Designing routines: On the folly of designing artifacts,while hoping for patterns of action

Using the example of a failed software implementation, we discuss the role of artifacts in shaping organizational routines. We argue that artifact-centered assumptions about design are not well suited to designing organizational routines, which are generative systems that produce recognizable, repetitive patterns of interdependent actions, carried out by multiple actors. Artifact-centered assumptions about design not only reinforce a widespread misunderstanding of routines as things, they implicitly embody a rather strong form of technological determinism. As an alternative perspective, we discuss the use of narrative networks as a way to conceptualize the role of human and non-human actants, and to represent the variable patterns of action that are characteristic of “live” routines. Using this perspective, we conclude with some suggestions on how to design organizational routines that are more consistent with their nature as generative systems.     

Learning bad habits across generations: How negative imprints affect human resource management in the family firm

Organizational learning can be a key shared value that perpetuates the family's and the family firm's culture across generations. Imprinting theory helps to explain the impact that lessons learned and transmitted can have on the development of human resources in the family firm. However, the results of imprinting may not necessarily be positive, particularly when imprinting manifests itself in negative processes and expectations. Whereas imprinting and organizational learning are often associated with a “positive halo effect,” they have the potential to result in negative behaviors and deleterious firm-level outcomes. Employing imprinting theory as a framework, we highlight the potential dark side of imprinting within the family firm context and how it can damage human resource efforts and threaten company performance and firm survival. Finally, we suggest how bad habits may be broken and replaced with more effective routines so as to ensure the family firm's continuity and success.     

人力资源开发学科:在争议中健康发展

在20世纪90年代,人力资源开发作为一门学科在国际领域内达成共识,人力资源开发专业逐渐壮大。人力资源开发在经历理论的不断的成熟和实践地位的提高,在培育个人专业素质和提升组织绩效方面具有重要作用,逐渐向一门成熟学科迈进。然而,在该学科发展道路中,由于受到学科属性、研究切入点和文化属性影响,人力资源开发学科发展中产生许多争议。当今,人力资源开发的学科身份、本质、理论与实践的关系和未来发展存在的争议,但人力资源开发作为一门独立学科将健康发展。     

Organizational Routines as Sources of Connections and Understandings

Organizational routines are increasingly identified as an aspect of organizations that allows them to achieve the balance between adaptability and stability. We contribute to this discussion by showing that the connections that organizational routines make between people contribute to both stability and the ability to adapt. We argue that the connections between people that are formed as they engage together in organizational routines are important for developing understandings about both what needs to be done in a specific instance of performing a routine and about the goals of the organization that routines presumably help accomplish. Together the two sets of understandings influence organizational performance by affecting the ability of organizations to adapt to changing circumstances. These arguments lead to a general recognition of the importance to organizations of connections and the suggestion that the connections, themselves, may be an important outcome of organizational routines.     

Capabilities in Motion: New Organizational Forms and the Reshaping of the Hollywood Movie Industry*

abstract This paper looks at the evolution of capabilities in the Hollywood movie industry in the aftermath of the transition from a studio era dominated by integrated hierarchies to a post‐studio era dominated by flexible hub organizations supplied by networks of resource providers. Adopting a dynamic capabilities perspective we argue that two industry capabilities – mobilizing and transforming capabilities – play a crucial role in assembling and transforming resource bundles into feature films. We further argue that the transition to new organizational forms shifts the co‐evolutionary process, with practices and routines that make up mobilizing capabilities changing faster and becoming more important to box office success than practices and routines that make up transforming capabilities. We test our hypotheses using a sample of 400 films split between the studio and post‐studio eras. The results support our hypotheses, pointing to the influence of centralized control versus dispersed access to resources. The strategy of integrated hierarchical organizations depends on ownership of resources that reduces incentives to develop mobilizing capabilities, and increases incentives to develop transforming capabilities. The advent of new organizational forms, by contrast, increases returns to new practices and routines that mobilize resources at the expense of returns on exploring practices and routines that make up transforming capabilities.     

STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT WITHIN A RESOURCE-CAPABILITY VIEW OF THE FIRM*

This paper takes a critical look at the field of strategic human resource management and in particular the debate about the strategic value of the human resource. We identify the contribution as well as the problematic nature of the situational-contingency perspective. Drawing from the strategic management literature and the concept of resource heterogeneity, we then posit a resource-capability view of the firm and argue that the mutually reinforcing interaction between the stock of knowledge, skills and expertise (resources) and the organizational routines and human resource policies and practices (capabilities) generates human resource competencies whose strategic value is realizable to the extent that they are linked with core competencies. We thus offer a reconceptualization of human resource competencies which goes beyond existing trait, behavioural and systems approaches. Finally, we identify the circumstances surrounding the generation and distribution of rents arising from the utilization of human resource competencies by drawing from transaction cost theory and industrial relations.     

The new-breed approach to 21st century human resources

When the CEO for one of the country's large telecommunications companies selected Bonnie C. Hathcock as chief human resources officer almost six years ago, she had not spent day one in a personnel or human resources assignment. At that time, her career spanned 15 years and included a decade in sales and marketing with a Fortune 50 corporation and two training and development assignments with large multinationals. Now after 20 years of corporate life, Bonnie says, “I love this dynamic profession and have discovered my perfect fit in corporate America.” Bonnie and her team of human resource professionals at Siemens Rolm Communications Inc. in California's Silicon Valley, have launched a progressive human resource strategy and a creative organizational design. In this article, Bonnie shares her approach to 21st century human resources that is newbreed, strategic, and refreshingly unconventional. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Workforce Downsizing and Firm Performance: An Organizational Routine Perspective

While there is an extensive body of work on how organizational routines emerge and evolve over time, there is a scarcity of research on what happens when routines are disrupted or disbanded through the elimination of key individuals involved in them. This study is the first to theorize and empirically examine the relationship between the magnitude of workforce downsizing and firm performance applying an organizational routine perspective. Consistent with prior research on organizational routines, we posit that small‐scale downsizing leads to efficiency improvements without disrupting the existing routines. While larger routine disruptions occur in both medium‐ and large‐scale downsizing, we further argue and find that large‐scale downsizing tends to be more beneficial than medium‐scale downsizing. Building on prior research on routines, we reason that in medium‐scale downsizing employees try to salvage the impaired, partially functioning routines, while large‐scale downsizing requires a more fundamental rethinking and re‐creation of routines leading to more positive outcomes. Our study contributes to downsizing research through the application of the organizational routine perspective to explain the financial outcomes of downsizing. In doing so, we depart from the widely held assumption in the downsizing literature that the relationship between the magnitude of downsizing and firm performance is linear. Our study also extends prior research on organizational routines by highlighting the usefulness of conceiving routines as mindful accomplishments where the pressure to engage in path‐breaking cognitive effort may lead to better results than path‐dependent repairing of routines.     

组织行为学在企业人力资源管理中的应用

当前,随着经济的不断发展,市场竞争日益激烈,各行各业面临的挑战不断加剧,人力资源管理成为企业经营管理中的重要方面,企业想要完善自身发展机制,就要建立内部管理体系,提升企业管理水平,重视企业人力资源的配置与发展,创新管理机制,最终推动企业长久发展。论文结合组织行为学,提出其在企业人力资源管理中运用和实施的策略,进而推动组织行为学更广泛地应用。     

Strategic human resources management is irrelevant when it comes to highly skilled professionals in the Canadian new economy

The goal of this paper is to explain the commitment behaviour of highly skilled professionals in Canadian business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies that do not have a formal and explicit managerial commitment strategy and to emphasize the need to take the organizational context into consideration when developing a theory that seeks to account for differences in employee's organizational commitment. Our contribution is to reappraise the relevance of the traditional organizational commitment definition in this organizational context, a new organizational form. We demonstrate that in the companies which are different from the traditional bureaucratic organizational forms and which employ highly qualified professionals, the employment relationship is based on a psychological contract that is not accounted for in the strategic HRM theory.

Indeed, the basic principles of strategic HRM dictate that an organization's most valuable asset is its employees; it is therefore incumbent on management to do whatever is necessary to retain its workforce, readily described as a key resource, and to use human resources management (HRM) practices as tools to elicit commitment. In a study of highly skilled workers in Canadian business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies belonging to the so-called ‘new economy’, we observed that although the competitive advantage enjoyed by these companies depends to a large degree on the creativity and innovativeness of their workforce, these companies barely have any official HRM policies, and the HR department plays a very unobtrusive role. Yet, no one could say that the employees in these firms are not committed – on the contrary! This situation has several implications in terms of career for these professionals, in terms of HR practices for the employers.

Nevertheless, until now, existing theoretical models of organizational commitment have shown little interest in highly skilled workers in general and even less in new economy professionals.     

Transferring Organizational Learning Systems to Japanese Subsidiaries in China*

abstract Qualitative interviews and observations were conducted to study the cross‐border transfer of organizational learning systems to the subsidiaries of five Japanese manufacturing companies operating in South China. This paper develops a holistic model of the overall process, by integrating knowledge‐oriented, routine‐oriented, and social/contextual perspectives, each of which plays a necessary role in explaining essential aspects. One feature of the transfer of organizational learning systems entailed arranging local access to, and opportunity to replicate, various types of knowledge repository that contained corporate values as well as technical expertise. A second feature involved the development of collective learning routines through dynamic interplay with evolving, locally based, knowledge repositories. A third feature, in two companies, entailed the creation of enterprise contexts that reproduced the socialization and corporate culture maintenance rituals, and the open plan factory and office designs, that were hallmarks of the respective parent companies, and which appeared highly conducive to the transfer of collective learning routines to the local sites. Findings indicate that successful cross‐border transfer of organizational learning systems entails the development and implementation of an overall heuristic design for cultivating collective learning routines through the engineering of enterprise contexts and the responsive management of knowledge repositories.     

Changing Routine: Reframing Performance Management within a Multinational

This paper seeks to extend the literature on how change occurs in organizational routines by examining the link between routines and schemata and showing the cognitive and motivational factors involved. Using an in‐depth analysis of a Japanese multinational, we develop an account of how a newly‐implemented centralized performance management routine is interpreted by managers at two subsidiaries. We show how different performances of subroutines emerge into a new ostensive pattern of a routine, and how the cognitive and motivational aspects of individual agency are manifested in this process and how they affect the espoused organizational schema.     

Cultural Complementarity: Reshaping professional and organizational logics in developing frontline medical leadership

With the rise of clinical management, new skills of medical doctors stand out, including leadership skills. Medical doctors organize medical work and improve patient care. The training of frontline leadership skills, however, is weakly developed in residency programmes. Medical professional cultures tend to resist organizational techniques and values. This paper analyses cultural interventions in health-care organizations, aimed at overcoming ‘clashes’ between professional and organizational logics in frontline domains. These interventions do not work against, but ‘use’ professional traditions, styles and customs as cultural resources. We use one particular project to illustrate this, a project in which internal medicine residents are invited to join quality improvement sessions, during which they identify critical (organizational) experiences with care provision and realize change. We show how residents feel enabled to establish results and cooperate with other professionals. We also show how this project links organizational responsibilities and medical professionalism – how complementarity (instead of conflict) is established. This is done in practical ways, which commit instead of alienate medical professionals.     

The threat of professional obsolescence: How do professionals at different career stages experience it and cope with it?

The accelerated rate of scientific and technological progress puts heavy demands on professionals. To be able to function effectively in the world of modern technology, professionals must continuously update their knowledge and skills so that they do not stay behind and are not threatened by obsolescence. Managers and human resource practitioners need to understand how the threat of obsolescence is perceived, and what professionals actually do to alleviate this threat. An exploratory study, based on in-depth interviews with 50 professionals in the Israeli high-tech industry, identified a variety of meanings that professionals assign to the threat of obsolescence, and a variety of updating activities in which they engage in order to cope with these threats. First, three meaning categories were identified: threat in the context of the self, threat in the immediate social context, and threat in the context of the job market. The essence and prevalence of these meanings were different at different career stages. Second, three types of updating resources were identified: structured opportunities, information material, and interpersonal exchange. Both the availability and the utilization of these resources varied with career stage. Implications of the multifaceted view of obsolescence to the management of professional human resources are discussed.     

企业战略人力资源管理的探析

战略人力资源管理对经济增长和组织绩效都具有重要作用。在实践中，人们认识到了战略人力资源管理对组织绩效的重要作用．但是对于战略人力资源管理对组织绩效的作用方式尚不确定．而且企业的人力资源与企业经营的基本战略不相匹配。为了实现更好的组织绩效，有必要建立科学的战略人力资源管理模式。战略人力资源管理模式构建的实质就是协调人力资源管理战略和企业的经营战略，用科学的人力资源计划为员工提供足够的发展空间，以系统的培训开发人力资源，引导员工最大限度的实现企业战略目标，为企业做出最大贡献。     

组织智能的评价指标体系与评价方法

组织智能是组织在快速变化和高度竞争的环境中取胜的关键。基于组织智能的国内外研究现状,界定了组织智能的概念和特点,初步提出了由人力资源、知识管理、组织内部环境、资源运作、外部支持因素构成的组织智能评价指标体系,运用模糊综合评价法和灰色聚类分析法,分别对组织智能进行了评价。     

人力资源管理视野下的员工心理资本开发

心理资本关注开发人的积极能量和潜能,成为人力资源管理的新取向,是组织竞争优势的核心要素。心理资本具有很强的投资收益性和可开发性,通过把心理资本引入人力资源管理配置体系、建立目标导向的绩效管理体系、建立重视员工心理资本提升的培训开发项目、引入心理资本增值计划等人力资源管理策略,不仅能增进组织公民行为、提高组织绩效,而且可以提高员工的工作场所幸福感,帮助员工实现家庭工作平衡。     

Identifying the moderating influences of external environments on new product development process

Few studies have attempted to investigate the following: (1) whether the firm's core capabilities or resources and routines (e.g., integration among functions) for product development, in the presence of environmental dynamics, become incumbent inertia or core rigidities? and (2) how environmental dynamics affect the influence of a project team's implementation capabilities in the new product development (NPD) process on new product launch performance? This study approaches these questions by addressing the three most indispensable NPD process components (i.e., marketing, technology, and organization) and incorporating new moderators, namely pace of technological change and competitive intensity, within a single study. It specifically examines the extent to which the latter two external environmental variables moderate the impact of NPD practices on new product launch outcome. Data obtained from a survey of NPD projects developed and launched by Korean manufacturers suggest that environmental dynamics would reduce the contribution of functional-specific sources of advantage (resources) and project-specific sources of advantage (e.g., integration among functions) to organizational implementation capabilities (i.e., a project team's proficiency in executing NPD activities). Moreover, the research also shows that market dynamics may increase the contribution of organizational implementation capabilities to NPD project performance.     

论校企合作给力人才培养

人才是企业的一项重要资源。在校企合作的框架下,院校开展校企合作是其谋求自身发展、实现与社会接轨、提高育人质量的重要举措;企业则通过与院校建立的合作机制,为其培育一线实用型基础人才,从而实现自身长期可持续发展的战略需求;而学生可以提前接受企业的培训,熟悉企业工作的环境和文化,从而实现更快成长和发展。因此,校企合作实是企业培养较高实战素质人才的有效途径和人力资源开发的一种重要形式。     

浅谈企业的人力资源配置

文章首先对企业在人力资源配置方面存在的问题进行简要分析并对人力资源的合理配置问题进行论述,从知人善用、适人适位,动态优化与配置,个人与组织发展的匹配的角度出发,寻求解决人力资源配置问题的途径。