Do Human Resource Departments Act as Strategic Partners? Strategic Human Capital Management Adoption by County Governments

Drawing on qualitative data from forty counties in New York and North Carolina, this article examines the adoption of strategic human capital management (SHCM) principles and practices at the county level and presents a typology of five levels of SHCM adoption. The level of SHCM implementation in a county depends on: the view of the HR function by executive county leadership, the capacity of the county to engage in strategic planning and management, and the capacity of the HR director to think strategically about the role of HR in the government. The article concludes with recommendations for practice, which focus on educating a diverse set of actors about SHCM, building executive level support, developing HR skill and competencies, and applying basic change management practices

Female leadership in French voluntary associations

Drawing on a recent national survey, this paper focuses on the female representation on executive committees in French voluntary associations. To begin with, we observe that this representation is very unequal according to the different officer positions. It is especially low among presidents. Then we study the relationship between the associations' attributes and the likelihood of women being appointed as executive committee members. We notice that the probabilities that women hold president, treasurer and secretary positions are highly correlated to each other. We find that the proportion of female officers is higher in organizations whose activities pertain to social service, health and humanitarian sectors. It is lower in the oldest associations and it decreases as their geographical area of activity increases and as their budget becomes larger. The probability that associations have female presidents is higher in associations with few volunteers