Anonymous Workblogging and Organizational Coping Strategies

In recent years, the rise of blogging has led to debate about whether employees should be free to talk about their employers on the Internet, and whether they should be able to blog on company time. Several high-profile cases of fired bloggers between 2002 and 2006, drew attention to important labor and civil rights issues that led to debate among human resources and employment law experts in the mainstream media. The negative publicity surrounding the cases of fired bloggers has given rise to an alternative management strategy – a cautious embrace of blogging by employers, who saw the practice as a potential opportunity for marketing and professional development. However, efforts by bloggers to retain their right to blog anonymously signify continuing tensions, revealing the contradictions between workplace surveillance and an “enlightened” management doctrine based on openness and trust, indicating a refusal by some employees to align their blogging endeavors with the interests of their employer. This chapter examines the workblogging phenomenon as an intersection of organizations, technology, and trust, and makes some tentative connections between Guerra et al.’s (2003) concept of “trust-tension” and the critical management literature.

Trends in IT Human Resources and its Determinants

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the various, sometimes contradictory, factors influencing the demand for IT professionals and to build a simple framework that can be used to predict demand. The ability to predict the demand for IT professionals with a reasonable degree of accuracy is important for IHE’s and businesses to correctly identify where their scarce resources should be allocated to develop a curriculum for the 21st century workforce.

Hu Resources Replaces Human Resources in Health Care

Intelligent technologies are exponentially approaching the stage where healthcare professionals must begin to plan for the management of “hu” (human, software, and robotic) resources, replacing management of human resources alone in isolation from other intelligences. The healthcare industry in multiple levels and ways must begin to plan for human resources in health care to extend existing and to develop new conceptual and behavioral skills in order for humans, intelligent software, and robots to optimally partner with each other. The interaction among hu resources will be active and carried out in multiple modes and intellectual and emotional intensities. Healthcare professionals, who shape the social and cultural institutions around intelligence and active knowledge, can optimize the impact and performance of this intelligence partnership.

Talent Management

Talent management is a new concept in the scientific literature, but not in the practitioner arena. In this sense, this chapter underlines the powerful perspective of talent management integrating practices from organizations and providing a scientific approach. Some previous results from different research are expressed in relation to strategy and organizational performance. Talent Management is clearly a concept close to high performance work system, with the difference of a more strategic approach. More than practices are goals for the organization to achieve excellence at work. So Talent Management is clearly linked with a strategic approach to the organization in order to attract, develop, evaluate, and retain professionals with high capacities.

Assessment of Web 2.0 Applications Employed by Human Resource Departments in U.S. Cities

Most local governments employ an intranet within the organization, to assist in human resources. A telephone survey of local government officials (n=17) found these intranet sites employ few Web 2.0 applications. The survey found most cities have plans to increase their use of Web 2.0 applications for human resources management. However, the recent economic recession has adversely impacted these plans. The chapter forwards recommendations to improve local governments’ use of Web 2.0 applications while maintaining cost efficiencies.

The Human Factor in Quality

The aim of this chapter is to theoretically investigate the implications of ISO 9000:2000 and EQA on HR issues in selected Greek industrial organizations in their road to quality improvement. The study sample consists of two selected industrial organizations that were judged as normal, ordinary, and representative. The data gathering was carried out through extensive and in-depth interviews in the two organizations asking several multiple informants. The study shows that organizations approach to quality is of great influence to effective human resource utilization. There is a tendency to avoid the involvement of HR department on either certification or the EQA and also it is clear that HR department status and role is still very traditional. The small sample does not allow making any generalizations for the majority of Greek organizations in all sectors of the economy. This is the first step towards an understanding of the current context and content of HRM in organizations moving towards total quality management implementing ISO 9000:2000 or EQA model. However, further studies needed to investigate similarities and differences in an international basis. The chapter provides a basis for understanding the present status of HRM implementation under ISO 9000 implementation and EQA model of selected Hellenic organizations and the results can be helpful for academics and practitioners. The author suggests that in order to have a reliable and objective depiction of the effect and influence of ISO 9000:2000 and EQA to the context and content of HRM, a thorough examination and analysis of relevant studies should be conducted which will include all the various approaches, practices and perceptions recorded so far in the literature -some of them based on empirical data and some deriving from rhetoric and “good-stories” or “how things ought to be” perspective.

Communicating in Multicultural Firms

Based on a qualitative study of 14 knowledge intensive companies, this chapter suggests that multi-cultural and multilingual firms are faced with certain challenges in the attempt to fruitfully utilize the diverse background of their workforce. Firstly, through informal settings, the employees to create social boundaries within the firm use native languages strategically. Secondly, even though the introduction of English as cooperate language might solve some communication issues, it tends to render the communication less nuanced, thereby reducing the use of human resources within the firm. Thirdly, ICT does not necessarily solve communication problems within a given company. It can even be used as a social ‘tool’ to uphold social boundaries or social fragmentation. It is suggested that in order to address these challenges, the management should seek to reward not only individual employees, but also expand the notion of performance to include the collectivity of the workplace.

Cross-Cultural Learning and Intercultural Competence

Globalization has increased the need to understand the nature of work-related adult learning and development across national boundaries. It is driving the demand for the workforce that possesses knowledge of other countries and cultures and affecting those who are responsible for developing international learning activities. The author of this chapter calls for adult education and Human Resource Development (HRD) professionals to learn how to apply adult learning theories in cross-cultural learning to help individuals with different cultural backgrounds. This would help these professionals acquire intercultural competence and become successful in international assignments.

Human Talent Forecasting using Data Mining Classification Techniques

Talent management is a very crucial task and demands close attention from human resource (HR) professionals. Recently, among the challenges for HR professionals is how to manage organization’s talents, particularly to ensure the right job for the right person at the right time. Some employee’s talent patterns can be identified through existing knowledge in HR databases, which data mining can be applied to handle this issue. The hidden and useful knowledge that exists in databases can be discovered through classification task and has been widely used in many fields. However, this approach has not successfully attracted people in HR especially in talent management. In this regard, the authors attempt to present an overview of talent management problems that can be solved by using this approach. This paper uses that approach for one of the talent management tasks, i.e., predicting potential talent using previous existing knowledge. Future employee’s performances can be predicted based on past experience knowledge discovered from existing databases by using classification techniques. Finally, this study proposes a framework for talent forecasting using the potential Data Mining classification techniques.

Promoting Digital Competences through Social Software

In the present landscape of technological change there is increasing awareness of the need to support the acquisition of digital competences. In this chapter, we address how digital competences can be developed through formal learning. We show how to design a web 2.0 learning experience that was undertaken at Universitat Rovira i Virgili1 and which developed both digital competences and management knowledge. In particular, the case presented focuses on the field of gender equality within the framework of labor relations in a non-real company created for this purpose, “Quadratonics SA”. Through Quadratonics’, web 2.0 tools and social software students improve their digital competences and, at the same time, are exposed to the most up-to-date innovations in ICT. Our final reflection is that higher education academics should continue to expand their awareness of web 2.0 applications and the role they can play in optimizing learning and knowledge creation among students, who will be the digital workers of the future.