Career development of female managers in retailing: Inhibitors and enablers

In the retail industry “women are highly visible” as employees and customers, but managers are predominantly male [Traves et al., 1997. Service Industries Journal, 17(1), 133–154]. To shed light on this anomaly, this article investigates inhibitors to and enablers of the career development of female managers in retailing in theoretical and empirical terms. The primary work comprises interviews and focus groups in three case companies, exploring career development experiences and practices. The evidence discussed supports the contention that active enabling factors, such as organisational values supporting gender equity and people-centred management styles, are pre-prerequisites for females’ career progression.     

HR practices from the perspective of managers and employees in multinational enterprises in China: Alignment issues and implications

China's significance as a destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) is a major factor in Asia-Pacific economic growth. This paper identifies important yet unexplored matters of human resource management (HRM) in multinational enterprise (MNE) subsidiaries in China. Specifically, the study explores the alignment issues between managers and employees with respect to their knowledge of HR practices, their experience of HR practices, and their perceived effectiveness of HR practices. Both interviews and a survey covering seven MNE subsidiaries operating in China finds a lack of alignment between managers and employees in each instance, for example, in their views of intended and actual HR practices and perceived effectiveness of these practices in the areas of performance assessment, recruitment and selection and career development. The implications of the differences for managers of MNEs operating in China are identified and discussed. The limitations of the study are acknowledged and areas for further study are also suggested.     

Organisational change and the management of training in Australian enterprises

This article presents the findings from a study of the impact of the introduction of new management practices on the organisation of training in Australian enterprises. The study investigated the impact of five common new management practices: teamworking, total quality management, lean production, business process re‐engineering and the learning organisation, as well as a number of other organisational factors. The incidences of these practices were modelled against eight measures of the organisation of training in enterprises. The results confirm that organisational change, as represented by the five new management practices, has had a significant impact on the organisation of training. However, the most significant impact on the way training is organised appears to be on the extent to which training and human resource policy are integrated with business strategy.     

Strategic Goals and Practices of Innovative Family Businesses

A profile of 231 Washington state family businesses is presented. This article focuses on the business strategies of these firms, analyzing the relationship between strategy, performance, and business practices. Firms categorized as Prospector firms reported more gains in their current market position than all other strategic types. These firms were more likely to value an effective management and employee team and to develop new quality products and services and career development plans for non-family employees. Implications for family businesses are discussed.     

Bridging the gender gap in confidence

Underconfidence among women can reduce their career aspirations and thwart advancement in whatever career they choose. For managers seeking to retain and promote capable women, we recommend addressing the gender gap in confidence to increase the effectiveness of women in the current workforce as employees and leaders and thereby attract the best new hires among women seeking opportunity. Based on a wide range of research and the broad experience of the authors, we discuss useful approaches—include helping women learn how to be more self-confident through classes and webinars—but also discouraging practices such as equating low confidence with low competence. The entire organization can benefit when its practices recognize the need for and payoff from reducing the confidence gap between women and men.     

Exploring talent management in India: The neglected role of intrinsic rewards

The challenge of global talent management is critical to firm success. Even with the global economic slowdown of 2008 and 2009, there are continuing challenges in attracting, managing, and retaining talent, especially in the developing regions of the world where economic activity has outpaced the availability of skilled employees. To examine this situation, we develop and test a model of talent management across 28 Indian firms involving 4811 professional-level employees. The intrinsic rewards experienced are a critical element in employee retention, satisfaction with the organization, and career success. We explored four antecedents of intrinsic rewards: the social responsibility of the employer, pride in the organization, manager support, and performance management (PM). We found support for the importance of intrinsic rewards as a mediating variable, as well as for the moderating role of certain hygiene factors. Our research suggests multinational, international, and national employers may have non-pecuniary mechanisms to promote retention and employee satisfaction, even in challenging labor market environments. We conclude by proposing implications for research and global HRM practices.     

‘It’s the identification,stupid’: profiling senior public service managers for training and development

A review of practices of senior management development across the upper echelons of the public services of major jurisdictions shows that while the need to develop leaders is universally recognised by governments, there are still considerable gaps in the development function. One of the key gaps the article argues that is central to the training and development function is that of identification and targeting of individuals. A profiling protocol is presented that is argued could be an appropriate tool for governments to consider as they seek to link the desired competencies with the career aspirations of their public service senior managers.     

新入职员工职业生涯自我管理的难点与对策

新入职员工要更好的实现自我价值,就必须从自我管理的角度出发,主动对职业生涯进行规划。然而,目前新入职员工在职业生涯管理方面存在自我认知不清晰、自我管理理念薄弱,企业忽视新入职员工职业生涯自我管理的重要性且相关制度不完善等难点。因此,要实现组织和新入职员工预期的职业目标,新入职员工要不断获得清晰的自我认知,并增强职业生涯自我管理理念,企业则需完善制度建设,以充分发挥自身在新入职员工职业生涯管理中的重要作用。     

Exploring organizational and individual career goals,interactions, and outcomes of developmental international assignments

This study uses the intelligent careers framework to investigate individual and organizational mobility goals. It explores the interactions of individual attitudes and behaviors with organizational approaches to managing mobility. Individual and organizational data were gathered in a global fast‐moving consumer goods firm. The findings showed that individuals wanted to add to each of their three career capital areas through an international assignment (IA). Because the organizational context during and after the IA was not perceived to facilitate the growth of all three ways of knowing, international assignees acted as “career capitalists.” They used extraorganizational mechanisms to acquire career capital. Some actions were regarded as dysfunctional by the organization and led to interventions aimed at career capital management. A range of organizational and individual outcomes are outlined and career capital propositions developed. The article includes the professional implications for international mobility and career capital management. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

PERCEPTIONS A L'EGARD DES PRATIQUES EN GESTION DES RESSOURCES HUMAINES ET DE I'IMPORTANCE RELATIVE DES FONCTIONS ENSEIGNEMENT,RECHERCHE ET SERVICES A LA COLLECTIVITÉ: UNE ÉTUDE DESCRIPTIVE CHEZ DES PROFESSEURS D'ADMINISTRATION DES UNIVERSITÉS QUÉBÉCOISES***

This exploratory study concerns a group living a special situation inside the academic teaching profession: the business or management professors. Using a sample (N = 229) of management teachers coming from all Quebec universities, this study outlines the profile of their perceptions with regard to some practices in Human Ressource Management (H.R.M.) affecting them in different steps of their academic career. We are also interested in their perceptions about the relative importance of teaching, research and collectivity services. The results point out some apparently more problematic practices in H.R.M.: reception, control of sabbatical year of training and and finally fairness of wages. It also brings out, that the respondents, while giving teaching the highest score, would wish to be granted a significant reduction of time allowed to this activity in order to be able to concentrate their energy on research, which obtains the second higher score, above the collectivity services score. Nevertheless, the perceptions relative to the balance wanted in research vary significantly (p < 0,01) according to level of diplomes and tenure of the respondents; the implications of these results on the management of teaching resources are discussed.     

Fast Track Opportunities for High Achievers? A Comparative Investigation into Career Advancement Patterns for In-House and Consultancy Practitioners

Consultancy? Or in-house department? Public relations and communication graduates usually extensively debate the “pros and cons” of the industry's two key employment options. However, to date there has been a lack of research into potential differences in required skill sets, career advancement, and promotional opportunities between these two employment types. Contrary to management research, public relations scholars have largely focused on traditional career advancement determinants, such as experience in years and gender, largely failing to embrace modern management research into career advancement. Based on the author's previous research into alternative career advancement factors, which has highlighted the importance of social competencies and networking skills for PR practitioners, this article sets out to investigate potential differences in career advancement factors and career development patterns for in-house and consultancy-based practitioners.     

Effects of responsible human resource management practices on female employees’ turnover intentions

This study focuses on the effects of socially responsible human resource management (SR‐HRM) practices on female employees’ turnover intentions and the moderating effect of supervisor gender on this relationship. With a sample of 212 female employees from eight different industries in Finland, the results indicate that SR‐HRM practices promoting equal career opportunities and work–family integration play a significant role in reducing women's turnover intentions. The study adds to the academic discourse of corporate social responsibility by highlighting the impact of the organizational‐level HRM determinants on the individual‐level outcome. In addition, supervisor gender makes a difference in the studied relationship: female supervisors have a stronger and more significant impact on the relationship than male supervisors. Our findings suggest that organizational measures which support work–family integration should be taken seriously to decrease female employees’ turnover intentions. Male supervisors could adopt some gender‐incongruent leadership behaviors, such as individualized emotional concern and caring when dealing with female employees. In the future, other gender combinations in the supervisor–employee relationship would merit research.     

Beyond Size: Predicting Engagement in Environmental Management Practices of Dutch SMEs

This study focuses on the prediction of the engagement of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in environmental management practices, based on a random sample of 689 SMEs. The study finds that several endogenous factors, including tangibility of sector, firm size, innovative orientation, family influence and perceived financial benefits from energy conservation, predict an SME’s level of engagement in selected environmental management practices. For family influence, this effect is found only in interaction with the number of owners. In addition to empirical research on SMEs’ environmental behavior, this article draws on the ecological modernization literature as well as the theory of planned behavior.     

Offshore responsiveness: theory of Constraints innovates customer services

This study describe a typical scenario occurring inside the stressful environment of a service call center working in shifts with high agent turnover, and offer ways to streamline operation through the usage of Theory of Constraints (TOC) methods. Offshore customer service representatives should not operate in fire-fighting mode but instead management should identify the root causes of customer dissatisfaction. A lesson learned from the study is that call centers should diminish reliance on automatic voice recognition technologies, which detracts executive attention from customer complaints about issues such as miss-communication, time zone differences, and national culture. Companies should complement the usage of TOC practices to improve key performance indicators by establishing career promotion paths for customer service representatives that would improve their well-being and elevate their status in the organizational hierarchy, consequently increasing their motivation to improve service level.     

Hospital career management systems and their effects on the psychological state and career attitudes of nurses

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of organizational career management efforts on the emotional states and to investigate how such emotional states shape the employees’ career attitudes. By investigating the responses from 280 nurses, we tested our research model through the structural equation modeling-based analysis. The results confirmed the effects of job rotation and assessment among the elements of the career management system on emotional states. The effects of emotional states on career attitudes—career commitment, career withdrawal, and turnover intention—were also revealed from data analysis.     

Career management of business expatriates from China

Chinese mainland business managers assigned to Hong Kong responded to a mail survey exploring issues on career management. The group of mainland managers was compared with a sample of Western expatriates, mostly from the US, France, and Britain. It was found that the Chinese expatriates had a significantly lower score than their Western counterparts on all the studied individual level career management variables: expatriate career preferences, meeting career goals within the corporation, career development fit, and right career move. Of the corporate level policy variables, corporate expatriate pool and separate expatriate careers also had lower scores for the Chinese than the Western managers. These findings support the behavioral process model of internationalization claiming that internationalization is a matter of learning. Implications of these results for internationalizing Chinese corporations are discussed.     

The appeal of retailing as a career 20 years on

With the transformation and profesionalisation of British retailing it was expected that a career in retailing would be more appealing than previously. However, the results of a questionnaire survey of 369 undergraduate management students found that, on average, students remain neutral about pursuing a career in retailing. The top five attributes associated with a career in retailing were ‘consumer oriented’, ‘people oriented’, ‘poor salary’, ‘limited advancement’ and ‘poor working hours’. Little has been done to dispel the ‘retailing myth’ as recommended by Swinyard et al. (J. Retailing 67(4) (1991) 451), and retailers and academics need to work independently and together to enhance the perception of retailing as a career option to undergraduates.     

Total quality management,institutional isomorphism and performance: the case of financial services

This article concentrates on the relationship between the number of years that the firms have been implementing total quality management and the impact its practice can have on performance. The literature provides studies revealing that the last firms to introduce total quality management fail partly due to the fact that they imitate the implementation strategy used. Based on a sample of 77 Spanish financial companies, this paper provides evidence of the concept of institutionalisation as a process by which different management practices are generalised. The conclusion reached is that the process differs depending on the moment in which the total quality management system is introduced.     

Global talent management: Shaping the careers of internationally educated talents in developing markets

In the context of globalization, country‐level actions to manage global talent (e.g., development of immigrant‐friendly policies, policies to attract back skilled diaspora, or investment in the international education of youth) have been underresearched. The aim of this article is to analyze the impact of a country‐level global talent management practice on the careers and career success of its talents in the Republic of Kazakhstan, a developing country in Central Asia. Using qualitative methods, this study introduces new dimensions of career success evaluation for internationally educated talents in developing markets: use of knowledge acquired abroad and international aspect of the job. Based on these dimensions, it develops a model of career types. The career types predict the varying degrees of talents' career success and their involvement in sharing and capitalizing on knowledge, ideas, and international experience, which may have an impact on society. The study contributes to the field of global talent management and career success by providing empirical evidence on an underresearched topic in the underresearched context of developing markets.     

试论职业生涯管理能力与“毕业生可雇佣性品质”提升——来自澳大利亚教育政策的经验

研究了在瞬息变幻的知识经济时代,大学生可雇佣性远远超越了吸引雇主的一般性就业能力的范畴。反而,为了获得最优的经济和社会产出,毕业生必须具有一种前瞻性能力,能够驾驭工作环境和构建自我管理职业生涯。理想的毕业生品质模型展示了自我管理和职业生涯构建技能的重要性,同时表明了其对终身职业发展和可雇佣性强化的作用。