MANAGING DIVERSITY IN ORGANISATIONS TO GAIN COMPETITIVENESS

Organizations the world over is increasingly finding themselves coping with the changes taking place in their environment. There are two sets of forces that are changing the once familiar organizational landscape increasing reliance on teams and the changing workforce. This is bringing more and more people from diverse backgrounds into contact with one another. In general, diversity refers to the ways that people in organizations differ. That sounds simple, but defining it more specifically is a challenge because people in organizations differ in many ways-races, gender, ethnic group, age, personality, cognitive style, tenure, organizational function, and more. Managing diversity means establishing a heterogeneous workforce to perform to its potential in an equitable work environment where no member or group of members has an advantage or a disadvantage. Effectively managing diversity helps organizations to identify and capitalize on opportunities to improve products and services, attract, retain, motivate and utilize talented people effectively improve the quality of decision-making at all organizational levels and reap the many benefits from being perceived as a socially conscious and progressive organization. The paper attempts to analyze the mechanism of leveraging and unleash the powerful benefit of a diverse workforce in work organization.

Human Resource Competencies, Organizational Culture, and Employee Performance

The performance of an employee plays an essential role in an organization because it contributes to the achievement of the performance of every organizational function. Several previous studies showed that human resource competencies and organizational culture can affect employee performance. This study aimed to test and analyze the competencies of human resources and organizational culture on employee performance at Bio Farma both partially or simultaneously. This study was conducted using a quantitative method. Data collection techniques using a questionnaire distributed to employees of Bio Farma with samples taken of 300 employees. The research results were tested using path analysis. The results show that human resource competencies and organizational culture had a significant effect on employee performance at Bio Farma, either partially or simultaneously.

From enthusiasts to systematic innovation: the journey of building the innovation function in a large industrial organization

The creation of a management system to systematically promote innovation is a great challenge for large companies. Some authors argue for the creation of a dedicated organizational function (the Innovation Function – IF) to guide this system. This paper aims to understand how a large company builds an Innovation Function from a longitudinal and retrospective case study. Some aspects regarding the emergence of the IF, its organizational structure evolution, and changes on its team’s scope of action are discussed. The main results highlight the importance of key actors for IF’s recognition by the organization, serving as connecting mediators to other functions and external agents. Besides that, specific competence accumulation, gradual legitimacy acquisition, and project intermediary results enabled the team to deal with radical innovation projects over time.

Derationalizing Delusions

Because of the traditional conceptualization of delusion as “irrational belief,” cognitive models of delusions largely focus on impairments to domain-general reasoning. Nevertheless, current rationality-impairment models do not account for the fact that (a) equivalently irrational beliefs can be induced through adaptive social cognitive processes, reflecting social integration rather than impairment; (b) delusions are overwhelmingly socially themed; and (c) delusions show a reduced sensitivity to social context both in terms of how they are shaped and how they are communicated. Consequently, we argue that models of delusions need to include alteration to coalitional cognition—processes involved in affiliation, group perception, and the strategic management of relationships. This approach has the advantage of better accounting for both content (social themes) and form (fixity) of delusion. It is also supported by the established role of mesolimbic dopamine in both delusions and social organization and the ongoing reconceptualization of belief as serving a social organizational function.

What matters for in-house tax planning: Tax function power and status

Social hierarchy theory predicts that the power and status of an organizational function have a first-order effect on the function's ability to influence outcomes. We find that the rank of the title of the top tax executive is positively associated with tax planning after controlling for treatment effects. Our inferences remain when (1) using changes in the size of the c-suite as a shock to the relative power and status of the tax function and (2) examining promotions and demotions in title rank. Point estimates suggest that tax function power and status are up to 2.6 times as important as tax planning resources, up to 4.0 times as important as tax function-specific expertise, and more often than not more important than manager fixed effects. Overall, results suggest that the power and status of the tax function is often what matters most in determining tax outcomes.

RESEARCH AREAS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT

The objectives of this study are elaboration research areas in the development of educational management at the teacher and educational science faculty. Elaboration of research areas significant for the development of competitiveness study program, and can be references candidates for the topic choices of thesis and dissertation or lecturer research at the teacher and educational science faculty. The study will be done to literature analysis on educational management as a dimension process and substances in education. As a dimension, process management has explored while on planning, organizing, staffing, directing, budgeting, controlling, evaluating, and reporting. Substantial management included the curriculum, student, teacher, staff, money, facilities, and participation in educational management. The organization level can be analyses on global, regional, local, and institutional levels. The organizational function can be analyses on leadership, planning, supervision, communication, decision making, and innovation in the management process. The area's research in educational management has used for institutional innovation and student achievement.

Human Resource Management Between Economy and Ethics – Research of Serbia and Bosnia and Hercegovina

This paper discusses economic and ethical issues that bring about certain limitations in human resource management as one of the basic organizational functions, through which the organization’s relationship with employees is expressed. The aim of this paper is to point out the ethical dimension of human resource management as a key organizational function, which has economic, but at the same time ethical responsibilities. In elaborating this problem, we started from the basic assumption that human resource management as an organizational function and theoretical concept should balance between economic and ethical requirements, which depends on the attitudes of managers as decision makers. In addition to the analysis of the existing literature in this field, an empirical research was conducted to verify the stated assumptions on the basis of a survey questionnaire, which explored the attitudes of managers. The results were processed by statistical methods in the SPSS program. The significance of this paper derives from the importance of employees for the organization and the sensitivity of the human dimension of the organization in relation to the economic one. Bad condition in human resources management in BiH and Serbia, as the countries on which our research is focused, with unfavorable situation on the labor market, low level of perception of needs by managers and knowledge (professionalism) required for experts in this field to achieve necessary influence and affirm an effective concept and practice, opens opportunities for unethical actions of organizations. Unethical practices can be generated by ignorance, employers ’greed for quick profits, and weak institutional influence. High distance of power is an unfavorable cultural factor that encourages the arbitrariness of individuals and prevents social control of the behavior of organizations. In these wanderings and undefined directions of institutional development, in these countries there is room for corruption, poor law enforcement (incomplete reform of the judicial system), insufficiently defined protection of private property, strong influence of political parties in all spheres of life, political and economic connection, significant share of state property, etc. On the ground of egalitarian culture, high social inequality and impoverishment of the majority of the population is created, which negatively affects education, health and distracts attention from the civic control of the government. Therefore, in the research we started from the assumption that the primary evaluation of the human and social function of business and employees as a purpose, not a means, positively affects the ethical practice of human resource management, which we tested over the average response of respondents employed in different positions in the organization. The results obtained are presented in the paper. Keywords: Business Ethics, Ethics, Employees, Economics, HRM, Organization.

“True peace of mind” allegorical narrative as a tool of moral (trans)formation in J. A. Comenius’s Labyrinth

Labyrinth of the world and paradise of the heart belongs to the jewels of Czech literature. The author – Jan Amos Comenius – consciously uses allegorical narrative for didactic purposes – mainly for his own moral self-reflection in the face of suffering. His method proved to be very effective. The goal of this text is to explore the potential of the literary method from the perspective of moral (trans)formation. The key question is: How did Comenius convey the moral content of his “lesson” in the Labyrinth? Or in general: How does allegorical narrative work as a tool of moral (trans)formation – both for the reader and author of the text. Specifically, this paper attempts to show several literary functions of the Labyrinth as a tool of moral (trans)formation: the therapeutic function, the emphatic function, the imitation function, the organizational function, the performative function and the plot function.

Rethinking Samir Amin’s Legacy and the Case for a Political Organization of the Global Justice Movement

Juego argues that the new Internationale’s “primary organizational function should be the global coordination of actions of progressive grassroots movements from country to country.” He calls for a ‘learning organization,’ where the new Internationale supports “a continuous dialogue between bottom-up and top-down approaches to decision-making.” He sees it as “[a]kin to a global coordinating council” meaning that it works to integrate and synthesize the “varying initiatives, campaigns, and mass actions at all geographical levels of membership” while remaining mindful of the “dialectics between reform and revolution.” The new Internationale must, moreover, be “grounded on a pragmatic understanding of realpolitik especially in struggles at national and local scales,” and institutionalize a commitment to dialogue, research, and discussion.

THE MAIN TRENDS IN STALINIST EMPIRE STYLE IN WESTERN SIBERIA

Understanding of the Stalinist Empire style allows finding an alternative to postmodernism architecture in the conditions of the current crisis of the Russian civilization. The aim of this work is to characterize the architectural style of the Western Siberian cities and show the general and particular character in its consecutive development. Theoretical prerequisites for this work lie in the fact that the general paradigm of Stalinist Empire style was formed during the proletarian cultural revolution, i.e. realization of the collectivism principle and associated creative remaking of the architectural heritage. Stalinist Empire style in the Western Siberia represents the economic regional analogue of such a collectivist architectural synthesis of traditions and innovations.The architectural genesis of the Stalinist Empire style is considered by means of the systems and sociogenetic approaches. The genetic approach to the Stalinist Empire style is used to describe three stages: genesis, differentiation and integration. This triad expresses the main tendencies in the development of the Stalinist Empire style in Western Siberia with a gradual approximation to the increasingly rigid type of the architectural environment. It is concluded that the Stalinist Empire style represents a polystylistic synthesis of traditions and innovations, such as neoclassicism and constructivism, order and extraorder forms, collectivism and statehood based on the conceptual continuity of the world, national and regional style directions. The internal and external forms of the Stalinist Empire style are functionalism, neoclassicism and art deco.The Stalinist Empire style is aesthetic, expressive and consecutive in all its analogues. It is characterized by a clearly defined trend to beauty, dynamic stability and architectural organization. This relates also to the Western Siberian variant that achieves a stronger artistic effect in the paper architecture. The pedagogical socially-organizational function of the Stalinist Empire style is upbringing of new personality. The specific character of the Stalinist Empire style in Western Siberia is greater combination, rigidity and structuredness of the architectural environment as a result of negative system selection from unfavorable conditions. The Stalinist Empire style of metropolitan is a discrete system, while that of Western Siberia is a rigid system.