The state of strategic human resource measurement in Spanish banks

The new strategic role of Human Resource (HR) management that many academics and practitioners have been calling for requires that HR systems not only achieve operational excellence in performing their traditional activities but that they also contribute to developing the strategic capabilities needed by the organization to maintain its competitive advantage. This new orientation has important implications for the evaluation of an organization's HR system. Traditional measures of the HR function tend to focus on internal efficiency. In order to determine the success of an HR system in achieving its new role as strategic partner, the strategic impact of HR practices must be evaluated. This requires measuring the contribution of the HR system toward building organizational capabilities, including employee skills, behaviors and attitudes, and the impact that changes at this level have on organizational results. This study presents a strategic HR measurement framework and investigates the current state of HR measurement in five large Spanish banks

Rethinking utility analysis: a strategic focus

Utility analysis is a technique which allows for the estimation of the financial impact of human resource (HR) interventions. While utility analysis methods have been available for decades, their application is still not widespread. Some argue that this is because managers do not understand the techniques and suggest that allowing managers to participate in the analysis would increase understanding and, as a results, use and acceptance of utility analysis. The current work posits that translating the value of HR interventions into financial terms may not be necessary. It may be more useful to determine the direct impact of HR programs on employee behaviors and attitudes. The impact of these changes on the bottom line may then be determined. Building upon the recently proposed multi-attribute utility analysis and the strategic perspective offered by the Balanced Scorecard, this paper presents a strategic utility analysis method. Strategic utility analysis requires that multiple outcomes, not only financial, be considered in order to determine the utility of a given HR intervention. It further stipulates that these outcomes should come directly from the company's business strategy. The strategy should imply certain organizational capabilities and strategic utility analysis should measure the contribution of HR interventions towards building these specific capabilities

The state of strategic human resource measurement in Spanish banks.

The new strategic role of Human Resource (HR) management that many academics and practitioners have been calling for requires that HR systems not only achieve operational excellence in performing their traditional activities but that they also contribute to developing the strategic capabilities needed by the organization to maintain its competitive advantage. This new orientation has important implications for the evaluation of an organization's HR system. Traditional measures of the HR function tend to focus on internal efficiency. In order to determine the success of an HR system in achieving its new role as strategic partner, the strategic impact of HR practices must be evaluated. This requires measuring the contribution of the HR system toward building organizational capabilities, including employee skills, behaviors and attitudes, and the impact that changes at this level have on organizational results. This study presents a strategic HR measurement framework and investigates the current state of HR measurement in five large Spanish banks.

Kevin McCain and Ted Poston’s Best Explanations

In this critical notice, I focus my attention on the chapters that deal with the explanationist response to skepticism

String Theory, Non-Empirical Theory Assessment, and the Context of Pursuit

In this paper, I offer an analysis of the radical disagreement over the adequacy of string theory. The prominence of string theory despite its notorious lack of empirical support is sometimes explained as a troubling case of science gone awry, driven largely by sociological mechanisms such as groupthink (e.g. Smolin 2006). Others, such as Dawid (2013), explain the controversy by positing a methodological revolution of sorts, according to which string theorists have quietly turned to nonempirical methods of theory assessment given the technological inability to directly test the theory. The appropriate response, according to Dawid, is to acknowledge this development and widen the canons of acceptable scientific methods. As I’ll argue, however, the current situation in fundamental physics does not require either of these responses. Rather, as I’ll suggest, much of the controversy stems from a failure to properly distinguish the “context of justification” from the “context of pursuit”. Both those who accuse string theorists of betraying the scientific method and those who advocate an enlarged conception of scientific methodology objectionably conflate epistemic justification with judgements of pursuit-worthiness. Once we get clear about this distinction and about the different norms governing the two contexts, the current situation in fundamental physics becomes much less puzzling. After defending this diagnosis of the controversy, I’ll show how the argument patterns that have been posited by Dawid as constituting an emergent methodological revolution in science are better off if reworked as arguments belonging to the context of pursuit

The inconveniences of transnational democracy

Despite some limited moves toward openness and accountability, suprastate policy formation in such bodies as the World Trade Organization remains fundamentally exclusive of individuals within states. This article critiques the “don’t kill the goose” arguments commonly offered in defense of such exclusions. It highlights similarities between those arguments and past arguments for elitist forms of democracy, where strict limitations are advocated on the participation of nonelites in the name of allowing leaders to act most effectively in the broad public interest. Advocated here is movement toward a strongly empowered WTO parliamentary body that would be guided in practice by a principle of democratic symmetry, attempting to match input to the increasing impacts of WTO governance. A parliament with codecision powers broadly similar to those of the European Parliament is offered as a long-term institutional ideal