Subramaniam Ananthram

Strategic human asset management: evidence from North America

Purpose – Human resource management (HRM) theory has transitioned in recent decades towards “human capital” and “human assets” frameworks that emphasize strategic choice and “investment”, which are concepts borrowed from strategic management, accounting and economic theories. This paper aims to explore the perspectives of strategic human asset management theory, which involves strategic agility and knowledge management.Design/methodology/approach – The research was based on semi‐structured interviews with 30 senior executives of multinational firms in Canada and the USA in 2009, following the global financial crisis. The qualitative findings were analyzed using the NVivo software (version 8) package.Findings – The research findings suggest that many North American multinational firms recognize the value of this new interpretation of HRM and are attempting to implement it through “strategic human asset management” in their own firms. The paper concludes with some practical recommendations for line managers...

Career development, job satisfaction, and career commitment: evidence from the Singaporean hospitality industry

Trends such as a changing workforce with greater diversity, a shrinking leadership pipeline, increased globalization, and rapid technological advances are driving organizations to take proactive steps for career development and talent management. To accelerate the development of leaders, organizations must carefully select development methods and invest development dollars wisely. In fact, senior executives are continuing to push for more accountability with human resource expenditures given the rising costs of these solutions and the intensive competition for the budgets associated with them. To that end, many best-practice organizations have developed balanced evaluation criteria, up to and including return on investment, to gauge the effectiveness of leadership development programs. This case study shows how the ROI process was used to evaluate the impact of a career development initiative implemented as a pilot talent management strategy for increased efficiency in a dynamic manufacturing environment. Results showed a positive link between participants’ on-the-job application of learned skills/knowledge and desired business results. Findings from this study support research showing that successful career development efforts must be implemented with a systems view that occurs in the context of ongoing, real-time work initiatives that are closely tied to strategic business goals. Critical success factors that have implications for HR professionals seeking to develop value-added career development solutions include: beginning with a thorough needs assessment; securing support and involvement from senior management; linking efforts to strategic objectives; integrating continuous evaluation processes; involving line managers in programme design; and piloting the programme before launch.

Leader–Member Exchange and Relational Quality in a Singapore Public Sector Organization

An objective of Singapore’s ongoing public sector reform (PS21) requires agencies to focus on getting the best out of its employees. One way of doing this is by creating a positive leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship, enabling supervisors to motivate their subordinates towards the development of organizational citizenship behaviours (OCBs). This article reports the extent of LMX and relational quality in a public sector agency experiencing PS21 reform and high staff turnover. In addition, we examined the effects of organizational justice perceptions and job satisfaction towards a subordinates’ OCB. A path model was developed to examine the relationships between LMX, organizational justice, job satisfaction, and OCB and tested by applying LMX theory. The path analysis results showed that LMX mediates the relationship between organizational justice perceptions and OCB. The results also showed that one’s job satisfaction led to higher level of OCB. The study findings have implications for theory and practice which have been presented in the discussion section.

Control and involvement HR practices in Indian call centres: still searching for answers

Call centres were established primarily to reduce organizational costs while simultaneously providing high-quality customer service. To support this ‘twin constraints’ strategy, a range of human resource (HR) practices tends to be used in call centres that focus simultaneously on both control and involvement. To date, there has been a lack of empirical evidence concerning the outcome of such HR practices on call centre frontline staff (call centre representatives – CCRs). Consequently, this paper attempts to bridge this gap using a sample of 250 CCRs from Indian call centres. The findings show that, while the simultaneous use of involvement-and control-oriented HR practices had a positive impact on CCR job satisfaction, it also resulted in employee exhaustion and disengagement. These findings suggest that while involvement-oriented HR practices enhance CCR job satisfaction, they come at a cost which is potentially a key factor leading to high CCR turnover.

High-performance work systems and employee outcomes in Indian call centres: a mediation approach

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationships between high-performance work systems (HPWSs) and four employee outcomes – job satisfaction, employee engagement, presenteeism and well-being – in Indian call centres.,A path model is developed to investigate the direct and mediation effects between the assessed variables. The study utilised a survey of 250 call centre employees working in five business process management firms based in India.,The findings indicate that HPWSs have a positive relationship with job satisfaction, engagement and well-being. Job satisfaction also had a positive relationship with engagement and presenteeism, and engagement was positively related to presenteeism and well-being. However, there was no significant direct effect of HPWS on presenteeism. Mediation analysis showed that HPWS has an indirect effect on well-being via engagement and also via job satisfaction and engagement combined.,HPWS significantly increases job satisfaction and employee engagement and indirectly influences employee well-being via these outcomes. However, job satisfaction and employee engagement was also found to increase presenteeism, which, in turn, can reduce employee well-being. These findings contribute to the HPWS theory and the literature on employee well-being, and have implications for HR personnel and call centre management.,Given the well-established challenges with employee retention in Indian call centre environments, one solution may be the adoption of a more strategic approach to HRM using HPWS. Such an approach may enhance employees’ perceptions that HPWS practices would have a positive influence on job satisfaction, employee engagement and employee well-being.