Personnel Practitioners Research Articles

Role of the personnel practitioner in the identification and handling of communication problems in organisations

The scope of the personnel practitioners' role has, over the past decade, grown from the traditional activities of inter alia, manpower recruitment, selection and training to include organisational diagnoses and maintaining and improving organisational effectiveness and the quality of work life of employees. The complex organisation in which the practitioner has to fulfil these roles, consists of differentiated but interdependent sub-systems linked by resource and information flows. Information can be described as the bloodstream of an organisation and communication channels as the arterial system. To fulfil his role the personnel practitioner has to have means and instruments to gather information on all relevant aspects of organisation and its sub-systems. In this paper the important role of information in organisational functioning and behaviour is described, as well as ways to gather information systematically and how the personnel practioner can use ] this information to maintain and improve organisational effectiveness and the quality of work life of employees

Funksie van mannekragbestuur in effektiewe kommunikasie binne die organisasie

For purpose of this paper the term Personnel Management will be used in its widest generic sense so as to include all the behavioral functions within the organisation. The basic function of personnel management (Human Resources Management) is to influence the behaviour of people at work in such a professional manner that it will realise performance objectives at an optimal level. Traditionally personnel practitioners concentrated primarily on the mechanistic inputs to realise these objectives. With the dramatic change of the South African Industrial complexion with its different races integrating the work place, it has now become imperative to focus more on the behavioral dimension of personnel management in order to influence the behaviour of people at work in a positive way. In this dominant role in the total spectrum of management activities in modern South African organisations, the personnel practitioner plays a vital communications role. This communication contribution is dominant not only in verbal categories but equally in the non-verbal categories of communications. The overall manpower mosaic, noted for a distorted manpower supply and demand situation, requires a sensitivity to manpower which is unprecedented in the history of South African Industry.

Sms-based information dissemination system with android application controller for Taguig city university

This study aimed to determine the accessibility of information in Taguig City University in terms of Class Suspensions, Schedule of Enrollment, Meetings and Seminars, Programs/Events, New School Policies and Grade Inquiry. It also focused on the development of SMS-Based Information Dissemination System with Android Application Controller and intended to determine the evaluation of the students, faculty members, non-teaching personnel and IT practitioners on the developed SMS-Based Information Dissemination System with Android Application Controller using the criteria based on ISO 25010 Software Quality Standards. A total of 307 students, 38 faculty members, 38 non-teaching personnel and 20 IT practitioners from Taguig City University participated in the study. In order for the researcher to develop the SMS-Based Information Dissemination System with Android Application Controller, the design covers the model used in the development of the application that is called the Waterfall Model. The results revealed that the level of accessibility of information at Taguig City University as perceived by the respondents was “Accessible”. It was also found out that the evaluation of the respondents on the proposed SMS-Based Information Dissemination System with Android Application Controller was “Very Satisfactory”. The results of one-way ANOVAs revealed that there were no significant differences in the evaluation of SMS-Based Information Dissemination System with Android Application Controller between students, faculty and non-teaching personnel. Lastly, the enhancements that were suggested by the respondents include Improve Graphical User Interface, Security Features, Reports Generation and Develop Android Application for Students.

The factorial validity and reliability of a change agent identification assessment tool

The main aim of the research project reported on here was to validate and test the reliability of the developed change agent identification assessment tool to be used by organisations to identify change agents more effectively in large organisations undergoing change, with a view to providing improved support to employees and ensuring more effective change management in such organisations. An initial change agent identification framework was developed by Van der Linde-de Klerk (2011) and this served as the foundation for the development of an assessment tool. Because minimal research has been conducted on identifying change agents in large organisations, it was deemed important to provide organisations with a tool to help them identify these individuals correctly. A sample group comprising 239 change agents participated in the quantitative research and completed the newly developed change agent identification questionnaire. The proposed questionnaire consists of three dimensions, namely willingness, commitment and personality traits. Participants indicated the ideal attributes in each dimension that they require to operate as change agents. The dimensions are based on the theoretical change agent identification framework that was developed. The results of the validity and reliability analysis indicated that the questionnaire can be used with confidence to select change agents. Change agents can typically be employees, managers, personnel practitioners, organisational development consultants or employee or union representatives. The developed scale showed positive reliability and validity results.

The factorial validity and reliability of a change agent identification assessment tool

The main aim of the research project reported on here was to validate and test the reliability of the developed change agent identification assessment tool to be used by organisations to identify change agents more effectively in large organisations undergoing change, with a view to providing improved support to employees and ensuring more effective change management in such organisations. An initial change agent identification framework was developed by Van der Linde-de Klerk (2011) and this served as the foundation for the development of an assessment tool. Because minimal research has been conducted on identifying change agents in large organisations, it was deemed important to provide organisations with a tool to help them identify these individuals correctly. A sample group comprising 239 change agents participated in the quantitative research and completed the newly developed change agent identification questionnaire. The proposed questionnaire consists of three dimensions, namely willingness, commitment and personality traits. Participants indicated the ideal attributes in each dimension that they require to operate as change agents. The dimensions are based on the theoretical change agent identification framework that was developed. The results of the validity and reliability analysis indicated that the questionnaire can be used with confidence to select change agents. Change agents can typically be employees, managers, personnel practitioners, organisational development consultants or employee or union representatives. The developed scale showed positive reliability and validity results.

Quality intrapartum care and partnerships

And that is where our biggest problem with pregnancy and intrapartum care lies in the Pacific – there is an outrageous underinvestment in training opportunities to increase the numbers of nurses, midwives and doctors. We simply do not have enough nurses, midwives and doctors to have engaging discussions on relationships and guaranteeing every woman in labour has a skilled health personnel practitioner. In 2011, it was estimated that 5000 newborns and 1500 women died in childbirth in PNG per annum and there were only 152 practicing midwives.<a title="PACNEWS (PINA), 2011 #13041" href="#_ENREF_5"><sup>5</sup></a> Australian government investment in capacity building has seen 500 midwives trained in PNG in the last four years and a paper from the University of Technology Sydney team tasked with building capacity is published in this issue.

An integrative review of the antecedents and consequences of lateral hiring

Purpose– Although there is a burgeoning stream of research on lateral hiring (LH), lack of integration of the literature has obscured the past accomplishments and future directions remain unclear. The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesise the existing literature on LH in the spirit of further development of this field.Design/methodology/approach– The paper is based on an extensive review of the literature across multiple social science disciplines.Findings– The study integrates the existing streams of research in such a way that human resources and personnel practitioners see the relevance of research and how they can mitigate the negative effects of LH. The study demonstrates how employers can acquire, develop and retain scarce human capital (HC) to help improve their competitiveness.Research limitations/implications– The main limitation of the review is that the search might have overlooked studies that employed specialised terminologies or keywords not used here.Practical implications– The study outlines a number of implications for theory and human resource management.Originality/value– This study advances research on LH by developing an integrated conceptual framework of how the attributes of the target employee, current employer and potential employer influence how LH is considered, instigated, responded to and accepted. The findings highlight the increasingly important role played by HC in developing sustainable competitive advantage.

Counterproductive behaviour at work: an investigation into reduction strategies

The present study examined the interrelation of personality characteristics, organizational justice, organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). An anonymous questionnaire survey was conducted, with 1662 participants representing a wide variety of jobs across heterogeneous organizations in Thailand. Statistical analysis indicated that CWB can be predicted by the following personality characteristics; conscientiousness, agreeableness, self-esteem, extraversion, neuroticism and openness to experience. Moderation analysis discovered that the association between personality characteristics and CWB is moderated by three factors; distributive justice, interactional justice and OCB. Structural Equation Modelling was adopted in order to examine the efficacy of the identified moderators, and revealed that interactional justice has the strongest moderating effect, followed by distributive justice and finally OCB. Implications of the findings to organizational management and personnel practitioners are discussed accordingly, including; that the occurrence of CWB could be reduced through the implementation of organizational justice enhancement policies; and that the prevalence of OCB atmosphere at work could also help alleviate the impact of personality characteristics on CWB.

No news is good news? Evaluating new pay systems

The evaluation of the impact of changes in reward systems is a common recommendation in the personnel practitioner literature, but little has been written about how and to what extent practitioners themselves evaluate. This article therefore focuses on the activities of HR managers who have introduced new pay systems, not on academic studies of reward system change. Face‐to‐face interviews were conducted in 15 large, unionised organisations in England between 2000 and 2002. The study found that little formal evaluation of changes in pay and grading systems had been carried out and that managers expressed considerable scepticism about the evaluation process. They relied heavily on informal or anecdotal feedback, and appeared to have little psychological incentive to evaluate. The article suggests explanations for this lack of formal evaluation, drawing on the management decision‐making literature, and recommends how changes in reward systems should be evaluated.

Ethnic minority personnel careers

Personnel departments often have particular responsibility for equal opportunities within their organizations. This paper explores equal opportunities within personnel departments themselves, in relation to the careers of ethnic minority personnel practitioners. Through primary research, it identifies a range of criteria which can affect personnel careers, of which ethnic origin is often one. However, although being categorized as of ethnic minority origin often hinders personnel careers, the paper reveals that it is sometimes possible for individuals who are so categorized to overcome that negative effect through demonstrating some of those other criteria. Thus, the paper suggests, it is not just organizational equal opportunities practices which may provide hope for ethnic minority personnel careers but also – and perhaps more importantly – the actions of the ethnic minority individuals themselves. Ways in which personnel departments might support these actions are discussed.

Innovating the HR Function in a Commercialising British Public Sector Organisation: Towards a More Strategic Role for HR?

Although the body of research and practice on HR management in private sector organisations has grown at an astonishing pace in recent years, much less is known about the nature, role and meaning of a strategic HR department within public sector organisations undergoing commercialisation. This article addresses this gap by exploring the changing role of the HR function within a British public sector organisation responding to the New Labour government's 'modernisation' agenda. The findings are based on in-depth interviews, focus groups, analysis of documentary evidence and observations carried out over a period of two years. Drawing on role-set theory and concepts of negotiated order, the study sheds light on the factors that support or hinder the shift towards a more strategic role for the function and suggests a number of conclusions and implications for both theorists and practitioners. Key words: Strategic Human Resource Management, Role of the HR Function, Organisational Change, Public Sector Introduction In the context of significant changes in their operating environments and pressures to increase efficiency and accountability, public sector organisations in the United Kingdom have been provided with the opportunity to operate and compete commercially, whilst the Government retains ownership (New Labour Modernising Government White Paper, March 1999; E-Government Strategic Framework, April 2001). Commercialisation, part of these Labour reforms, has been seen as one of the ways of reinventing public sector entities to make them more competitive in the commercial market. It was used as a way of relieving some of the government's financial pressures and described the situation whereby former government agencies were allowed to charge the public for the provision of goods and services and to adopt features of the commercial environment. As a result, many public sector organisations now exist in the intersection of two different spheres - the public and the private. They fit neither in the strictly public realm of state action nor in the strictly private realm of commercial relationships. They are expected to function like businesses - to be efficient, customer driven, and client oriented - yet they perform tasks that are inherently public. A common goal has been to transform these organisations along the lines of an idealised private sector firm by adopting a strategic approach to people management instead of the traditional bureaucratic public personnel management approach. This has exposed personnel practitioners to a new set of role demands, professional challenges and managerial expectations. However, there has been a tendency to assume that processes of change in the public domain are essentially the same as those in commercial organisations in the private sector. The main problem with these assumptions is that they may ignore how both the context and the mechanisms of change are different in public organisations. In particular, being 'halfway' towards the private sector may add different constraints to developing a strategic HR agenda and we may, thus, fail to do justice to what is distinctive about public sector transformation in terms of the strategic priorities and demands it creates, and the kind of responses it elicits from HR functions. This article explores the changing role of the HR function within a commercialising British public sector organisation responding to the 'modernisation' agenda. Drawing on role-theory and concepts of negotiated order, the study sheds light on the factors that support or hinder the shift towards a more strategic role for the function. The article also discusses some of the challenges and constraints that this organisation is facing in transforming its HR function in the long journey to commercialisation. Previous research Research into the role of the HR departments in public sector organisations has centred around the question of whether the HR function is taking on a more strategic role. …

Wish you were here: managing absence

Management texts abound on how to develop effective techniques to manage absence, but what actually happens in practice? Aims to shed light on how organisations try to cope with the “problem”. Examines the practices of seven companies from three sectors (financial services, retail, and manufacturing) and has drawn upon the views and opinions of personnel practitioners, line managers, occupational health advisers as well as employees themselves. Focuses on how organisations are addressing the issue of absence and the organisational factors which make up the day‐to‐day policing of absence levels. Three themes are relevant to the context of this study. First, when is absence perceived to be a problem? Second, how do companies manage absence and do line managers view the management of absence as being within the remit of their responsibilities? Finally, the issue of negotiated discipline is considered. How are rules applied in practice?

The Future of Trauma Practice

Abstract In the new and evolving field of traumatology, the need to keep practitioners apprised of emerging developments is acute. While many journals about trauma exist, most of them focus primarily on publication of empirical research studies. Applied professionals rarely read these journals because they see empirical investigations as having very little relevance to their daily practice. Regrettably, these circumstances foster divisiveness between traumatologists who identify themselves mainly as researchers and those who consider themselves chiefly practitioners. Providing an avenue for bridging and integrating the sub-cultures of trauma research and practice is one of the primary aims of the Journal of Trauma Practice (JTP). JTP also seeks to unite the diverse professions that routinely work with traumatized populations, such as emergency room personnel and other medical practitioners, attorneys and forensic specialists, law enforcement personnel, and emergency service workers. Accomplishing these ob...

Are public sector personnel managers the profession's poor relations?

This article is concerned with differences between personnel practitioners in the private and public sectors. Drawing on survey and interview data from practitioners in both sectors, the authors report that public sector practitioners are less well‐qualified and are paid less than their private sector counterparts. Very few practitioners move between the sectors, suggesting the existence of separate and self‐contained career structures. It is argued that this is not a separation of equals, and is maintained partly by the existence of a system of myths and stereotypes which have the effect of discouraging able professionals from entering the public sector. The article considers the reasons for the continuing differences and the separation, particularly in the light of public sector reforms which might have been expected to have diminished them. The implications for personnel management in the public sector and for the personnel profession in general are then discussed.

The name has changed but has the game remained the same?

The article argues that many of the practices associated with the concept of human resource management were flourishing under different names before the notion of HRM emerged in the mid‐1980s. There have been many developments in these practices but they have been evolutionary. They have not happened because of any revolutionary new approaches derived from HRM theory. The fact that the pace of change in personnel management is faster now than before the 1980s is not attributable to the advent of HRM as a philosophy. It has been forced on organisations by the rapidly changing business, political, economic and social environment. It has also taken place as a result of the increased professionalism of personnel practitioners encouraged by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and by the burgeoning academic institutions which have disseminated ideas about human resource management more comprehensively through a wider range of high quality publications.

Physician heal thyself! Tension vs satisfaction in personnel practitioners

Human Resource Management JournalVolume 10, Issue 4 p. 8-15 Physician heal thyself! Tension vs satisfaction in personnel practitioners Eugene Sadler-Smith, Eugene Sadler-SmithSearch for more papers by this authorBeryl Badger, Beryl BadgerSearch for more papers by this authorMike Leat, Mike LeatSearch for more papers by this author Eugene Sadler-Smith, Eugene Sadler-SmithSearch for more papers by this authorBeryl Badger, Beryl BadgerSearch for more papers by this authorMike Leat, Mike LeatSearch for more papers by this author First published: 24 August 2006 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-8583.2000.tb00002.xCitations: 2About ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article.Citing Literature Volume10, Issue4November 2000Pages 8-15 RelatedInformation

Learning Preferences and Cognitive Style

A wide variety of professional institutions are exhorting their members to update their professional knowledge and skills through `continuous professional development' (CPD). However, those who involve themselves in CPD are likely to have clear preferences for different learning methods and activities. It is argued that cognitive style is one factor which may influence individuals' preferences. This study explores, using the Cognitive Style Index and a learning preferences inventory, the cognitive styles and learning preferences of 127 personnel practitioners in the UK. Respondents preferred traditional and work based methods of learning over self-directed methods. The relationship between cognitive style and preference appeared to be mediated by gender. The implications for CPD policy and practice and the theoretical and empirical elaboration of the cognitive style construct are discussed.

Morality vs. Mandate: Affirmative Action in Employment

Affirmative action, one of the most significant public policies of the 20th century, can be seen as an attempt to establish a more “inclusive moral convention,”1 which aims at achieving fairness and equality for all members of society. In such a society everyone has the ability to compete for its goods and benefits.2 Attempting to create a society, workplaces, and educational institutions in which individuals or groups are not stigmatized or excluded from opportunities on the basis of race/ethnicity or gender can be seen as the ethical foundation of affirmative action.3 The moral basis for affirmative action is found in the tradition of American public administration, anti-discrimination laws, and the principles of organizational justice.4 To public personnel practitioners, affirmative action has ethical significance from a variety of viewpoints, particularly as it relates to the “merit controversy” and organizational justice issues. This article argues that affirmative action (AA) is as much a moral issue as it is an anti-discriminatory measure. The focus of this article is to examine the ethical aspects of AA rather than to discuss the anti-discrimination principles of AA as embodied in the Constitution, statutes, and legal precedents. Today, the increased national sensitivity to the rights of minorities does not rely on the moral imperatives that should underlie such a debate, but, rather, the fear of litigation or so-called “political correctness.” Viewing AA from a purely legal perspective reduces it to an adversarial proposition with winners and losers. Furthermore, the doctrine of legal protection does not always discourage discriminatory behaviors. In spite of the available legal remedies, discrimination is often under-reported due to reasons such as fear of retaliation, complexities of the legal system, difficulty in supplying the necessary proof, and the psychological and financial costs involved.5 Focusing attention on the ethical principles of affirmative action divert attention from contentious legal issues and reinforce its fundamental purpose. In addition, an ethical perspective can also help counter the backlash and resentment toward AA policies within organizations.6

Human Resource Management in the Voluntary Sector: Challenges and Opportunities

This article discusses issues facing personnel specialists within the voluntary sector who are trying to implement people management policies associated with the Human Resource Management (HRM) model. It outlines the pressures for change in management practice in the voluntary sector and then focuses more precisely on the definition of HRM theory, providing a rationale for voluntary agencies to develop policies and practices. The difficulties managers and personnel practitioners may face when attempting to implement these practices are described. Finally, an agenda for further research in this area is proposed.

Devolving human resource responsibilities to the line

Alternative hypotheses for the personnel function are presented, based on findings from four case study organisations which have devolved personnel responsibilities from a designated personnel department to line managers. The views of line managers and employees are sought to assess the effects of these changes. The study finds that devolved responsibilities of personnel are formally geared to securing commitment from employees by promoting an integrative culture of employee management through line managers. In practice, though, we find little evidence that personnel has succeeded in catalysing such changes. The case study findings do not point to any clear evidence of a general increase in influence for personnel practitioners following devolution. Tensions exist between line managers and personnel and the function appears to be vulnerable to further contraction. The study concludes that prospects for personnel following devolution are at best uncertain.