How Can SMES Become More Competitive On The Graduate Labour Market?

Extensive research in strategic Human Resource Management demonstrates that an organisation¿s success is bound by its workforce knowledge, skills and abilities (Breaugh & Starke, 2000). Recruiting a highly talented workforce has therefore become recognised as a strategic business challenge (Gurtheridge et al, 2005) and this also applies to the recruitment of top graduates (Phillips, 2008). However, SMEs have as of yet remained greatly underrepresented within the graduate market and this dissertation aims to address the issue by exploring how SMEs can become more competitive within this field. Building on previous research on talent recruitment (Maurer and Liu, 2007) the dissertation suggests that recruiting SMEs need to act like marketers, closely attending to graduate work aspirations and employer expectations, fulfilling graduate needs, wants and desires - as long as the exchange also remains beneficial for the organisation. To avoid direct competition with recruiting TNCs in campus campaigns, SMEs are recommended to make use of more direct communication channels such as email and they are advised to attend to information content and specificity very carefully. To differentiate from the competition, SMEs are further advised to engage in employer branding. The recommendations are developed on the basis of primary data as obtained from interviews with prospective graduates

How Can SMES Become More Competitive On The Graduate Labour Market?

Extensive research in strategic Human Resource Management demonstrates that an organisation's success is bound by its workforce knowledge, skills and abilities (Breaugh & Starke, 2000). Recruiting a highly talented workforce has therefore become recognised as a strategic business challenge (Gurtheridge et al, 2005) and this also applies to the recruitment of top graduates (Phillips, 2008). However, SMEs have as of yet remained greatly underrepresented within the graduate market and this dissertation aims to address the issue by exploring how SMEs can become more competitive within this field. Building on previous research on talent recruitment (Maurer and Liu, 2007) the dissertation suggests that recruiting SMEs need to act like marketers, closely attending to graduate work aspirations and employer expectations, fulfilling graduate needs, wants and desires - as long as the exchange also remains beneficial for the organisation. To avoid direct competition with recruiting TNCs in campus campaigns, SMEs are recommended to make use of more direct communication channels such as email and they are advised to attend to information content and specificity very carefully. To differentiate from the competition, SMEs are further advised to engage in employer branding. The recommendations are developed on the basis of primary data as obtained from interviews with prospective graduates.

Speed/Accuracy Trade-Off between the Habitual and the Goal-Directed Processes

Instrumental responses are hypothesized to be of two kinds: habitual and goal-directed, mediated by the sensorimotor and the associative cortico-basal ganglia circuits, respectively. The existence of the two heterogeneous associative learning mechanisms can be hypothesized to arise from the comparative advantages that they have at different stages of learning. In this paper, we assume that the goal-directed system is behaviourally flexible, but slow in choice selection. The habitual system, in contrast, is fast in responding, but inflexible in adapting its behavioural strategy to new conditions. Based on these assumptions and using the computational theory of reinforcement learning, we propose a normative model for arbitration between the two processes that makes an approximately optimal balance between search-time and accuracy in decision making. Behaviourally, the model can explain experimental evidence on behavioural sensitivity to outcome at the early stages of learning, but insensitivity at the later stages. It also explains that when two choices with equal incentive values are available concurrently, the behaviour remains outcome-sensitive, even after extensive training. Moreover, the model can explain choice reaction time variations during the course of learning, as well as the experimental observation that as the number of choices increases, the reaction time also increases. Neurobiologically, by assuming that phasic and tonic activities of midbrain dopamine neurons carry the reward prediction error and the average reward signals used by the model, respectively, the model predicts that whereas phasic dopamine indirectly affects behaviour through reinforcing stimulus-response associations, tonic dopamine can directly affect behaviour through manipulating the competition between the habitual and the goal-directed systems and thus, affect reaction time

Das Tübinger Herz. Ein Beitrag zur Lehre von der Überanstrengung des Herzens.

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An operant discrimination task allowing variability of reinforced response patterning

Five pigeons were trained to perform a discrimination task allowing variability of reinforced response patterning. The task consisted of moving a stimulus light within an 4×4 matrix of lights from the top left position to the bottom right position by pecking on two keys in succession in order to obtain a reinforcement. A peck on one key moved the light one position to the right and a peck on the other key moved it one position down. After preliminary training on alternating fixed-ratio 3 schedules of reinforcement, the birds could peck on either key in any order, but more than three responses on a key resulted in a blackout followed by the return of the stimulus light to the start position. Results indicate that initially the birds used a wide variety of response patterns to obtain reinforcement, but with continued practice, response patterns became more stereotyped