Human Resources and the Resource Based View of the Firm

The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has influenced the field of strategic human resource management (SHRM) in a number of ways. This paper explores the impact of the RBV on the theoretical and empirical development of SHRM. It explores how the fields of strategy and SHRM are beginning to converge around a number of issues, and proposes a number of implications of this convergence

Comparison of Positive and Negative Verbal Cueing on Muscular Endurance in College - Aged Females

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Group space scan of flavor symmetries for nearly tribimaximal lepton mixing

We present a systematic group space scan of discrete Abelian flavor symmetries for lepton mass models that produce nearly tribimaximal lepton mixing. In our models, small neutrino masses are generated by the type-I seesaw mechanism. The lepton mass matrices emerge from higher-dimension operators via the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism and are predicted as powers of a single expansion parameter \epsilon that is of the order of the Cabibbo angle \theta_C\simeq 0.2. We focus on solutions that can give close to tribimaximal lepton mixing with a very small reactor angle \theta_{13}\approx 0 and find several thousand explicit such models that provide an excellent fit to current neutrino data. The models are rather general in the sense that large leptonic mixings can come from the charged leptons and/or neutrinos. Moreover, in the neutrino sector, both left- and right-handed neutrinos can mix maximally. We also find a new relation \theta_{13}\lesssim\epsilon^3 for the reactor angle and a new sum rule \theta_{23}\approx\pi/4+\epsilon/\sqrt{2} for the atmospheric angle, allowing the models to be tested in future neutrino oscillation experiments.Comment: 18 pages, 2 tables, 2 figures, references added, final version to appear in JHE

Facilitated Variation: How Evolution Learns from Past Environments To Generalize to New Environments

One of the striking features of evolution is the appearance of novel structures in organisms. Recently, Kirschner and Gerhart have integrated discoveries in evolution, genetics, and developmental biology to form a theory of facilitated variation (FV). The key observation is that organisms are designed such that random genetic changes are channeled in phenotypic directions that are potentially useful. An open question is how FV spontaneously emerges during evolution. Here, we address this by means of computer simulations of two well-studied model systems, logic circuits and RNA secondary structure. We find that evolution of FV is enhanced in environments that change from time to time in a systematic way: the varying environments are made of the same set of subgoals but in different combinations. We find that organisms that evolve under such varying goals not only remember their history but also generalize to future environments, exhibiting high adaptability to novel goals. Rapid adaptation is seen to goals composed of the same subgoals in novel combinations, and to goals where one of the subgoals was never seen in the history of the organism. The mechanisms for such enhanced generation of novelty (generalization) are analyzed, as is the way that organisms store information in their genomes about their past environments. Elements of facilitated variation theory, such as weak regulatory linkage, modularity, and reduced pleiotropy of mutations, evolve spontaneously under these conditions. Thus, environments that change in a systematic, modular fashion seem to promote facilitated variation and allow evolution to generalize to novel conditions

Signaling in Secret: Pay-for-Performance and the Incentive and Sorting Effects of Pay Secrecy

Key Findings: Pay secrecy adversely impacts individual task performance because it weakens the perception that an increase in performance will be accompanied by increase in pay; Pay secrecy is associated with a decrease in employee performance and retention in pay-for-performance systems, which measure performance using relative (i.e., peer-ranked) criteria rather than an absolute scale (see Figure 2 on page 5); High performing employees tend to be most sensitive to negative pay-for- performance perceptions; There are many signals embedded within HR policies and practices, which can influence employees’ perception of workplace uncertainty/inequity and impact their performance and turnover intentions; and When pay transparency is impractical, organizations may benefit from introducing partial pay openness to mitigate these effects on employee performance and retention

The compositional and evolutionary logic of metabolism

Metabolism displays striking and robust regularities in the forms of modularity and hierarchy, whose composition may be compactly described. This renders metabolic architecture comprehensible as a system, and suggests the order in which layers of that system emerged. Metabolism also serves as the foundation in other hierarchies, at least up to cellular integration including bioenergetics and molecular replication, and trophic ecology. The recapitulation of patterns first seen in metabolism, in these higher levels, suggests metabolism as a source of causation or constraint on many forms of organization in the biosphere. We identify as modules widely reused subsets of chemicals, reactions, or functions, each with a conserved internal structure. At the small molecule substrate level, module boundaries are generally associated with the most complex reaction mechanisms and the most conserved enzymes. Cofactors form a structurally and functionally distinctive control layer over the small-molecule substrate. Complex cofactors are often used at module boundaries of the substrate level, while simpler ones participate in widely used reactions. Cofactor functions thus act as "keys" that incorporate classes of organic reactions within biochemistry. The same modules that organize the compositional diversity of metabolism are argued to have governed long-term evolution. Early evolution of core metabolism, especially carbon-fixation, appears to have required few innovations among a small number of conserved modules, to produce adaptations to simple biogeochemical changes of environment. We demonstrate these features of metabolism at several levels of hierarchy, beginning with the small-molecule substrate and network architecture, continuing with cofactors and key conserved reactions, and culminating in the aggregation of multiple diverse physical and biochemical processes in cells.Comment: 56 pages, 28 figure

SABRE: A bio-inspired fault-tolerant electronic architecture

As electronic devices become increasingly complex, ensuring their reliable, fault-free operation is becoming correspondingly more challenging. It can be observed that, in spite of their complexity, biological systems are highly reliable and fault tolerant. Hence, we are motivated to take inspiration for biological systems in the design of electronic ones. In SABRE (self-healing cellular architectures for biologically inspired highly reliable electronic systems), we have designed a bio-inspired fault-tolerant hierarchical architecture for this purpose. As in biology, the foundation for the whole system is cellular in nature, with each cell able to detect faults in its operation and trigger intra-cellular or extra-cellular repair as required. At the next level in the hierarchy, arrays of cells are configured and controlled as function units in a transport triggered architecture (TTA), which is able to perform partial-dynamic reconfiguration to rectify problems that cannot be solved at the cellular level. Each TTA is, in turn, part of a larger multi-processor system which employs coarser grain reconfiguration to tolerate faults that cause a processor to fail. In this paper, we describe the details of operation of each layer of the SABRE hierarchy, and how these layers interact to provide a high systemic level of fault tolerance. © 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd

Towards Critical Human Resource Management Education (CHRME): a sociological imagination approach

This article explores the professional standing of the discipline of human resource management (HRM) in business schools in the post-financial crisis period. Using the prism of the sociological imagination, it explains the learning to be gained from teaching HRM that is sensitive to context, power and inequality. The context of crisis provides ideal circumstances for critical reflexivity and for integrating wider societal issues into the HRM curriculum. It argues for Critical Human Resource Management Education or CHRME, which, if adopted, would be an antidote to prescriptive practitioner-oriented approaches. It proceeds to set out five principles for CHRME: using the ‘sociological imagination’ prism; emphasizing the social nature of the employment relationship; investigating paradox within HRM; designing learning outcomes that encourage students to appraise HRM outcomes critically; and reflexive critique. Crucially, CHRME offers a teaching strategy that does not neglect or marginalize the reality of structural power, inequality and employee work experiences

Commodification of transformation discourses and post-apartheid institutional identities at three South African universities

Using mission statements from the UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), we explore how the three universities have rematerialised prior discourses to rebrand their identities as dictated by contemporary national and global aspirations. We reveal how the universities have recontextualised the experiences and discourses of liberation struggle and the new government's post-apartheid social transformation discourses to construct distinctive identities that are locally relevant and globally aspiring. This has led to the semiotic refiguring of universities from spatial edifices of racially based unequal education, to equal opportunity institutions of higher learning, and to the blurring of historical boundaries between these universities. We conclude that the universities have reconstructed distinct and recognisable identities which speak to a segregated past, but with a post-apartheid voice of equity and redress.IS