Understanding Kindness – A Moral Duty of Human Resource Leaders

The role of leaders in the modern organization has evolved as scholars and practitioners have recognized that a key element to long-term profitability is the creation of high trust and high commitment work systems that treat employees as valued partners (Kim & Wright, 2011; Block, 2013; Beer, 2009; Caldwell & Floyd, 2014). Effective leaders create aligned organizational cultures with systems, processes, practices, and programs reinforcing the organization’s espoused values in achieving its mission (Schein, 2010). Human resource professionals (HRPs) play a critical leadership role in ensuring that human resource management (HRM) cultural elements are properly integrated, communicated effectively to employees, and followed in a manner that builds trust and increases commitment (Lengnick-Hall, 2009; McEvoy, et al., 2005). The purpose of this paper is to identify the importance of kindness as a moral duty of HRPs in serving their organizations and the employees within them. As HRPs perform their strategic and operational roles in the modern organization, properly understanding the nature of kindness is an important factor in carrying out HRM roles. This paper begins by defining kindness and its specific application to HRPs — equating the definition of kindness as a leadership trait with six elements of kindness and seven kindness-related ethical perspectives. The paper concludes with a summary of its contribution for HRP practitioners and scholars in understanding the nuances of kindness as a morally-and ethically-related HRM leadership virtue

A Golod-Shafarevich Equality and p-Tower Groups

All current techniques for showing that a number field has an infinite p-class field tower depend on one of various forms of the Golod-Shafarevich inequality. Such techniques can also be used to restrict the types of p-groups which can occur as Galois groups of finite p-class field towers. In the case that the base field is a quadratic imaginary number field, the theory culminates in showing that a finite such group must be of one of three possible presentation types. By keeping track of the error terms arising in standard proofs of Golod-Shafarevich type inequalities, we prove a Golod-Shafarevich equality for analytic pro-p-groups. As an application, we further work of Skopin, showing that groups of the third of the three types mentioned above are necessarily tremendously large.Comment: 12 pages, pre-reviewer versio

The Irony of Choice

We are having the inevitable late night conversation. You talk about your eventual wedding, your marriage to the person you love, the timeline you’ve created for yourself, and your plans for what our future children will do together. I clarify that I don’t want to have children, but you can’t seem to understand that decision. You question how happy, satisfied, or fulfilled my life will be without children, the maternal instincts I’m supposed to be feeling, and my desire to have something to care for and love. You’re convinced that I will recognize how empty my life will be sans kids and that I will change my mind about motherhood. I’m confused: why do you trust my judgment about everything else, but my decision to (or not to) give birth and raise children is questionable? [excerpt

“I See You!” – The Zulu Insight to Caring Leadership

Although the role of leaders in building relationships with team members has been well-established as a foundation for improved performance (Beer, 2009), the complex challenges in directing the modern organization in a highly competitive global marketplace often mean that leaders of organizations are more focused on tasks rather than people. Nonetheless, a growing body of research about the importance of leader-member relationships confirms that leaders who demonstrate a caring commitment to the welfare of organization members also create organizations that are more profitable, more innovative, and more effective at meeting customer needs (Cameron, 2003; Kouzes & Posner, 2012)