Cogitate,articulate, communicate: the psychosocial reality of technology roadmapping and roadmaps

Roadmapping has gained acceptance by technology management practitioners as a key tool in planning and strategy development. Technology roadmapping workshops are essentially a socially facilitated mechanism that solicits a diverse group of participants for their pool of experience and expertise in order to explore the opportunities and challenges facing an organisation. The group collaboration is captured through the generation of a roadmap which provides a visual representation of their collective cognitive efforts. It must therefore be acknowledged that the actual practice of roadmapping involves numerous complex underlying cognitive factors and social interactions. In this regard, an initial framework for the exploration of the psychological and sociological aspects involved in technology roadmapping and roadmaps is presented. The postulation is that roadmapping/roadmaps provide a mechanism/vehicle to cogitate, articulate and communicate.     

Individualism/collectivism and attitudes towards human resource systems: a comparative study of American,Irish and Indian MBA students

In this study, we collected data from 180 MBA students from the USA, Ireland and India on their individualism/collectivism (IC) orientations and their preferences for human resource management (HRM) practices. Contrary to expectations, the Indian sample tended to be more individualistic than the American or Irish sample. While there were no differences on the preferences for progressive HRM practices across sample, the Americans exhibited a greater preference for paternalistic practices than the Indians and the Irish. Further, the Americans also showed a greater preference for equality in rewards than the Irish and fairness in appraisals/rewards than the Indians. At the individual level, controlling for nationality, age and gender, higher individualism scores on the supremacy of individual goals and self-reliance dimensions were positively related to progressive HRM practices. Higher individualism on supremacy of individual goals was also positively related to procedural fairness in appraisals/rewards and negatively related to paternalistic HRM practices. A higher preference for working alone was negatively related to progressive HRM practices. Further, higher individualism on the supremacy of individual interest dimension was negatively related to progressive HRM practices and positively related to paternalistic HRM practices. Implications are discussed.