HRM and Employee Significant Behavior: Explaining the Black Box through AMO Theory

The purpose of this study is to explore the employees’ perceptions towards the role of HRM policies and practices in assisting them to perform the desired behavior in contributing to the organizational goals achievement. Employees’ perceptions are explored through their actual experiences with the implementation of HRM policies and practices. Interviews were conducted with employees in five different star-rating hotels to understand contextual factors that can be observed. Different perceptions on the role of HRM policies and practices in influencing employees’ performance are reported from the interviews. Instead of acting as a medium to transmit the message of their work expectations, employees view the HRM policies and practices as a common process happening in their organization and unrelated to their work demand. Therefore, findings of this study could light a torch of awareness for organizations to give more attention to the employees’ responses and feedback to minimize their dysfunctional behaviors that are detrimental to organizational achievement. Suggestions are given to increase the employee desired behavior relevant to the organizations from the perspective of AMO theory.

Działalność Alodii i Józefa Gryczów w świetle ich spuścizny rękopiśmiennej

Alodia Gryczowa and Józef Grycz belong to the line of the most outstanding Polish librarians of the twentieth century. Their huge scientific and organizational achievement provides material for numerous works discussing the development of book history and library science in Poland. The article attempts to describe the curriculum vitae and the activities of both Alodia and Józef in relation to their papers kept at the Manuscript Department of the National Library. This archive encompasses personal materials, which reflect the line of their professional development and institutional careers, documents relative to their community service (concerning libraries, bibliophile activities, etc.), their publications, and an abundant correspondence (both professional and private). In conclusion the author acknowledges that further research is necessary to bring together the complete set of the Grycz papers. The article is supplemented with an appendix presenting a provisional list of contents of the ‘Grycz Papers’, a newly acquired fond at the Polish National Library in Warsaw.

Dual Habitus and Founding Cadres: The Sociological Foundations of How Discretion Is Oriented to Organizational Achievement

This chapter considers why organizations use the potential for difference afforded by operational discretion to pursue abstract public goals of organizational achievement, in the process bucking prevailing neopatrimonial patterns. It develops the idea of actors with dual habitus. Appreciating how institutionally fruitful innovations can emerge from dual habitus helps make sense of an important empirical observation: most Ghanaian niches became centers of excellence when they were populated by a critical mass of Ghanaians who had local first degrees that endowed them with valuable social and cultural capital, coupled with lived experience abroad of a medium duration, often through advanced foreign education. These Ghanaians had acquired implicit skills of, and taste for, formal organizational practice while still remaining connected to local Ghanaian cultural practices and networks. The same pattern holds true for the international comparison cases. The chapter concludes by observing that these organizations were not so much transformed by singular leaders but rather by clustered cadres: small and tightly knit corps of senior staff with strong proto-bureaucratic habitus who were hand-picked for their commitment to the organizational mission.

Leading Happiness: Leadership and Happiness at a Workplace

Organizational achievement is determined by a number of factors, particularly human resources. Human resources with high levels of happiness will affect productivity and the smoothness of tasks performed. Since employees spend most of their day working in an organization, it is obvious that the organizational environment will affect the employees’ emotional well-being. This article discusses the meaning of happiness at workplace and the leadership factors that influence employees’ happiness. Other than adopting effective leadership concepts, leaders who have the skills to listen and think about the career path of the employees are found to highly influence their employees' happiness in the organization