Dale J. Dwyer and Morgan Arbelo
The purpose of this paper is to learn how managers make downsizing decisions.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to learn how managers make downsizing decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
Participants read a created organizational scenario and 25 hypothetical employee profiles and then chose five employees to lay off.
Findings
Older and minority applicants were chosen most often. No significance was found for performance. Rater group membership in race, gender, and age were significant predictors of layoff decisions.
Research limitations/implications
Because the participants were in a controlled environment they may have disregarded other information often available to decision makers. The majority of the sample was students who may be unrepresentative of managers who make layoff decisions. The inclusion of managers who have made downsizing decisions was designed to help address this limitation.
Practical implications
An employer's use of personal characteristics in making downsizing decisions may ultimately affect the aftermath of downsizing.
Originality/value
This is one of the first studies to study the decision‐making process of layoffs.
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Scott W. Lester and Dale J. Dwyer
The aim of this paper is to examine the motivations and benefits for pursuing or not pursuing the PHR and SPHR.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to examine the motivations and benefits for pursuing or not pursuing the PHR and SPHR.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a sample of 1,862 participants, the study used multinomial logistic and hierarchical linear regression to test six hypotheses.
Findings
Participants pursuing SPHR were more likely to report intrinsic motivations pursuing certification, while PHR respondents were more likely to report extrinsic reasons. Other‐driven reasons were not significant predictors. Respondents not pursuing certification saw a lack of perceived benefits. Non‐pursuers of SPHR were concerned about time constraints. The pursuing and non‐pursuing groups did exhibit differences in their demographic and commitment profiles.
Research limitations/implications
The sample is limited to only those professionals active in their local SHRM chapters. The data were cross‐sectional. Future research needs to address the validity of Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI) certification and the lack of empirical research on the connection between certification and objective measures of job performance.
Practical implications
Results regarding perceived certification benefits suggest that organizations could run into retention problems if HR professionals continue to view marketability as the top benefit and view pay and promotion as unaffected by certification. The profiles of pursuers and non‐pursuers suggest that HRCI should target younger, less educated professionals when promoting the PHR and highlight increased marketability as the key benefit. Furthermore, HRCI should target those with high levels of affective commitment when promoting the SPHR.
Originality/value
The paper provides some of the first empirical evidence for why professionals pursue or do not pursue PHR and SPHR certification.
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Arwen H. DeCostanza, Katherine R. Gamble, Armando X. Estrada and Kara L. Orvis
Unobtrusive measurement methodologies are critical to implementing intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) for teams. Such methodologies allow for continuous measurement of team states…
Abstract
Unobtrusive measurement methodologies are critical to implementing intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) for teams. Such methodologies allow for continuous measurement of team states and processes while avoiding disruption of mission or training performance, and do not rely on post hoc feedback (including for the aggregation of data into measures or to develop insights from these real-time metrics). This chapter summarizes advances in unobtrusive measurement developed within Army research programs to illustrate the variety and potential that unobtrusive measurement approaches can provide for building ITS for teams. Challenges regarding the real-time aggregation of data and applications to current and future ITS for teams are also discussed.
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This chapter addresses Bangladeshi female students’ experiences of higher education in the United Kingdom through the race/gender trajectory. Research shows that although minority…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter addresses Bangladeshi female students’ experiences of higher education in the United Kingdom through the race/gender trajectory. Research shows that although minority ethnic women invest heavily in education, they go on to face obstacles in the labour market. However, there is a strong desire to study which is evident in the increasing numbers of Bangladeshi women applying to university since 1994. The chapter draws on empirical research with women who have claimed a kind of ‘agentic autonomy’ to pursue education in the face of structural inequalities.
Design/methodology/approach
The chapter is based on research conducted with a sample of Bangladeshi women studying at or recently graduated from university. Qualitative research was carried out in the form of semi-structured interviews with 13 participants.
Findings
The study finds that Bangladeshi women are undeterred by structural inequalities in higher education and employment. Although they expect to face some difficulty finding suitable employment, they are optimistic about the future. They represent a group of women who have been able to achieve their objectives to study at degree level and show aspirations towards achieving similar objectives after graduation.
Originality/value
Bangladeshi women show agency and agentic behaviour to negotiate access to higher education institutions. This will, in the future have a knock-on effect in employment.
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This article looks at corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a discursive social practice that attempts to interrogate the global market economy and its neoliberal underpinnings…
Abstract
This article looks at corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a discursive social practice that attempts to interrogate the global market economy and its neoliberal underpinnings and that reflects as well as frames and shapes domestic and global politics and institutions. Drawing upon Karl Polanyi’s notions of reciprocity and redistribution while also emphasizing the normative content of the concept, the article inquires into the position that the CSR discourse occupies in addressing the corporate transnational risks derived from social tensions and conflicts and more generally, in answering social expectations for justice. The Polanyian perspective highlights the CSR discursive quest for a missing conceptual consistency and implicitly, for a constructive “critical” core. From this perspective, the article shows CSR to reside within controversial conceptual boundaries; a discursive social practice that engages with the social aspiration of embedding market economy in society while it is also in need of reclaiming its critical core and its potential for social change.
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The U.S. Congress has been struggling to create a comprehensive energy program. A key component of the present attempt, recommended by President Carter, is a synthetic fuel…
Abstract
The U.S. Congress has been struggling to create a comprehensive energy program. A key component of the present attempt, recommended by President Carter, is a synthetic fuel program. In July of 1979, the President asked for an $88 billion “crash program” to encourage development of synthetic fuels. To date, a three month struggle to reach a consensus between House and Senate conferees has brought only limited results. Compromise is emerging in the form of a proposal for a “synthetic fuels corporation.” The body would have the authority to disperse $20 billion in the form of federal loan guarantees and purchase agreements with more money to become available later.
In this chapter, the relations between Muslim migrant women's bodily appearances at Western workplaces, their work choices and career development are examined through the lens of…
Abstract
In this chapter, the relations between Muslim migrant women's bodily appearances at Western workplaces, their work choices and career development are examined through the lens of embodied intersectionality. This chapter draws on exiting research reports and empirical research to also reflect on the scope of Muslim female migrants' labour market integration in the United Kingdom.
For Muslim women, wearing ethnic or religious dresses such as headscarf/‘hijab’, ‘niqaab’ or ‘burqa’ represents the quintessential identity of women belonging to their particular ethnic group or religion. These highly visible social and cultural markers are also inherently gendered. This chapter delves into understanding how Muslim migrant women wearing ethnic/religious dresses experience/encounter Western workplaces and how their embodied intersectional identities through creating barriers at the workplaces impede the process of their labour market integration, in turn, limit their work choices and further restrict their career progression/development in the long run. The discussion also shows that attention to the Muslim migrant women's workplace experiences funnelled through the process of embodied intersectionality can expose the overall racialised and gendered practices of the society, different forms of social exclusion while simultaneously indicate resistance from and agency of these Muslim women through bodily appearances in transnational contexts. This chapter also sheds lights on how these women's career and workplace experiences need to be understood outside the stereotypical Western description of gendered workplaces and how the discussion needs to be broadened in scope and encompass the spatial dynamics of migration, religion, gender and ethnicity to be able to make sense of Muslim migrant women's work choices and career in the West.
This chapter has a twofold structure – first, it looks at the relationship between self-regulating agency and voice and understanding of the embodiment of intersectional identities by the women themselves in the host country's society and labour market, and, second, how the changing time, space and contexts interact to play a role in terms of the host society and its labour market's acceptance and level of tolerance shown towards this group's embodied intersectional presence.
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Shehla Riza Arifeen and Caroline Gatrell
The purpose of this paper is to make a case for empirical research for British Pakistani managerial and professional women, a group who have remained invisible in organization…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to make a case for empirical research for British Pakistani managerial and professional women, a group who have remained invisible in organization studies; to give voice to their experiences, to highlight the issues and challenges they are facing as women who have careers, their perceptions of what they are and how they have reached where they are and where do they think they would be going while taking an all‐inclusive view of the historical/social/culture/religious context.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper undertakes a comprehensive re‐examination of the intersectional approach. An approach of gender with ethnicity and with religion and nationality or diaspora is suggested, in order to capture identities and focuses on relationship between gender and other categories of difference, in particular gender.
Findings
A review of race/ethnicity in organization studies in the UK reveals the homogenizing of ethnicities and a gap, as there is a lack of focused research on a large ethnic group in the United Kingdom. The paper then argues for intersectionality as being the most valid method as a means of analysis of a complex phenomenon, as it bridges partly the theoretical gap between critical theory and liberalism or deconstructionist tradition.
Originality/value
Empirical research on this marginalized group of women will highlight the structures and systems that are created and maintained. These may be self‐created and self‐perpetuated, but unless and until voice has been given to their experiences they will remain unknown.
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Matthias Fuchs, Peter Fredman and Dimitri Ioannides
This chapter offers an experience-based report about the development of the first Scandinavian PhD program in tourism studies at Mid-Sweden University. This process is documented…
Abstract
This chapter offers an experience-based report about the development of the first Scandinavian PhD program in tourism studies at Mid-Sweden University. This process is documented through a framework which, rather than having the coherence of a single clearly bounded discipline, focuses on tourism as a study area encompassing multiple disciplines. Tourism knowledge is derived through a synthesis of fact-oriented positivist methodologies and critical theory. The theoretical framework employed to develop the graduate program in tourism studies is presented by critically discussing its multidisciplinary base and briefly outlining future veins of further development.