Kevin M. Taaffe, Robert William Allen and Lindsey Grigg
Performance measurements or metrics are that which measure a company's performance and behavior, and are used to help an organization achieve and maintain success. Without the use…
Abstract
Purpose
Performance measurements or metrics are that which measure a company's performance and behavior, and are used to help an organization achieve and maintain success. Without the use of performance metrics, it is difficult to know whether or not the firm is meeting requirements or making desired improvements. During the course of this study with Lockheed Martin, the research team was tasked with determining the effectiveness of the site's existing performance metrics that are used to help an organization achieve and maintain success. Without the use of performance metrics, it is difficult to know whether or not the firm is meeting requirements or making desired improvements. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Research indicates that there are five key elements that influence the success of a performance metric. A standardized method of determining whether or not a metric has the right mix of these elements was created in the form of a metrics scorecard.
Findings
The scorecard survey was successful in revealing good metric use, as well as problematic metrics. In the quality department, the Document Rejects metric has been reworked and is no longer within the executive's metric deck. It was also recommended to add root cause analysis, and to quantify and track the cost of non-conformance and the overall cost of quality. In total, the number of site wide metrics has decreased from 75 to 50 metrics. The 50 remaining metrics are undergoing a continuous improvement process in conjunction with the use of the metric scorecard tool developed in this research.
Research limitations/implications
The metrics scorecard should be used site-wide for an assessment of all metrics. The focus of this paper is on the metrics within the quality department.
Practical implications
Putting a quick and efficient metrics assessment technique in place was critical. With the leadership and participation of Lockheed Martin, this goal was accomplished.
Originality/value
This paper presents the process of metrics evaluation and the issues that were encountered during the process, including insights that would not have been easily documented without this mechanism. Lockheed Martin Company has used results from this research. Other industries could also apply the methods proposed here.
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Joanna Mason, E. Lianne Visser, Lindsey Garner-Knapp and Tamara Mulherin
This opening chapter introduces key debates in relation to informality in policymaking, laying the theoretical and conceptual groundwork for the individual empirical chapters…
Abstract
This opening chapter introduces key debates in relation to informality in policymaking, laying the theoretical and conceptual groundwork for the individual empirical chapters, beginning with a provocation for how informality can alternatively be understood. Through illustrating where gaps in understanding within current literature exist for how informality acquires meaning, and the physical and material relevance for how it manifests across contexts, this chapter introduces the three thematic clusters that thread through the book’s chapters: boundaries, knowledge mastery and networks. In doing so, it briefly positions each chapter in relation to these flexible and overlapping categories, drawing attention to how each chapter presents a different understanding of informality. Key to this chapter is our contention that while informality escapes definition, without binary or fixed conceptualisations of this concept we are better able to take in its fluidity and envisage how it is interwoven in everyday policy work and its human and non-human enactment. Underpinning this contention is a key contribution of this work, a proposition for a re-conceptualising of informality and formality as in|formality. Methodologically, this chapter argues that informality is better ‘shown’ than ‘told’ – and that this can be achieved through interpretive and socio-material approaches woven through disciplines that foreground narrative, ethnographic and creative approaches to research.
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Frank J. Cavico and Bahaudin Mujtaba
While the words diversity, disparate impact, and discrimination are commonly read and heard by working adults and professionals, they can at times be confusing and fearful to some…
Abstract
Purpose
While the words diversity, disparate impact, and discrimination are commonly read and heard by working adults and professionals, they can at times be confusing and fearful to some managers. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a specific aspect of US civil rights laws – the disparate impact theory. The authors provide an analysis based on the statute, case law interpreting, and applying the statute, administrative guidelines from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as legal and management commentary. The paper illustrates the requirements of a plaintiff employee’s initial case based on the disparate impact theory. The challenging causation component which requires some degree of statistical evidence is given particular attention. Limitations to the paper are stated at the beginning; and recommendations to managers are explored and provided toward the end of the paper.
Design/methodology/approach
It is a legal paper which covers all the laws related to discrimination based on disparate impact and disparate treatment theories. Actual court cases up until this month and Americans laws related to this concept are reviewed and critically discussed.
Findings
The salient feature of disparate impact is that this legal theory allows a plaintiff job applicant or employee to sustain a case of illegal discrimination without providing any evidence of a discriminatory motive. As opposed to the disparate treatment liability is imposed based on disproportionate adverse results and not discriminatory intent.
Research limitations/implications
This paper deals with the disparate impact theory pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. However, it must be pointed out that the disparate impact theory is also applicable to claims arising under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. Since the focus of this paper is Title VII federal and state constitutional issues, such as the applicability of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause that may arise in disparate impact cases involving government entities will not be addressed.
Practical implications
Managers and employees can protect themselves in the workplace from illegal discriminatory practices. Initially, employers and managers must be aware of the distinction between a disparate impact case and a disparate treatment case with the latter requiring evidence of intentional discrimination. Evidence, of course, can be direct or circumstantial or inferential. Whereas in a disparate impact case there is no intentional discrimination; and as such proof of discriminatory intent is not required. Rather, the employee has to present evidence that the employer’s neutral on-its-face employment policy or practice caused an adverse disproportionate impact on the employee as a member of a protected class.
Social implications
Human resources professionals and managers must become educated in diversity laws in order to provide an inclusive workplace for all employees and candidates. Employers have legitimate areas of concern in hiring and promoting employees; and the courts are cognizant of employer responsibilities; and thus the employers must be able to show how specific knowledge, skills, education, training, backgrounds, as well as height, weight, strength, and dexterity are legitimate qualifications that directly relate to successful job performance.
Originality/value
This is an original paper by the authors.
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Angela Hall, Stacy Hickox, Jennifer Kuan and Connie Sung
Barriers to employment are a significant issue in the United States and abroad. As civil rights legislation continues to be enforced and as employers seek to diversify their…
Abstract
Barriers to employment are a significant issue in the United States and abroad. As civil rights legislation continues to be enforced and as employers seek to diversify their workplaces, it is incumbent upon the management field to offer insights that address obstacles to work. Although barriers to employment have been addressed in various fields such as psychology and economics, management scholars have addressed this issue in a piecemeal fashion. As such, our review will offer a comprehensive, integrative model of barriers to employment that addresses both individual and organizational perspectives. We will also address societal-level concerns involving these barriers. An integrative perspective is necessary for research to progress in this area because many individuals with barriers to employment face multiple challenges that prevent them from obtaining and maintaining full employment. While the additive, or possibly multiplicative, effect of employment barriers have been acknowledged in related fields like rehabilitation counseling and vocational psychology, the Human Resource Management (HRM) literature has virtually ignored this issue. We discuss suggestions for the reduction or elimination of barriers to employment. We also provide an integrative model of employment barriers that addresses the mutable (amenable to change) nature of some barriers, while acknowledging the less mutable nature of others.
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Mary L. Walshok and Josh D. Shapiro
Since the 1980s, US universities have greatly increased attention given to innovation and entrepreneurship out of a genuine commitment to enhancing American competitiveness…
Abstract
Since the 1980s, US universities have greatly increased attention given to innovation and entrepreneurship out of a genuine commitment to enhancing American competitiveness. Although regional innovation and entrepreneurship can be enhanced by universities in multiple ways, the primary metrics of “success” remain patenting, licensing rates, and university spin-outs. While these metrics can be a useful proxy for the entrepreneurial university they tend to understate the many important contributions universities, including non-research intensive universities, make to their regional economies. In this chapter, we introduce a framework of capabilities that are essential to nurturing ecosystems of innovation and entrepreneurship at the regional level. We then describe the varied ways in which universities can support the development of these capabilities. Finally, we provide a framework of metrics, which can more comprehensively capture the value that universities represent to innovation and entrepreneurship in their regions.
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Umesh Chandra Pandey, Subash Ranjan Nayak, Krishna Roka and Trilok Kumar Jain
Paul C. Harris, Janice Byrd, Hyunhee Kim, Miray D. Seward, Araya Baker, Alagammai Meyyappan, Deepika Nantha Kumar and Tia Nickens
The authors focus on using Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a lens through which to analyze the holistic welfare development of Black male student-athletes, namely their identity…
Abstract
The authors focus on using Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a lens through which to analyze the holistic welfare development of Black male student-athletes, namely their identity development and overall college and career readiness. The authors contend that if structured and delivered well with the appropriate supports, athletics can be more of a mobilizing mechanism for Black males versus an exploitive one. Specifically, athletic identity does not have to be exclusive, but rather one aspect of the student-athletes' multidimensional sense of self. To this end, the authors outline specific research, practice, and policy recommendations that address the unique challenges of Black male student-athletes in K-16.
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Maxim Vlasov, Karl Johan Bonnedahl and Zsuzsanna Vincze
This paper aims to contribute to the emerging entrepreneurship research that deals with resilience by examining how embeddedness in place and in trans-local grassroots networks…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to contribute to the emerging entrepreneurship research that deals with resilience by examining how embeddedness in place and in trans-local grassroots networks influences proactive entrepreneurship for local resilience.
Design/methodology/approach
Three theoretical propositions are developed on the basis of the existing literature. These propositions are assisted with brief empirical illustrations of grassroots innovations from the context of agri-food systems.
Findings
Embeddedness in place and in trans-local grassroots networks enables proactive entrepreneurship for local resilience. Social-cultural embeddedness in place facilitates access to local resources and legitimacy, and creation of social value in the community. Ecological embeddedness in place facilitates spotting and leveraging of environmental feedbacks and creation of ecological value. Embeddedness in trans-local grassroots networks provides entrepreneurs with unique resources, including globally transferable knowledge about sustainability challenges and practical solutions to these challenges. As result, entrepreneurship for resilience is explained as an embedding process. Embedding means attuning of practices to local places, as well as making global resources, including knowledge obtained in grassroots networks, work in local settings.
Research limitations/implications
Researchers should continue developing the emerging domain of entrepreneurship for resilience.
Practical implications
The objective of resilience and due respect to local environment may entail a need to consider appropriate resourcing practices and organisational models.
Social implications
The critical roles of place-based practices for resilience deserve more recognition in today’s globalised world.
Originality/value
The specific importance of the ecological dimension of embeddedness in place is emphasised. Moreover, by combining entrepreneurship and grassroots innovation literatures, which have talked past each other to date, this paper shows how local and global resources are leveraged throughout the embedding process. Thereby, it opens unexplored research avenues within the emerging domain of entrepreneurship for resilience.
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When a small schoolboy I became acquainted with the proverb Fames optimum condimentum. Nevertheless, millions of human beings, perhaps because they have little experience of…
Abstract
When a small schoolboy I became acquainted with the proverb Fames optimum condimentum. Nevertheless, millions of human beings, perhaps because they have little experience of famishment, persist in taking other condimenta with their food two or three times a day. Some of them, having satisfied their hunger, slake their thirst with products of a brewery—most of the commoner condiments not being even remotely associated with brewing. I have spent many years in efforts to secure that foods are called by their proper names. Egg powder, Devonshire hake, tonic cocktails, queer liquors containing isopropyl alcohol or even methyl alcohol, phoney blended whiskey—how would food lawyers have lived if these and other wrongly described goods had never come on the market ? Though a rose by any other name may smell as sweet, a dandelion called a rose does not. And those who administer the food laws have come across many examples of articles labelled on the principle of lucus a non lucendo. How these old tags stick in one's memory.
Anna Marie Johnson, Amber Willenborg, Christopher Heckman, Joshua Whitacre, Latisha Reynolds, Elizabeth Alison Sterner, Lindsay Harmon, Syann Lunsford and Sarah Drerup
This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction through an extensive annotated bibliography of publications covering all…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present recently published resources on information literacy and library instruction through an extensive annotated bibliography of publications covering all library types.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2017 in over 200 journals, magazines, books and other sources.
Findings
The paper provides a brief description for all 590 sources.
Originality/value
The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.