Testing the Limits of Antidiscrimination Law: The Business, Legal, and Ethical Ramifications of Cultural Profiling at Work

While courts have rarely ruled in favor of plaintiffs bringing discrimination claims based on identity performance, legal scholars have argued that discrimination on the basis of certain cultural displays should be prohibited because it creates a work environment that is heavily charged with ethnic and racial discrimination. Drawing upon empirical studies of diversity management, stereotyping, and group dynamics, we describe how workplace cultural profiling often creates an unproductive atmosphere of heightened scrutiny and identity performance constraints that lead workers (especially those from marginalized groups) to behave in less authentic, less innovative ways in diverse organizational settings

CAHRS hrSpectrum (September - October 2002)

HRSpec02_10.pdf: 134 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Towards an understanding of the HRM bundle for lean service in the UK

Applying the principles of lean enables service organisations to improve service delivery processes and provide customers with better value. A growing body of evidence suggests that without a proper utilisation of enabling human resource management (HRM) practices, service organisations fail to orient their employees to conduct lean projects and support its practices. Enabling HRM practices provide supportive activities that assist organisations to direct their workforce to support lean practices. How service organisations utilise enabling HRM practices for that purpose has, as yet, not received significant attention in the existing literature. This study sets out to explore enabling HRM practices to support lean service. It is a scholarly attempt to thoroughly understand how service organisations utilise these practices to support their lean programmes. In doing so, it attempts to answer how relevant enabling HRM practices are to lean service and what those practices are. It also answers how and why these practices are utilised to support lean service. The research is based on five case studies directed towards answering an exploratory research question. Such a question grants the choice of a case study as an appropriate research strategy to collect contextual qualitative data through naturalistic data collection techniques. Purposive sampling is utilised to select the case studies and cross comparison is conducted for in-depth analysis. The case study organisations were adjudged to be at four lean maturity stages according to S-curve theory (Netland and Ferdows, 2016): Beginner , In-transition , Advanced and Cutting-edge , thus providing a richness of data reflecting variety of similar and different service activities and lean maturity stages. A total of thirty-one semi-structured interviews including four to eight interviews from each organisation were conducted. The interviews were supplemented with observation during site visits and multiple sources of secondary data. The data was coded by means of the NVIVO 10 software package. Rigorous thematic analysis was conducted with reference to Braun and Clark s (2006) six-stage approach of theme generation and 15-point checklist for good thematic analysis. As a main contribution, the analysis identifies 18 enabling HRM practices to support lean service: recruitment and selection, role profiling, capacity planning, absence management, retention and release, succession planning, training, career development, performance management, reward and recognition, groups and teamwork, employee voice, employee communication and collaboration, labour relations, employee motivation, employee involvement, employee empowerment and employee health and safety. The novelty of the research lies in providing a comprehensive list of practices which is rooted in contextual data and reflects the real-world context. The identified 18 enabling HRM practices lead to the development of a novel HRM bundle that covers seven areas of activities of people management to support lean service: (i) employee resourcing, (ii) training and development, (iii) performance management, (iv) reward and recognition, (v) employee relations, (vi) employee behaviour and (vii) employee health and safety. Furthermore, the lean-specific HRM bundle is used to develop a PDCA (plan-do-check-act), based on the Deming Cycle (Deming, 2000), showing lean service planning, provision and monitoring. Moreover, the bundle theory, contingency and configuration theories are used to explain bundling HRM practices and justify the findings. Borrowing bundle theory (Casullo, 1988) to justify bundling HRM practices serves as another novelty of this research. It is evidently clear from the findings that this study provides an empirical and grounded understanding of enabling HRM practices to support lean service. The theoretical contribution of the thesis is therefore elaborating, refining and extending the existing understanding of enabling HRM practices to support lean service. In addition, the practical contribution is increasing the awareness of service organisations of the 18 enabling HRM practices, a lean-specific HRM bundle of seven areas of activities of people management and a continuous improvement model that they can utilise to orient their employees to support lean programmes

Gender Bias in Power Relationships: Evidence from Police Traffic Stops

[Excerpt] We test for the existence of gender bias in power relationships. Specifically, we examine whether police officers are less likely to issue traffic tickets to men or to women during traffic stops. Whereas the conventional wisdom, which we document with surveys, is that women are less likely to receive tickets, our analysis shows otherwise. Examination of a pooled sample of traffic stops from five locations reveals no gender bias, but does show significant regional variation in the likelihood of citations. Analysis by location shows that women are more likely to receive citations in three of the five locations. Men are more likely to receive citations in the other two locations. To our knowledge, this study is the first to test for gender bias in traffic stops, and clearly refutes the conventional wisdom that police are more lenient towards women

Atypical working practices in the East Midlands

The aim of this research was to examine the extent and nature of atypical working practices in the East Midlands region and, in particular, look at the way in which these forms of work are likely to encourage employment and economic development in remote rural areas, and more generally, promote social inclusion

Contracting-out and governance mechanisms in the public employment service

The contracting-out of job brokerage and case management services is a major international trend in the reform of the Public Employment Service. Instead of a public agency, private providers are contracted to deliver these services for the jobseekers. Australia and the Netherlands have contracted-out (almost) all of this formerly core public service. The U.K. has introduced so-called Employment Zones, in which private providers are responsible for long-term unemployed and thus replace the public Jobcentre Plus for this target-group. Based on agency theory, the paper analyses and compares the contract management in the three cases with respect to the risk of moral hazard. Differentiating between three distinct governance mechanisms (incentives, information and control), the paper shows the requirement of an integrated approach to contract management. -- Das Contracting-out der öffentlichen Arbeitsvermittlung und des Fallmanagements für Langzeitarbeitslose ist eine der wesentlichen internationalen Entwicklungen in der Reform der öffentlichen Arbeitsverwaltung. Statt einer öffentlichen Behörde werden dabei private Anbieter vertraglich beauftragt, diese Dienstleistungen für Arbeitssuchende zu erbringen. Australien und die Niederlande sind bei dieser Auslagerung ehemals öffentlicher Dienstleistungen besonders weit gegangen. Großbritannien hat so genannte Employment Zones eingerichtet, in denen private Anbieter für Langzeitarbeitslose zuständig sind und somit die Leistungen des Jobcentre Plus für diese Zielgruppe ersetzen. Ausgehend von der Prinzipal-Agent-Theorie analysiert und vergleicht der Aufsatz das Vertragsmanagement in den drei Ländern hinsichtlich des Moral Hazards. Ein effektives Governance-Konzept erfordert, dass die drei wesentlichen Steuerungsinstrumente (Anreiz-, Informations- und Kontrollmechanismen) zu einem integrierten Vertragsmanagement zusammengeführt werden.

Tangible and intangible rewards in service industries: problems and prospects

Willingness and readiness of people to do their jobs are among the key factors of a successful enterprise. In XXI century intellectual human labour is gaining unprecedented value and is being developed actively. The demand for intellectual labour calls forth an increasing number of jobs and professions that require an extensive preparation, a large number of working places, high level of integration of joint human efforts, growth of social welfare. These trends are becoming ever more pervasive and are spreading widely in service industries, and that explains the rapid development of the latter when compared to the traditional areas of human activity. In its turn, it heightens the need for staff in service companies, supported by significant personnel turnover and a certain shortage of skilled professionals. These circumstances determine the need for developing a new concept of fostering staff motivation at the enterprises in the sphere of services. In order to reach the stated purpose while conducting our research into tourism and hospitality industry, as well as retail chains, we have examined the problems that arise in the process of staff motivation, and studied the foreign practice of motivating staff in hotels. The obtained analysis results enabled us to work out practical recommendations on improvement of the mechanism of tangible and intangible rewards in service companies, which are based on external and internal motivational factors. Additional attention in the article is paid to the statement that financial incentives should be based on key performance indicators (KPI). We give a detailed consideration to the classification of internal motivation incentives of the staff according to the terms of their realization, and give a schematic representation of the performance dynamics of the internal motivation model in service businesse

Time Orientation, Rational Choice and Deterrence: an Information Systems Perspective

The present study examines General Deterrence Theory (GDT) and its parent, Rational Choice Theory (RCT), in an information security setting, assessing the behavioral intent to violate organizational policy under varying levels of certainty, severity and celerity of negative sanction. Also assessed is the individual computer user\u27s time orientation, as measured by the Consideration of Future Consequences (CFC) instrument (Strathman et. al, 1994). How does rational consideration of violation rewards influence the impact of sanctions on individuals? How does time orientation impact intent to violate security policy? How do these operate in an IS context? These questions are examined by assessing the responses of university students (N = 443) to experimental manipulations of sanctions and rewards. Answering vignettes with the factorial survey method, intent to violate is assessed in a setting of Internet piracy of electronic textbooks while being monitored by computer security systems. Findings show that, although traditional GDT variables and reward impact intent to violate, CFC does not cause the hypothesized moderating effect on these variables. However, post-hoc analysis reveals a direct effect of time orientation on behavioral intent, as well as a weak moderating effect opposite of the hypotheses, indicating increased time orientation positively moderates, rather than negatively moderates, the impact of reward on intent to violate. Implications for theory and practice, and future research directions, are discussed