists organisations in acquiring agile attributes. The conceptual model delineates the key constructs and features of an Agility-Oriented Human Resource Strategy (AOHRS). The research was conducted through exploratory qualitative research, collecting data mainly through semi-structured interviews with HR directors, agility professionals and senior managers from 17 large public and private organisations in the UK. The research explicated the need and developed a conceptual framework for AOHRS, which gives explicit attention to an array of external environment forces. The framework proposes the need for ongoing reinterpretation of contextual information, frequent review of necessary individual and organisation-wide skills portfolio and capabilities profiles, and frequent re-evaluation of HR principles, policies and practices-in-use to reflect the persistent uncertainty and continuously morphing business conditions. The framework also offers for a dynamic HR system which can analyse capability needs continuously and have appropriate policies and practices in place to easily and quickly reconfigure the firms’ human assets. The study contributes to the knowledge in the field of SHRM and organisational agility by presenting a comprehensive conceptual framework for AOHR strategy, complemented by an expansive definition for an Agility-Oriented SHRM suitable for an uncertain business environment. As part of this, the attributes and capabilities of the agile workforce, a series of Agility-Oriented HR Principles and a series of widely-adopted Agility-Oriented HR Practices are also empirically identified in addition to the characteristics and dimensions of an Agile HR Function

The minimum wage and restaurant prices

Using both store-level and aggregated price data from the food away from home component of the Consumer Price Index survey, we show that restaurant prices rise in response to an increase in the minimum wage. These results hold up when using several different sources of variation in the data. We interpret these findings within a model of employment determination. The model implies that minimum wage hikes cause employment to fall and prices to rise if labor markets are competitive but potentially cause employment to rise and prices to fall if labor markets are monopsonistic. Therefore, our empirical results appear to provide evidence against the hypothesis that monopsony power is important for understanding the small observed employment responses to minimum wage changes.Labor market ; Wages ; Wages - Restaurants

Product market evidence on the employment effects of the minimum wage

We calibrate a model of labor demand to infer the employment response to a change in the minimum wage in the food away from home industry. Assuming a perfectly competitive labor market, the model predicts a 2.5 to 3.5 percent fall in employment in response to a 10 percent minimum wage change. We then introduce monopsony power in local labor markets. We identify the extent of monopsony power using information on the degree to which minimum wage cost shocks are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Whereas the competitive model implies that employment falls and prices rise in response to an increase in the minimum wage, the monopsony model potentially implies that employment can rise and prices fall in response to an increase in the minimum wage. Previous research shows that prices rise in response to an increase in the minimum wage. We show that this price response is consistent with the prediction of the competitive model. Calibrating the full model, we can place fairly tight bounds on the elasticity of demand for labor with the most plausible parameter values suggesting a 2 to 3 percent loss in employment in reaction to a 10 percent increase in the minimum wage.Wages ; Employment (Economic theory)

The effects of human capital on the productivity of smes in Catalonia

La actual crisis económica ha reabierto el debate sobre la importancia de la productividad empresarial en el crecimiento económico de una región. Es en este contexto que el análisis de los factores que contribuyen en la mejora de la productividad empresarial se ha convertido en un elemento esencial, especialmente en las regiones con bajos niveles de productividad, como por ejemple Cataluña. El objetivo de esta tesis es analizar los efectos del capital humano en la productividad empresarial en el contexto de las pequeñas y medianas empresas Catalanas, considerando la posible existencia de sinergias entre el capital humano y otros factores productivos como pueden ser el capital tecnológico o las nuevas prácticas organizativas del trabajo. Adicionalmente, esta tesis también incluye un análisis sobre como las pequeñas y medianas empresas ajustan sus niveles de capital human con la finalidad de dar una mejor respuesta al nuevo contexto competitivo con el que se enfrentan.The debate over the relevance of firm productivity to economic growth has been reviewed as a consequence of the current economic crisis. In this context, the analysis of elements that contribute to improve firm productivity becomes more important, especially in regions with low productivity levels, such as Catalonia. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the effects of human capital on firm productivity in the context of Catalan SMEs, taking into account the existent synergies between human capital and other production factors such as, technological capital or the new work organisational practices. Additionally, this thesis also includes an analysis of how SMEs adjust their human capital levels in order to give a better answer to the new competitive context

Losing Control Again? Power and the quality of working life

Talk of power and work seems passé, an unhelpful memory of battles that have long since been settled. This paper argues that far from having been superseded, we need a view of power to understand many prominent changes in work and working life. The imbalance of power remains a fact of life in the employment relationship in the 21st century, just as it was in the 19th and 20th. However, the responses society makes to it are radically different. For example, the solution to the power imbalance is no longer simply a matter of trade unions and collective bargaining, but is now seen as involving skills, individual employment rights, management practices that emphasise empowerment and autonomy, and, to a lesser extent, the implementation of technology in places of work. Our understanding of the circulations and exercise of power is more complex than it once was as a result

Family Structure Changes and Children´s Health, Behavior, and Educational Outcomes

More and more children do not grow up in traditional nuclear fam- ilies. Instead, they grow up in single-parent households or in fami- lies with a step-parent. Hence, it is important to improve our under- standing of the impact of "shocks" in family structure due to parental relationship dissolution on children. In this study I empirically test whether children are traumatized both in the short and the long run by shocks in the family structure during childhood. I focus on edu- cational, behavioral, and health outcomes. A population sample of Danish children born in January to May 1985 is used for the analysis. The empirical cross-sectional analysis indicates a negative relation be- tween the number of family structure changes and children’s health, behavior, and educational outcomes. These results are con…rmed by a di¤erences-in-di¤erences analysis of health outcomes. This suggests that there is not only a selection e¤ect, but also a causal e¤ect on children of shocks in the family structure.Family structure; child outcomes; health; crime; education

Minimum Wages and Employment: A Review of Evidence from the New Minimum Wage Research

We review the burgeoning literature on the employment effects of minimum wages - in the United States and other countries - that was spurred by the new minimum wage research beginning in the early 1990s. Our review indicates that there is a wide range of existing estimates and, accordingly, a lack of consensus about the overall effects on low-wage employment of an increase in the minimum wage. However, the oft-stated assertion that recent research fails to support the traditional view that the minimum wage reduces the employment of low-wage workers is clearly incorrect. A sizable majority of the studies surveyed in this monograph give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects, both for the United States as well as for many other countries. Two other important conclusions emerge from our review. First, we see very few - if any - studies that provide convincing evidence of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from those studies that focus on the broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment effects. Second, the studies that focus on the least-skilled groups provide relatively overwhelming evidence of stronger disemployment effects for these groups.

Minimum Wages and Employment: A Review of Evidence from the New Minimum Wage Research

We review the burgeoning literature on the employment effects of minimum wages—in the United States and other countries—that was spurred by the “new minimum wage research†beginning in the early 1990's. The wide range of existing estimates makes it difficult for us to draw broad generalizations about the implications of the new minimum wage research. Clearly, no consensus now exists about the overall effects on low-wage employment of an increase in the minimum wage. However, the oft-stated assertion that this recent research fails to support the traditional view that the minimum wage reduces the employment of low-wage workers is clearly incorrect. The overwhelming majority of the studies surveyed in this paper give a relatively consistent (although not always statistically significant) indication of negative employment effects of minimum wages. In addition, among the papers we view as providing the most credible evidence, almost all point to negative employment effects. Moreover, the evidence tends to point to disemployment effects of minimum wages in the United States as well as many other countries. Two potentially more important conclusions emerge from our review. First, we see very few—if any—cases where a study provides convincing evidence of positive employment effects of minimum wages, especially from studies that focus on broader groups (rather than a narrow industry) for which the competitive model predicts disemployment effects. Second, when researchers focus on the least-skilled groups most likely to be adversely affected by minimum wages, we regard the evidence as relatively overwhelming that there are stronger disemployment effects for these groups.Minimum wage; Employment

Early Labour Market Returns to College Subjects

This paper aims at estimating early labour market outcomes of Italian university graduates across college subjects. We devote great attention to endogenous selection issues using alternative methods to control for potential self-selection associated with the choice of the degree subject in order to unravel the causal link between college major and subsequent outcomes in the labour market. Our results suggest that “quantitative” fields (i.e. Sciences, Engineering and Economics) increase not only the speed of transition into the first job and employment probability but also early earnings, conditional on employment.University to work transition; College subject; Self-selection; Returns to education

Organizational Change in French Manufacturing: What Do We Learn From Firm Representatives and From Their Employees?

In this paper, we use a French matched employer-employee survey, the COI survey, conducted in 1997, to describe the general features of organizational change in manufacturing firms with more than 50 employees. In a first section, we explore the methodological issues associated with the building up of a statistical measure of organizational change, we describe the COI survey and we present the set of firm level and employee level variables that we have selected to investigate organizational change. In a second section, we present the results of two correspondence analysis, one conducted on a sample of 1462 firms from the COI survey and the other one conducted on the sample of 2049 blue collar workers affiliated to those firms. On one hand, using the firm level section of the survey, we show that all types of new organizational practices are positively correlated with one another. On the other hand, at the blue collar level, three main dimensions discriminate between jobs: the intensity of involvement in information processing and decision, the intensity of constraints weighing on the content and rhythm of work and the orientation of information and production flows: either pushed by colleagues or pulled by the market. We also find that blue collars cannot develop a high level of involvement in information processing and decisions and have at the same time their work rhythm fixed by heavy technical constraints whereas high time pressure imposed on work rhythm by the market is positively correlated with such an involvement. Finally, if we correlate firm level and worker level variables, we find that an increase in the use of 'employee involvement' and 'quality' practices by the firm is positively correlated both with a higher level of blue collars' involvement in information processing and decision and with a higher level of technical constraints, production flows being pushed by colleagues rather than pulled by the market. The mapping of firm level responses stemming from our first correspondence analysis has been used to select 4 firms in different areas of the statistical universe and belonging to the with executives from these firms and plant visit are used to check the quality of our statistical data and to better understand our descriptive results.