In the Trenches at the Talent Wars: Competitive Interaction for Scarce Human Resources - A Qualitative Study

The purpose of this paper is to examine how firms are competing for scarce human resources in the talent wars. First, the paper makes the distinction between responding to labor shortages with investments in recruiting and retention and directly competing against identified labor market competitors for scarce human resources. It appears firms compete with rivals in the open labor market and in initiating and defending against talent raids. The process of identifying and responding to the tactics of labor market competitors is reviewed for both types of direct competition. Firms tend to respond to rivals’ tactics either by changing the employment relationship with threatened employees or engaging in tactics to influence the behavior of the competing firm. Factors that determine the propensity and type of response to competitor’s tactics are reviewed and integrated. The greater the threat posed by the rival’s tactics the greater the likelihood affected firms will respond with externally as opposed to internally oriented tactics. The greater the skill mobility of threatened employees, the more administrative and financial resources will be invested in the counter-response. Finally, firms use a variety of preemptive tactics to reduce the threat of talent raids. These tactics are listed and explained. The paper concludes with recommendations for firms seeking to gain or protect advantage relative to rivals in the war for talent

Theoretical and Empirical Challenges in Studying: The HR Practice - Firm Performance Relationship

Over the past 10 years a plethora of research has been conducted seeking to establish a relationship between human resource (HR) practices and firm performance. While this research has demonstrated promising results, a significant number of problems exist. This paper seeks to identify the theoretical and empirical challenges facing researchers who wish to further establish the impact of HR practices on firm performance. We conclude with some recommendations for future research in this area that might more accurately assess this relationship in ways that will be useful for both researchers and practitioners

ILR Impact Brief - Affective Commitment Links Human Resource Practices and Voluntary Turnover

[Excerpt] Motivation- and empowerment- enhancing human resource (HR) practices are positively associated with employees’ collective emotional attachment to, and identification with, a company and its goals; this affective commitment, in turn, is negatively associated with the aggregate of employee decisions to exit an organization. Thus, collective affective commitment mediates the relationship between these two sets of HR practices and voluntary turnover. Practices that enhance workforce skills, however, are not mediated by collective affective commitment; rather, they are directly and positively associated with increased voluntary turnover

The Impact of Human Resource Practices on Business-Unit Operating and Financial Performance

This study examined the impact of HR practices and organizational commitment on business-unit operating performance and profitability. Using a predictive design with a sample of 50 autonomous business-units within the same corporation, the study revealed that both organizational commitment and HR practices were significantly related to operational measures of performance as well as operating expenses and pre-tax profits

High Performance HR Practices And Customer Satisfaction: Employee Process Mechanisms

This research examined organizational commitment and customer focus as mediators between HR practices and customer satisfaction of seventy-one work units from twenty-five business units from a single firm in the food service industry. Customer satisfaction was assessed by ratings from multiple customers eighteen months after HR practices and process mechanisms were assessed from unique groups of employee respondents. Results suggest that employee commitment and customer focus partially mediate the relationship between HR practices and customer satisfaction

The HR-Firm Performance Relationship: Can it be in the Mind of the Beholder?

This study examined whether respondents’ implicit theories of performance could impact their responses to surveys regarding HR practices and effectiveness. Senior Human Resource and Line Executives and MBA, graduate Engineering, and graduate HR students read scenarios of high and low performing firms and were asked to report on the prevalence of various HR practices and effectiveness of the HR function in each firm. Results indicated that all four groups of respondents held implicit theories that high performing firms were characterized by extensive HR practices and had highly effective HR functions relative to low performing firms. Subjects with substantial work experience reported greater differences between and high and low performing firms than did subjects with relatively little work experience. The implications of these results for research on the HR Practices – Firm Performance relationship are discussed

Beginning to Unlock the Black Box in the HR Firm Performance Relationship: The Impact of HR Practices on Employee Attitudes and Employee Outcomes

Theoretical models in strategic human resource management research commonly include employee attitudes and behaviors as key mediating links between human resource practices and firm performance. However, almost all empirical SHRM work to date has ignored the mediating hypothesis and merely examined the direct relationship between HR practices and firm outcomes. The purpose of this study is to test the relationship between HR practices and employee attitudes and behaviors. Using a sample of 174 independent work groups, we examined the relationship between HR practices and collective behaviors (turnover and absenteeism) mediated by collective attitudes (job satisfaction and commitment). Results indicate attitudes partially mediate the relationship between HR practices and employee behaviors. The direct and indirect relationships identified in this study support the notion that attitudes and behaviors play a mediating role between HR practices and firm outcomes. These findings illustrate the varying impacts of HR practices and the importance of utilizing multilevel theory and methods

HR Practices and Customer Satisfaction: The Mediating Link of Commitment

This research examined organizational commitment as a mediator between HR practices and customer satisfaction of 35 job groups from 13 service firm business units. Both commitment level and consensus were predicted to influence customer satisfaction. Results found that commitment level mediated the relationship between HR practices and customer satisfaction

A low cost MEMS based NDIR system for the monitoring of carbon dioxide in breath analysis at ppm levels

The molecules in our breath can provide a wealth of information about the health and well-being of a person. The level of carbon dioxide (CO2) is not only a sign of life but also when combined with the level of exhaled oxygen provides valuable health information in the form of our metabolic rate. We report upon the development of a MEMS-based non-dispersive infrared CO2 sensor for inclusion in a hand held portable breath analyser. Our novel sensor system comprises a thermopile detector and low power MEMS silicon on insulator (SOI) wideband infrared (IR) emitter. A lock-in amplifier design permits a CO2 concentration of 50 ppm to be detected on gas bench rig. Different IR path lengths were studied with gases in dry and humid (25% and 50% RH) in order to design a sensor suitable for detecting CO2 in breath with concentrations in the range of 4 to 5%. A breath analyser was constructed from acetal and in part 3D printed with a side-stream sampling mechanism and tested on a range of subjects with two data-sets presented here. The performance of the novel MEMS based sensor was validated using a reference commercial breath-by-breath sensor and produced comparable results and gave a response time of 1.3 s. Further work involves the detection of other compounds on breath for further metabolic analysis and reducing the overall resolution of our MEMS sensor system from ca. 250 ppm to 10 ppm

Time-Frequency Ridge Analysis Based on the Reassignment Vector

International audienceThis paper considers the problem of detecting and estimating AM/FM components in the time-frequency plane. It introduces a new algorithm to estimate the ridges corresponding to the instantaneous frequencies of the components, and to segment the time-frequency plane into different `basins of attraction', each basin corresponding to one mode. The technique is based on the structure of the reassignment vector, which is commonly used for sharpening time-frequency representations. Compared with previous approaches, this new method does not need extra parameters, exhibits less sensitivity to the choice of the window and shows better reconstruction performance. Its effectiveness is demonstrated on simulated and real datasets