HRM PRACTICES ON FOREIGN-OWNED COMPANIES IN HUNGARY

This paper sought to answer the question of how best human resource practices can support organisations in the current phase of internationalisation while still maintaining the local standards of the hosting country? In attempting to answer this question, the paper studied the HRM practices of Foreign-Owned Companies and Hungary's Socioeconomic environment. The study revealed that the Hungarian cultural society was more independent, and power hierarchy was not entrenched in the organisational cultures, highly individualistic, masculine, intolerant towards taking risks, realistic, and culturally restrained. The paper concluded that the increased FDIs and multinational companies in Hungary posed a great challenge to employees' effective and efficient management while still maintaining the host country's local standards.

Gaining Expertise in Creating Metadata: An Exploratory Study

<p>Increasingly, people with little experience of cataloguing, indexing or abstracting are using metadata schemas like the Dublin Core Metadata Elements Set (DC) and the New Zealand Government Locator Service (NZGLS) to describe resources. There is currently little information available about how novices approach the process of metadata creation, and what personal (cognitive) and other factors (particularly organisational) are at work. In this exploratory study, I spoke with novice metadata creators about their skills and knowledge when they began to create metadata and, six weeks later, after they had created records as part of their normal work duties. I asked novices to identify factors that impacted positively or negatively upon their progress, and also sought the opinions of metadata experts who were training and supervising novice creators. The study identified the skills and knowledge that are required to create metadata, and investigated the techniques used to develop expertise. The tools used by metadata creators were evaluated, and the effects of organisational culture were also explored. The insights of the expert and novice participants provide guidance as to how managers can facilitate the production of good quality metadata through developing effective staff training and quality assurance, providing more usable online tools and documentation, and fostering more supportive organisational cultures.</p>

Gaining Expertise in Creating Metadata: An Exploratory Study

<p>Increasingly, people with little experience of cataloguing, indexing or abstracting are using metadata schemas like the Dublin Core Metadata Elements Set (DC) and the New Zealand Government Locator Service (NZGLS) to describe resources. There is currently little information available about how novices approach the process of metadata creation, and what personal (cognitive) and other factors (particularly organisational) are at work. In this exploratory study, I spoke with novice metadata creators about their skills and knowledge when they began to create metadata and, six weeks later, after they had created records as part of their normal work duties. I asked novices to identify factors that impacted positively or negatively upon their progress, and also sought the opinions of metadata experts who were training and supervising novice creators. The study identified the skills and knowledge that are required to create metadata, and investigated the techniques used to develop expertise. The tools used by metadata creators were evaluated, and the effects of organisational culture were also explored. The insights of the expert and novice participants provide guidance as to how managers can facilitate the production of good quality metadata through developing effective staff training and quality assurance, providing more usable online tools and documentation, and fostering more supportive organisational cultures.</p>

Diagnosing delivery capabilities on a large international nature-based solutions project

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly at the centre of urban strategies to mitigate heatwaves and flooding, improve public health and restore biodiversity. However, on-ground implementation has been slow, inconsistent and often limited to demonstration sites. A broad literature consistently highlights institutional barriers as a major reason for the observed implementation gap. In this study, we developed and deployed an assessment tool to identify barriers to NBS delivery on a European Commission Horizon 2020 project spanning seven cities. We found that practitioners were effectively navigating challenges in the areas where they had significant control, including community engagement, strategy development and technical skills. The greatest barriers were outside the influence of project teams: understaffing, a lack of intra-organisational processes, and risk-averse organisational cultures. These findings emphasise that after cities embrace NBS at the strategic and political level, it is vital that executives follow through with the necessary pragmatic reforms to enable delivery.

The service platform as a dualistic meta-organisation: An ethnographic account of contingency work and its organisational cultures

This study examines the character of service platforms in terms of economic and organisational sociology. It is based on an ethnographic study and semi-structured interviews at a delivery platform in Germany. The article argues that ser-vice platforms can be conceived of as dualistic meta-organisations. At the centre of the company is a complete organisation with membership rights and obligations. Be-yond the centre of the organisation, there is a peripheral organisation which is a hybrid between organisation and market. This partial organisation only provides limited rights and duties to its members. These conditional labour relations in the digital economy can be seen as a modern-ized organisational match of precarious labour relations in the form of contingency work. Within this structure, em-ployees thus experience new forms of insecurity.

Is Mobile Email Functional or Dysfunctional? Two Perspectives on Mobile Email Usage

This paper offers a study of contradiction in the usage of mobile email. Using qualitative data, the paper identifies mobile email usage patterns that are dangerous, distracting, anti-social and that infringe on work-life boundaries. Mobile email users were forthcoming in describing these dysfunctional usage patterns, but they made a convincing argument that their mobile devices are highly functional and allow them to be efficient, to multitask without disruption to others, and to respond immediately to messages, as well as offering them the freedom to work from anywhere. These dual perspectives on mobile email (dys)functionality are explored through a metaphorical lens, showing how organisational cultures can reinforce the functional perspective while simultaneously suppressing the dysfunctional view. It is argued that it is important to understand and explore the dysfunctional perspective of mobile email adoption. The paper concludes with a series of questions that challenge organisations to reflect critically on their assumptions about mobile email usage.

Illusions of Balance and Control in an Always-On Environment: A Case Study of BlackBerry Users

This paper presents a qualitative case study of Canadian BlackBerry® users. It begins with a brief description of the BlackBerry, a handheld wireless mobile email device developed by Research in Motion1 . BlackBerry users find their devices to be empowering, allowing them more control over their environments. The BlackBerry does give its users a mechanism to exert control over the management of daily communication tasks, but by virtue of its always-on, always-connected nature, it also reinforces cultures that expect people to be accessible outside normal business hours. Rather than just a tool of liberation for its users, the BlackBerry can also be understood as an artifact that reflects and perpetuates organisational cultures in which individual employees have little control and influence. While this case study focuses on BlackBerry users, it is suggested that the findings are not unique to this device. BlackBerries and other mobile technologies have been envisioned by some as means of enforcing work-life boundaries, but this paper concludes that the use of always-on mobile devices can lead to situations where conflict between work and personal activities is exacerbated rather than reduced.

Illusions of Balance and Control in an Always-On Environment: A Case Study of BlackBerry Users

This paper presents a qualitative case study of Canadian BlackBerry® users. It begins with a brief description of the BlackBerry, a handheld wireless mobile email device developed by Research in Motion1 . BlackBerry users find their devices to be empowering, allowing them more control over their environments. The BlackBerry does give its users a mechanism to exert control over the management of daily communication tasks, but by virtue of its always-on, always-connected nature, it also reinforces cultures that expect people to be accessible outside normal business hours. Rather than just a tool of liberation for its users, the BlackBerry can also be understood as an artifact that reflects and perpetuates organisational cultures in which individual employees have little control and influence. While this case study focuses on BlackBerry users, it is suggested that the findings are not unique to this device. BlackBerries and other mobile technologies have been envisioned by some as means of enforcing work-life boundaries, but this paper concludes that the use of always-on mobile devices can lead to situations where conflict between work and personal activities is exacerbated rather than reduced.

Is Mobile Email Functional or Dysfunctional? Two Perspectives on Mobile Email Usage

This paper offers a study of contradiction in the usage of mobile email. Using qualitative data, the paper identifies mobile email usage patterns that are dangerous, distracting, anti-social and that infringe on work-life boundaries. Mobile email users were forthcoming in describing these dysfunctional usage patterns, but they made a convincing argument that their mobile devices are highly functional and allow them to be efficient, to multitask without disruption to others, and to respond immediately to messages, as well as offering them the freedom to work from anywhere. These dual perspectives on mobile email (dys)functionality are explored through a metaphorical lens, showing how organisational cultures can reinforce the functional perspective while simultaneously suppressing the dysfunctional view. It is argued that it is important to understand and explore the dysfunctional perspective of mobile email adoption. The paper concludes with a series of questions that challenge organisations to reflect critically on their assumptions about mobile email usage.