What Policies and Practices Can HR Utilize to Promote an Innovation Based Culture and Help Drive Business Outcomes Through It?

[Excerpt] Innovation has evolved from a mainly scientific activity of research and development to a complex system of interactions among various participants both inside and outside of a firm. In an economy where the innovation cycle is shrinking, characterized by disruptive innovations and changing customer needs, it is crucial for companies to keep up with emerging trends and stay on top of factors that enhance their capacity for innovation. Innovation should not be limited to new products, it can lead to new processes as well. An idea may not work for one department, project, or product, but may be a good solution for another. Innovative firms effectively work across organizational boundaries and connect great ideas with the right people. Despite the importance of innovation, managing and promoting it in a company is not easy, especially when the payoff is often multiple years away. Human Resources, through various policies and practices, can play a vital role in promoting an innovation based culture

What is the Impact of Eliminating Performance Ratings?

[Excerpt] Ratingless performance management became trendy in recent years when companies found that traditional performance ratings cost huge amounts of money and time without significant positive impact on performance. However, simply eliminating performance ratings cannot achieve desirable results. In this paper, we summarize the research surrounding ratingless performance management and present some alternatives to the traditional methods

What are Best Practices to Define a Common Understanding of What is Expected of Companies\u27 Leaders, and How is this Understanding Structured?

[Excerpt] Today, companies need to have strong and meaningful leadership drive their business. A critical component of strong leadership involves identifying the competencies and behaviors that enable leaders to succeed. This is primarily accomplished by implementing a leadership competency model (LCM), which has benefits but is often ineffectively utilized. Knowing which leadership competencies are key for global companies and how companies are implementing LCMs is critical for success in developing strong effective leaders to influence their teams and the overall business

Drell-Yan plus missing energy as a signal for extra dimensions

We explore the search sensitivity for signals of large extra dimensions at hadron colliders via the Drell-Yan process pp -> l+ l- + E_T(miss) X (l = e,mu) where the missing transverse energy is the result of escaping Kaluza-Klein gravitons. We find that one is able to place exclusion limits on the gravity scale up to 560 GeV at the Fermilab Tevatron, and to 4.0 (3.3) TeV at the CERN LHC, for n = 3 (4) extra dimensions.Comment: 5 pages, 2 PS figs, revised verseion to be published in Physics Letters

Faraday Rotation in Pulsar Magnetosphere

The magnetosphere of a pulsar is composed of relativistic plasmas streaming along the magnetic field lines and corotating with the pulsar. We study the intrinsic Faraday rotation in the pulsar magnetosphere by critically examining the wave modes and the variations of polarization properties for the circularly polarized natural modes under various assumptions about the magnetosphere plasma properties. Since it is difficult to describe analytically the Faraday rotation effect in such a plasma, we use numerical integrations to study the wave propagation effects in the corotating magnetosphere. Faraday rotation effect is identified among other propagation effects, such as wave mode coupling and the cyclotron absorption. In a highly symmetrical electron-positron pair plasma, the Faraday rotation effect is found to be negligible. Only for asymmetrical plasmas, such as the electron-ion streaming plasma, can the Faraday rotation effect become significant, and the Faraday rotation angle is found to be approximately proportional to $\lambda^{0.5}$ instead of the usual $\lambda^2$-law. For such electrons-ion plasma of pulsar magnetosphere, the induced rotation measure becomes larger at higher frequencies, and should have opposite signs for the emissions from opposite magnetic poles.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure, submitted to MNRA

Learner’s Dialect Use by EFL Instructors: A Study of Junior High School Teachers in a Minority Area of China

The use of learners’ L1 (first language) in the EFL classroom has been widely discussed in the literature. However, the use of local dialects has received less attention. Thus, this study investigates the use of Enshi dialect in EFL classroom in junior high schools in order to explore how teachers deploy the learners’ own dialect in EFL classroom and its effect. The Enshi dialect which is a variant of Mandarin is frequently used in daily life in Enshi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with 15 teachers who adopt Enshi dialect in EFL classroom teaching in junior high schools in 8 minority villages in Enshi. The results indicate that occasional dialect use does exist in EFL classroom teaching for junior high school students in ethnic minority areas. In addition, four main benefits are revealed when learners use dialects in EFL classes. Teaching English by using dialect helps students to improve the mastery of English grammar, distinguish pronunciation, understand the meaning of English words, phrases and sentences, and enliven the classroom atmosphere. The research also shows that the effective use of learners’ dialects in the EFL classroom plays positive roles in English learning

Reconceptualising knowledge seeking in knowledge management: towards a knowledge seeking process model

Promoting knowledge sharing has long been regarded as a very important aspect of the management of knowledge. However, knowledge sharing has its challenges due to the special nature of knowledge. Based on this, the researcher argues that it is knowledge seeking rather than knowledge sharing that plays a crucial role in knowledge management. However, there is no clear definition for knowledge seeking in existing literature. In the few studies of knowledge seeking research, knowledge has been viewed as a noun and as such knowledge seeking has been seen as no different to information seeking. The aim of this research has been to explore the knowledge seeking process in the workplace in order to conceptualise knowledge seeking by developing a theoretical model. A review of the literature concerning knowledge seeking has been conducted in order to clarify the concept of knowledge seeking. From the interpretivist’s perspective, a qualitative research approach has been taken, in which sense-making theory is employed as a methodological guide. Time-line interviews were carried out with construction engineers in China to collect primary data, and Template analysis was utilized. Based on the literature, this thesis defined knowledge seeking as a learning process, which consists of three major themes: experiential learning, information seeking and problem solving, based on which a preliminary framework was developed. Twenty six engineers were successfully interviewed. The findings from the data confirmed the links between the themes. Further codes were also identified to develop a final template, which evolved to a theoretical model illustrating the knowledge seeking process in the workplace. By promoting knowledge seeking rather than knowledge sharing, this research contributed innovatory insight into existing KM research. The new concept of knowledge seeking and the theoretical model developed thereafter contribute to knowledge by providing a theoretical framework for further research in this area. The specific combination of time-line interviews and template analysis has demonstrated good results in this research. Collecting primary data from China, this research applied Western theories onto engineers within a Chinese context, which has contributed to KM research in China. These contributions will result in many practical implications for KM practices