Antonio La Sala, Ryan Fuller, Laura Riolli and Valerio Temperini
The aim of this research is twofold: first, to get more insights on digital maturity to face the emerging 4.0 augmented scenario by identifying artificial intelligence (AI…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this research is twofold: first, to get more insights on digital maturity to face the emerging 4.0 augmented scenario by identifying artificial intelligence (AI) competencies for becoming hybrid employees and leaders; and second, to investigate digital maturity, training and development support and HR satisfaction with the organization as valuable predictors of AI competency enhancement.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was conducted on 123 participants coming from different industries and involved in functions dealing with the ramifications of Industry 4.0 technologies. The sample has included predominately small-to-medium organizations. A quantitative analysis based on both exploratory factor analysis and multiple linear regression was used to test the research hypotheses.
Findings
Three main competency clusters emerge as facilitators of AI–human interaction, i.e. leadership, technical and cognitive. The interplay among these clusters gives rise to plastic knowledge, a kind of moldable knowledge possessed by a particular human agent, here called hybrid. Moreover, organizational digital maturity, training and development support and satisfaction with the organization were significant predictors of AI competency enhancement.
Research limitations/implications
The size of the sample, the convenience sampling method and the geographical context of analysis (i.e. California) required prudence in generalizing results.
Originality/value
Hybrids’ plastic knowledge conceptualized and operationalized in the overall quantitative analysis allows them to fill in the knowledge gaps that an AI agent-human interplay may imply, generating alternative solutions and foreseeing possible outcomes.
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Ryan P. Fuller and Boniface Michael
This research investigates the issues of concern for American film and television (TV) unions, the features of issues, whether issues are threats, opportunities or mixed…
Abstract
Purpose
This research investigates the issues of concern for American film and television (TV) unions, the features of issues, whether issues are threats, opportunities or mixed evaluations, and unions' distributive or integrative approaches to issues (Walton and McKersie, 1965).
Design/methodology/approach
The first author interviewed 25 union leaders and used thematic analysis to identify issue characteristics and evaluations of issues as threats, opportunities or mixed. Using language analysis, the authors then connected these evaluations to integrative or distributive approaches.
Findings
The findings revealed three larger issues of concern (positioning the union and jurisdiction, shifting patterns of risk and negotiating and enforcing contracts) and five characteristics (locus, boundary, manageability, predictability and scope). These characteristics then determined how interviewees viewed issues as threats, opportunities or mixed evaluations. Three characteristics grouped together to form threats: external locus, indistinct boundaries and low manageability. Indistinct boundaries contributed to assessments of issues as mixed. These issue types, characteristics and interpretations revealed a metaphorical above- and below-the-line differentiation among film and TV unions based on the members continued ownership of their work. With one exception – BTL unions on positioning union and jurisdiction – leaders' language reflected distributive approaches to issues.
Originality/value
This study delves deeper into Walton and McKersie's (1965) classical two-part classification of issues by adding a typology of characteristics and operational definitions to aid in identifying threats, opportunities and mixed evaluations through the novel use of issue analysis in industrial relations.
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In the US minimum wages were initially enacted by individual states, beginning with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1912. These laws were modeled on legislation enacted over…
Abstract
In the US minimum wages were initially enacted by individual states, beginning with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1912. These laws were modeled on legislation enacted over the previous two decades in Australia, New Zealand, and England (Fisher, 1926, chap. 8; Hammond, 1915, 1913; Hobson, 1915; Hart, 1994, chaps. 2 & 3; Morris, 1986). From 1912 to 1923, the legislatures of 16 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia passed minimum wage legislation, although not all of them were operational by the end of this period (Brandeis, 1935, p. 501; Clark, 1921; Millis & Montgomery, 1938, chap. 6; Morris, 1930, chap. 1).
Many Australasian-Anglo-American jurisdictions including Queensland, other Australian states, the Australian Commonwealth, central government in Britain, the U.S., Canada and New…
Abstract
Many Australasian-Anglo-American jurisdictions including Queensland, other Australian states, the Australian Commonwealth, central government in Britain, the U.S., Canada and New Zealand (Department of Finance and Administration, 2000; NZ Treasury/State Services Commission, 2002; Queensland Treasury, 1997; Treasury Board of Canada, 2000), are presently debating over “managing for outcomes.” Throughout this chapter, the acronym MFO is used to stand for this whole movement even though it implies greater coherence than exists. There is a definite movement in this direction in Australasian public services with the emergence of widespread rethinking about its purposes and characteristics. It is driven in some jurisdictions by ministers wanting to know about actual policy outcomes and less about the shiny-chrome management systems behind them and, in other jurisdictions, by senior managers in central agencies and some line agencies who are rediscovering the real purposes constituting public management. There is also some back-pedaling in relation to some aspects of the economic reform agenda that was applied too hard during the late 1980s and 1990s in this part of the world. There are also some that claim that MFO is a logical extension of the first stage of reform undertaken during the 1980s and 1990s – one in which outputs rather than outcomes was the primary focus.
Philip William Sisson and Julie J.C.H. Ryan
This paper aims to clarify the need for Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs) and explain how some recent views on competencies for educational guidelines, a Knowledge Management (KM…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to clarify the need for Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs) and explain how some recent views on competencies for educational guidelines, a Knowledge Management (KM) competency model and expansion of practice management concepts make the need for CKOs clearer.
Design/methodology/approach
This viewpoint was developed in response to recent publications disparaging the idea of a CKO. The method used was to extract ideas from published and in-work papers to establish the basis for and explain the postulated Unified Competency Theory of KM and its implications regarding the need for CKOs.
Findings
CKOs are needed to ensure that all organizationally relevant functions’ knowledge and KM assessments and/or audits are individually complete and collectively sufficient. A risk/opportunity management role also provides justification.
Research limitations/implications
This paper mainly limits its discussion to the papers that comprise research leading to the Unified Competency Theory of KM, its implications and an updated practice management model. Other points of view that might substantiate or refute the conclusions have not been addressed.
Practical implications
The KM field needs to better identify KM’s risk and opportunity management role and functional imperative. Organizations may need to reevaluate their directions with regards to KM and a CKO.
Originality/value
It extends the concept of practice management to permit differentiating disciplines. It provides new rationale for CKOs.
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Kristen McIntyre and Ryan Fuller
The chapter focuses on how engaging undergraduate and graduate students at a metropolitan university through community-based experiential learning can help them make a difference…
Abstract
Purpose
The chapter focuses on how engaging undergraduate and graduate students at a metropolitan university through community-based experiential learning can help them make a difference in their personal relationships, in their workplaces and in their communities.
Methodology/approach
The chapter explores the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Department of Speech Communication’s integrated approach to undergraduate and graduate curriculum that focuses on four types of casing complex problems and making positive, ethical recommendations to make a difference. Specifically, the chapter explores how problem-based learning; service-learning; narrative ethnography; and research projects can be used as meaningful ways to case complex communication issues and to make ethical, theory-informed recommendations to not only do no harm but also affect positive change and promote social justice in students’ personal relationships, organizations, and communities.
Practical implications
Lessons learned from the programmatic approach are shared that include building a theoretical base for students to draw from, integrating case approaches into the curriculum, and engaging resistance and failure. Chapter recommendations promote using theory as a lever for learning, building meaningful relationships with stakeholders, and adopting a process orientation that embraces failure.
Originality/value
The chapter offers a review of four undergraduate courses and four graduate courses, with explicit applications of the four case approaches. Additionally, learning objectives, major assignment descriptions, and assessment approaches are detailed for each course.
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Ozias A. Moore, Beth Livingston and Alex M. Susskind
Hiring managers commonly rely on system-justifying motives and attitudes during résumé screening. Given the prevalent use of modern résumé formats (e.g. LinkedIn) that include not…
Abstract
Purpose
Hiring managers commonly rely on system-justifying motives and attitudes during résumé screening. Given the prevalent use of modern résumé formats (e.g. LinkedIn) that include not only an applicant's credentials but also headshot photographs, visible sources of information such as an applicant's race are also revealed while a hiring manager simultaneously evaluates a candidate's suitability. As a result, such screening is likely to activate evaluation bias. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of a hiring manager's perceptions of race-system justification, that is, support for the status quo in relations between Black and White job candidates in reinforcing or mitigating hiring bias related to in-group and out-group membership during résumé screening.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing from system justification theory (SJT) in a pre-selection context, in an experimental study involving 174 human resource managers, the authors tested two boundary conditions of the expected relationship between hiring manager and job candidate race on candidate ratings: (1) a hiring manager's affirmative action (AA) attitudes and system-justifying attitudes and (2) a job candidate's manipulated suitability for a position. This approach enabled us to juxtapose the racial composition of hiring manager–job candidate dyads under conditions in which the job candidate's race and competency for a posted position were manipulated to examine the conditions under which White and Black hiring managers are likely to make biased evaluations. The authors largely replicated these findings in two follow-up studies with 261 students and 361 online raters.
Findings
The authors found that information on a candidate's objective suitability for a job resulted in opposite-race positive bias among Black evaluators and same-race positive bias among White evaluators in study 1 alone. Conversely, positive attitudes toward AA policies resulted in in-group favoritism and strengthened a positive same-race bias for Black evaluators (study 1 and 2). We replicated this finding with a third sample to directly test system-justifying attitudes (study 3). The way in which White raters rated White candidates reflected the same attitudes against systems (AA attitudes) that Black raters rating Black candidates exhibited in the authors’ first two studies. Positive system-justifying attitudes or positive attitudes toward AA did not, however, translate into the elevation of same-race candidate ratings of suitability above those of opposite-race candidates.
Research limitations/implications
Although the size of the sample is on par with the percentage of Blacks nationwide in private-sector managerial-level positions ideally, the authors would have preferred to oversample Black HR managers. Given the scarcity of focus on Black HR managers, future researchers, using diverse samples of evaluators should also consider not only managers' and candidates' race but also their social dominance orientation. Moreover, it is important that future researchers use more racially diverse samples from other industries to more fully identify the ways in which the dynamics of system-justifying processes can emerge to influence evaluation bias during résumé screening.
Practical implications
Advances in technology pose new challenges to HR hiring practices. This study attempts to fill a void regarding the unintended effects of bias during digital résumé screening. These trends have important HR implications. Initial screening of a job applicant's credentials while concurrently viewing the individual's photograph is likely to activate subconscious evaluation bias, produces inaccurate applicant ratings. This study's findings should caution hiring managers about the potential for bias to arise when viewing job candidates' digital résumés and encourage them to carefully examine various boundary conditions on racial similarity bias effects on applicant pre-screening and subsequent hiring decisions.
Social implications
The study’s results suggest that bias might be attenuated as organizational leaders engage in efforts to understand their system-justifying motives and examine perceptions of the workplace social hierarchy (i.e. responses to status hierarchies) linked to perceptions of the status quo. For example, understanding how system justifying motives influence evaluation bias will inform how best to design training and other interventions that link discussions of workforce diversity to the relationships among groups within the organization's social hierarchy. This line of research should be further explored to better understand the complex forces at work when hiring managers adopt system-justifying motives during hiring evaluations.
Originality/value
The authors address the limitations of prior research by examining interactions between boundary conditions in a real-world context using real human resources hiring managers and more contemporary personnel-screening practices to test changes in the direction and strength of the relationship between hiring manager–job candidate race and hiring manager evaluations. Thus, the authors’ findings have implications for hiring bias and understanding of system-justification processes, particularly regarding how, when and why hiring managers support the status quo (i.e. perpetuate inequity) even if they are disadvantaged as a result.
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THE Ryan monoplane trainer is to the United States what the dc Havilland Tiger Moth or the Miles Magister is in this country. As in the case of the British aeroplanes a primary…
Abstract
THE Ryan monoplane trainer is to the United States what the dc Havilland Tiger Moth or the Miles Magister is in this country. As in the case of the British aeroplanes a primary type has been in use for a number of years and this has been developed to its ultimate form while, at the same time, other designs for different purposes were being developed.
Matthew Eriksen and George H. Tompson
This case describes a real family that has been running a labor-intensive business since 1992. The father, Phil Mason, runs the business with the help of his wife and two of his…
Abstract
This case describes a real family that has been running a labor-intensive business since 1992. The father, Phil Mason, runs the business with the help of his wife and two of his sons in southwestern Rhode Island. The business is a franchisee of ServiceMaster Clean. In 2006, the franchise employed 20 full-time employees and was the 50th largest ServiceMaster Clean franchise among the approximately 1,200 franchises located in the United States. Annual revenue is approximately $2.5 million. In late 2005, one of Phil℉s sons began researching the biodiesel industry. As he was growing weary of the labor-intensive nature of his franchise business, Phil fully researched the industry himself. By the middle of 2006, Phil was convinced that he could profitably manufacture biodiesel in his spare warehouse space. In July 2006, he formed Mason Biodiesel, LLC and financed the $1.5 million start-up costs through a combination of personal savings and bank debt.
Felipe Chávez-Bustamante and Cristián Troncoso-Valverde
This paper aims to study the role of absorptive capacities in coopetitive alliances that involve leakages of sensitive private knowledge regarding firms’ production processes.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the role of absorptive capacities in coopetitive alliances that involve leakages of sensitive private knowledge regarding firms’ production processes.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses a game theoretic approach to model a differentiated product market in which two firms asymmetrically informed about the economic value of a business opportunity must cooperate to exploit this opportunity. Under coopetition, firms gain access to their partners’ core knowledge as the result of inevitable leakages of information. Firms differ in their absorptive capacities, which affects their abilities to leverage this new knowledge outside the collaborative activity.
Findings
Firms with superior absorptive capacities are more likely to devise alliances whose purpose is to gain access to their partners’ core knowledge. This opportunistic behaviour does not disappear even if firms compensate their partners for the damages caused by this deceptive business practice. This paper also finds that a highly specialised product safeguards firms with limited absorptive capacities against these opportunistic behaviours.
Originality/value
This paper provides a theoretical analysis of the role that absorptive capacities and product specialisation play in influencing the emergence of opportunistic behaviours in coopetitive alliances. The theoretical analysis underscores the extent to which the risk of opportunism associated with the exploitation of a partner’s specific core knowledge outside the scope of the cooperative activity affects not only the nature and intensity of market competition but also the incentives to pursue coopetitive alliances.