E-Learning in Era of COVID-19 Pandemic: Impact of Flexible Working Arrangements on Work Pressure, Work–Life Conflict and Academics’ Satisfaction

The aim of this study is to better understand the effect of flexible working arrangements (FWAs) on three academics’ outcomes, which are work pressure, work–life conflict and satisfaction during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. A quantitative approach using probability-sampling technique was performed to collect the data. A total of 132 responses were considered in this study. The sample includes academics from Middle East and North Africa region. This research used the method of partial least squares to test the research hypotheses. The findings showed that there are significant effects between flexible working-time arrangements, work pressure, work–life conflict with academics’ satisfaction. Yet, both work pressure and work–life conflict do not have moderator roles on the relationship between FWAs and academics’ satisfaction. The research results could be applied by university human resources’ managers seeking to introduce flexible schedules in the workplace in the context of uncertainty. The study makes a novel contribution to the effect of flexible schedules on the attitude of academics during a health crisis (COVID-19).

Proposing a framework for specifying the appropriateness of pursuing a career regarding Employees’ healthiness and safeguard: A Case study of food manufacturing industry

BackgroundEmployee health is an essential issue for Human Resource Management (HRM). The employees' health level is undeniably correlated to the job position in which they work since it may harm their well-being, and they may not be capable of performing their duties properly. Prompt diagnosis and resolution of employees' physical complications are highly critical.MethodsMachine learning (ML) is the state-of-the-art method potentially utilized to make early predictions to safeguard employees' healthiness. The technical laborers within the food manufacturing company are included in this Research. The functional classification models, namely, Support Vector Machine (SVM), K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN), Logistic Regression (LR), Decision Tree, are exploited to predict the employees' wellness for their vocation. K-fold Cross-Validation (KCV) and Confusion Matrix were applied in this study, the former for estimating the model's functionality and the latter for forecasting accuracy.ResultsAfter implementing four models on the 231 employees, the accuracy was extracted out, SVM with 78%, KNN with 78%, Decision Tree with 80%, and the highest for LR algorithm with 84%.ConclusionsIn this Research, the LR algorithm was opted to paving the way for Human Resources Managers in order to utilize a functional system to predict the Suitability of factory workers concerning their healthiness. The Hearing condition was picked out as a leading factor in selecting employees for their job position. Consequently, it is significant to planning a hearing conservation program for employees, especially those exposed to excessive noise.Trial Registration: Retrospectively registered.

Emerging union–management partnership in Chilean firms: particularities and limitations

PurposeThe article explains why some Chilean companies have implemented a partnership strategy with trade unions, in a national context broadly described as unfavorable to such approach. Moreover, it discusses the shape and limits of this strategy.Design/methodology/approachThe argument draws on a case study conducted between 2016 and 2018 in three large companies. Human resources managers, line managers and union officers were interviewed in each of these companies, and internal and administrative documentation were analyzed.FindingsThe article demonstrates that the management’s partnership strategy in the studied companies has emerged to contain the union revitalization. Additionally, it suggests this strategy has not favored trust-based relationships that guarantee long-term mutual gains for employees and companies. The article identifies some factors that explain this situation: the regulation, the economic uncertainty and the absence of a pluralist management perspective.Originality/valueThe article has the value of providing empirical evidence on union–management partnership, a topic that has gained strategic importance for large Chilean companies but remains unexplored in the mainstream the human resources management literature. The article also contributes to underscore the theoretical relevance of political and cultural variables in explaining management strategies and their results.

Hubungan Motivasi Kerja dan Sistem Pengembangan Pegawai Terhadap Kinerja Pegawai di Koperasi Dharmayukti Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara Palembang

<em><span lang="EN-US">Employees are the most important assets in an agency, so that quality improvement needs to be an important concern in an effort to achieve agency goals effectively and efficiently. In every management activity, efforts should be made to align the goals of employees so that in the end the objectives of the agency can be achieved as much as possible. Performance appraisal is the most reliable tool for managers to control human resources and productivity. Performance appraisal can be used effectively in directing employee behavior, in order to produce high quality and volume of human resources. Managers can use the operational performance process to set the direction of work in selecting, training, guiding career planning, and rewarding competent employees. The essence of employment is basically regulation, potential mobilization, motivation process, and human resource development in fulfilling satisfaction through his work. This is useful for achieving the goals of the individual, organization, or community in which he works. Decisions made regarding manpower are strongly influenced by the philosophy adopted by the leader regarding labor empowerment. For example, views on work motivation, and the concept of labor. From this point of view, an employment pattern will be formed that is adjusted to the image of the leader. Every government and private agency will always try to improve the effectiveness of employees' work. This can be done by developing employee work. Most leaders are very supportive of employee development. The lower the job level, the more labor supply there is. The positions leading to special skills are not filled because of the lack of employees who meet the requirements. A person is trained to carry out the basic arrangements essential for the job, the most common types of training being fieldwork, meetings or discussions.</span></em>

HUMAN RESOURCES CHALLENGES FOR THE NEXT 10 YEARS: CASE STUDY OF TURKEY

Today, it is critical for businesses to utilize their resources to gain and sustain competitive advantage by having skilled workforce, retaining, and using employees in line with their business objectives and strategies. Therefore, possession of skilled workforce is recognized as one of the determining factors in the success of enterprises in today's competitive environment. It is important to emphasize that this can be achieved only with effective management policies and practices. The concept of globalization will not be missing within next 10 years considering that it has been one of the most important phenomena of the recent decades. In this context, human resources managers, who continue to remain “local” in terms of their knowledge and experience, need to improve themselves by learning new markets, new legislation, new cultures and different norms required by the changing business conditions. In the past, while practices known as employee record keeping, social work duty, personnel management were constituting the main understanding of Human Resource Management (HRM), following the industrial relations, HRM processes have started to be subject to major change and transformation. Currently, HRM has become a critical topic for the organizations due to its significance and impact on their strategic management. Within this context, application, and transformation of HRM is the focus of this study within the projections about its future considering the potential problems may have been encountered during this transformation process. Therefore, this study will examine the difficulties and challenges that may be experienced by HR managers within the next 10 years. Firstly, the current problems of HRM and the main discussions on this subject in the literature will be examined together with the predictions for the next 10 years. Later, in line with the survey results conducted to the HR managers in the Istanbul region, the discussions in the literature will be compared with the predictions of the local HR managers. Considering the complexity of human resources that derives from its own nature and the environment in which it operates, the everyday challenges experienced by HR professionals while handling their routine tasks should be discussed thoroughly by encouraging everyone to share their ideas and to put their best effort to improve their HR processes, policies, and practices.

The impact of the cooperative structure on organizational social capital

Purpose Most research into the relationship between social capital and cooperatives takes social capital as the independent variable and the cooperative as the dependent variable, but as yet the authors know little about causality in the other direction. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether the cooperative structure helps to maintain organizational social capital. Design/methodology/approach Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 46 participants from local banks (chairpersons, directors, managers, team leaders and human resources managers). Findings Although the cooperative structure formally remained in place, integration into financial markets and digitalization effectively disembedded the organization from its original social context. The cooperative model can only remain distinctive, in terms of how it relates to its clients, under certain institutional conditions. Practical implications The findings suggest that scaling, in response to changes in the institutional environment, was an important factor in changing the nature of the organization. Originality/value The paper contributes to the understanding of the social dynamics of cooperatives in the field of financial services.

Increasing Integrative Negotiation in European Organizations Through Trustworthiness and Trust

Integrative negotiation in which employers and employees create value is a major necessity in the current challenging context. Collective labor negotiations in organizations are traditionally focused on mostly distributive issues, such as pay, working hours, and holidays. However, the current situation demands the inclusion of other issues of a potentially more integrative nature, such as telework, sustainability, and risk prevention, the enhancement of which is a major challenge for organizations. In this study, we explore the negotiation process between management and employee representatives (ERs), analyzing the roles of trust and trustworthiness. We collected data from 614 human resources managers from different organizations in 11 European countries. The results confirm that ERs who management perceive to be trustworthy have a greater influence on negotiation, particularly with regard to integrative as opposed to distributive issues, and that trust partially mediates this relationship.

The Human Capital for Value Creation and Social Impact: The Interpretation of the IR’s HC Definition

The paper aimed at assessing and identifying in a comparative way the potentiality and suitability of the Integrated Reporting (IR)’s definition of human capital (HC) within a selection of companies and social cooperatives. Employing in-depth interviews, the qualitative study analyzed the points of view of a selection of human resources managers to firstly check and test the connection between human capital, value creation, and social impact. The contribution of human capital to value creation is not easily recognized, especially by smaller-sized companies. The results suggested that the HC definition of the IR in the for-profit sector seems to be more applicable to the top management than to the whole workforce, while it appears as “fitting” for the managers of social cooperatives because of its explicit focus on ethical values, loyalty, and motivation. This allowed opening possible channels of dialogue between the profit and not-for-profit sectors. The paper proposed practical recommendations to operationalize the IR’s HC definition.

The securitized workplace: document protection, insider threats and emerging ethnographic barriers in a South Korean organization

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how document protection has become a key object of concern for organizations, how the threat of leaks has led to an increase in security technologies and policies and how these developments present new and emergent ethnographic challenges for researchers. Through a study of a South Korean organization, the paper aims to demonstrate the ways workplace documents are figured into wider legal, regulatory and cyber security concerns.Design/methodology/approachThe research is based on 12 months of intensive embedded fieldwork in a South Korean firm from 2014 to 2015 and follow-up interviews in 2018. The author followed an immersive and inductive approach to collecting ethnographic data in situ. The author was hired as an intern in a Korean conglomerate known as the Sangdo Group where he worked alongside Human Resources managers to understand their work practices. The present article reflects difficulties in his original research design and an attempt to analyze the barriers themselves. His analysis combines ideas from theories of securitization and document studies to understand how the idea of protection is reshaping workplaces in South Korea and elsewhere.FindingsThe paper highlights three findings first that South Korean workplaces have robust socio-material infrastructures around document protection and security, reflecting that security around document leaks is becoming integrated into normal organizational life. Second, the securitization of document leaks is shifting from treating document leaks as a threat to organizational existence, to a crime by individual actors that organizations track. Third, that even potential document leaks can have transitive effects on teams and managers.Originality/valueOrganizational security practices and their integration into workplace life have rarely been examined together. This paper connects Weber's insights on bureaucratization with the concept of securitization to examine the rise of document security practices and policies in a South Korean organization. The evidence from South Korea is valuable because technological developments around security coupled with organizational complexities portend issues for other organizational environments around the world.

Psychological Impact of Downsizing on Survivor-Managers in a Developing Economy

Despite the importance of psychological wellbeing of survivors to the attainment of the envisaged goal of the downsizing practice, research on this group of workers is still limited particularly in Nigeria. The study aims at exploring the psychological impact of downsizing on survivor managers in Nigeria using a qualitative research approach. More specifically, unstructured and semi-structured interviews were carried out at different stages with a total of 20 interviewees. Data were analysed and coded using a data-driven thematic analysis. The finding revealed that anxiety, a feeling of uncertainty, insecurity of job, reduction in individual motivation and poor communication influenced the survivors negatively. These negative psychological and emotional impact exhibited by the survivor employees are linked to lack of jobs, high rate of unemployment, and lack of social security and culture. The outcome of the study would provide implications for human resources managers in Nigeria who often deal with downsizing and engaged in psychological contract breach.