The hr specialist as an agent of change: skills that open up a place at the company's top table

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the role of human-resource (HR) specialists as change agents and the competencies they need in order to execute this role. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on the HR literature, the paper enumerates the skills that HR specialists should seek to acquire in order to make them more valuable members of their organizations' top teams during periods of change. Findings – The paper highlights the importance of culture management, effective relationship and communication skills, good human-resource development practices, performance-management skills, value-chain knowledge, conflict-management skills and the ability to use the latest information technology. Practical implications – The paper urges HR specialists to be actively involved in operational matters, so they can understand more fully the relevant issues and assist line managers in improving efficiency. Social implications – The paper explains how today's volatile business environment makes it more important than ever for HR people to be able to guide their organizations’ change-management initiatives. Originality/value – The paper reveals ways in which HR specialists can play a more strategic role in their organizations

Good Software Development Processes Lead to Harmonious Project Teams Which in Turn Lead to Effective Project Performance

The modem world relies on computers in almost every facet of life. With the explosion of Information Technology, software development has become an important process. However, from the beginning, this process has suffered and continues to suffer from a number of problems. If these problems are not rectified, they can jeopardise projects and lead to project failure. Project failure results in a project being delivered: • without satisfying the functional and non-functional requirements requested by the user or customer • beyond the agreed schedule and/or • over budget. Research indicates that practising good software development processes (SDPs) can override these problems or at least minimise their impact, however the human element of group dynamics cannot be ignored, Demanding disciplined SDPs will lead to project team harmony and this will result in the improvement of product quality, productivity, time to market and customer satisfaction. This research established the relationship between the practice of good SDPs and team harmony and showed that good software development processes lead to harmonious project teams which in turn leads to effective project performance. Team harmony included the presence of constructive conflict and showed that the management of destructive conflict could minimise its impact or even channel it into constructive outcomes. The subjects of this research were third year undergraduate computer science students at Edith Cowan University involved in a year-long software engineering project. Data was collected through questionnaires and an interview and later analysed using the Spearman’s rank correlation against the project team final marks. The outcome of this study is that good software development processes do indeed lead to harmonious project teams, which in tum lead to effective project performance and favourable outcomes

Team Learning: A Theoretical Integration and Review

With the increasing emphasis on work teams as the primary architecture of organizational structure, scholars have begun to focus attention on team learning, the processes that support it, and the important outcomes that depend on it. Although the literature addressing learning in teams is broad, it is also messy and fraught with conceptual confusion. This chapter presents a theoretical integration and review. The goal is to organize theory and research on team learning, identify actionable frameworks and findings, and emphasize promising targets for future research. We emphasize three theoretical foci in our examination of team learning, treating it as multilevel (individual and team, not individual or team), dynamic (iterative and progressive; a process not an outcome), and emergent (outcomes of team learning can manifest in different ways over time). The integrative theoretical heuristic distinguishes team learning process theories, supporting emergent states, team knowledge representations, and respective influences on team performance and effectiveness. Promising directions for theory development and research are discussed

Cultural diversity and information and communication technology impacts on global virtual teams: An exploratory study.

Modern organizations face many significant challenges because of turbulent environments and a competitive global economy. Among these challenges are the use of information and communication technology (ICT), a multicultural workforce, and organizational designs that involve global virtual teams. Ad hoc teams create both opportunities and challenges for organizations and many organizations are trying to understand how the virtual environment affects team effectiveness. Our exploratory study focused on the effects of cultural diversity and ICT on team effectiveness. Interviews with 41 team members from nine countries employed by a Fortune 500 corporation were analyzed. Results suggested that cultural diversity had a positive influence on decision‐making and a negative influence on communication. ICT mitigated the negative impact on intercultural communication and supported the positive impact on decision making. Effective technologies for intercultural communication included e‐mail, teleconferencing combined with e‐Meetings, and team rooms. Cultural diversity influenced selection of the communication media

A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Face-to-Face and Virtual Communication: Overcoming the Challenges

Virtual communication has become the norm for many organizations (Baltes, Dickson, Sherman, Bauer, & LaGanke, 2002; Bergiel, Bergiel, & Balsmeier, 2008; Hertel, Geister, & Konradt, 2005). As technology has evolved, time and distance barriers have dissolved, allowing for access to experts worldwide. The reality of business today demands the use of virtual communication for at least some work, and many professionals will sit on a virtual team at some point (Dewar, 2006). Although virtual communication offers many advantages, it is not without challenges. This article examines the costs and benefits associated with virtual and face-to-face communication, and identifies strategies to overcome virtual communication\u27s challenges

Causes, Effects, and Remedies in Conflict Management

While workplace conflicts have been widely studied in the literature, this researchprovides a holistic view of the causes and effects of such, and how managers or amanagement can resolve the conflicts among their teams and organization througha detailed, multidimensional framework carried out on one of the biggest textilefirms of Pakistan. With an initial sample of 145 respondents, 37 questionnaireswere dropped because of invalid and incomplete answers; therefore, the studywas carried out on 108 respondents. Conflicts are a part of human nature, butmanagement should play an important role in dealing with these issues, as therecan be enormous chances of conflicts due to a diverse workforce. Conflict alsoresults in poor work performance and low productivity; therefore, it’s suggestedto create teams or groups which may encourage a competitive culture in theorganization. Additionally, a few remedies are identified, which may resolve someissues; managers must look at those techniques for a better culture.&nbsp

Conflict Resolution in E-HRM Environments

There have been studies on conflict resolutions but many focused on regional inter-tribe and international conflicts between or among nations of the world. Only very few have written about industrial conflict recently, even these few did not touch the mechanism of resolving conflicts in the organization in depth. Therefore, this article will focus on various conflict resolution mechanisms and the three major models of conflict resolutions—namely distributive bargaining, integrated bargaining, and interactive problem solving as given by Cross, Susan, Rosenthal, and Robert (1999). To do this effectively, we will explore the available literature on the antecedents of conflicts in human resource systems. Varieties of views and notions held by individuals and groups in respect of the role and the consequences of conflicts in the functioning of humans in our modern complex organizations will be considered. The consequences of conflicts on interpersonal, inter-group, and inter-organizational processes, when conflict may empower, distress, or lubricate the wheels of human interaction in the context of human resource management will be traced. The views of experts, professionals and academicians on how and why conflicts should be handled to ensure a healthier and conducive environment to work will be traced

Ground Rules in Team Projects: Findings from a Prototype System to Support Students

Student team project work in higher education is one of the best ways to develop team working skills at the same time as learning about the subject matter. As today’s students require the freedom to learn at times and places that better match their lifestyles, there is a need for any support for team project work to be also available online. Team working requires that the task roles as well as the maintenance roles are taken into consideration, in that social interactions are just as important as carrying out the tasks of the project. The literature indicates that groupware, whilst effective in supporting the task roles, provides limited support for the maintenance roles of team working in the work place. As groupware was not specifically designed for student team working, it provides limited support for maintenance roles in student team projects. Virtual learning environments similarly provide support for completing the task roles. Many researchers have found that students experience difficulties with their team project work that reduce the perceived benefits of working in a team. It is proposed that helping students to agree on ground rules at the start of a project will improve team cohesion. This paper describes the implementation and evaluation of a prototype system to help students to agree on ground rules as they start their team projects. The system was tested with teams of students carrying out information systems team projects, using an interpretive case study research approach. In this case the teams had the additional problem of being composed of students from across three years of their undergraduate degree programmes, so they did not always have prior knowledge of each other’s preferences. We were trying to establish how useful this software tool would be to these student teams, in starting their project work. The findings showed that some of the student teams did find the ground rules function useful, but the team leaders were the ones who most appreciated its potential. The students may use the outputs in very different ways, but even just looking at the ground rules appeared to get team members thinking about their expectations for team working. Student teams do not often start by thinking about norms, but this study shows a positive benefit of encouraging teams to agree on ground rules at the start of their projects

Virtual Teams: Work/Life Challenges - Keeping Remote Employees Engaged

Remotely located employees are quickly becoming a norm in the modern workplace in response to evidence that telecommuters save on costs and produce more efficiently. There are many intangible benefits also felt with the increasing prevalence of remote employees. Telecommuters are more satisfied with their work/life balance and report lower rates of job burnout. Though there are also many well-identified setbacks remotely located managers and employees may face. Employers see the most success with telecommuting by first recruiting the people best fit to fill these remote roles. However, the process of developing remote employees is a process that requires constant monitoring. The purpose of this paper is to identify the best practices being used by companies to keep remote employees engaged while simultaneously avoiding burnout