The changing role of the corporate HR function in global organizations of the twenty-first century

The primary focus of this paper is to examine how the increased demand for global corporate strategic consistency and flexibility redefines the roles of the corporate human resource function and its venues of influence. In particular, we analyse possible causal linkages among strategic international HR management, strategic leadership of corporate top management team (i.e. TMT), and alternative global assignment options. As globalization significantly changes not only the operating boundaries but also the symbolic context of the global organization, we argue that corporate HR function can play more influential roles in global organizations than it has in the past.     

Managing venture team relationships in corporate incubators: a case study of network dynamics and political rivalry in a high-tech incubator

This article addresses venture team relationships in an advanced high tech incubator through an analysis of the personal relationships of venture team members. During the study period of almost 2 years, the ventures were projected to grow and commercialise but, overall, they failed. Quantitative data collected in two rounds showed that commercial relationships remained weak while political relationships intensified. Qualitative follow-up interviews suggest that the political rivalry and low level of knowledge sharing between the ventures were further exacerbated by the individualistic-competitive structure of the incubator and weak management in some respects.     

Strategic human resource management and inertia in the corporate entrepreneurship of a multinational enterprise

Abstract

Corporate entrepreneurship (CE) supports sustained competitive advantage through the continuous exploration and exploitation of new sources of knowledge. With an emphasis on combining knowledge in new configurations, strategic human resource management (HRM) activities are core to these entrepreneurial endeavours. We explore how strategic HRM activities may facilitate and impede CE through a rich, qualitative case study of three local entities within a business unit of a large multinational enterprise facing business stagnation and low levels of corporate entrepreneurship. Responding to a call for more empirical research that probes the subtle and complex interactions between HRM activities and other organisational factors affecting CE, we identify a configuration of inter-dependent factors that mutually reinforce each other and sustain inertia in corporate entrepreneurship. We also make two novel contributions to theory by (1) elaborating the links between organisational process-orientation, strategic HRM and CE; and (2) refining to our current understanding of human competencies for CE.     

Economic marginalism and the microstate,the impact of donor conditionality requirements in international aid programmes on a SHRM training project in the Cook Islands

Donor conditionality involves the formal terms and commitments under which major international aid agencies, such as the World Bank and the IMF grant aid or arrange loans for developing countries. In doing so, said agencies have tended to emulate, as a matter of policy, private-sector market reforms based on the contemporary neoclassical model. As a consequence, donor conditionality tends to place formalized and regular stress on inflationary control, privatization of publicly owned equity and the deregulation of public-sector employment. In turn, the functional utility of strategic human resource management as a vehicle able to obtain major change-related outcomes has tended to give it an important role in the implementation process. This paper reports on events that took place in the Cook Islands, a central Pacific microstate, during a university-based training course for public service managers in which the government imposed on a virtual exercise the full weight of real decisionmaking process. It will attempt to place this action in a larger context by, first, critically examining the tendency for SHRM initiatives to be distorted - a situation that arises when the requirements of donor conditionality do not fit the economic, social and cultural conditions in which they are to be applied. It will conclude by reviewing some of the issues to be debated should the tendency to use a single model of reform be replaced by a more country-friendly programme of requirements.