How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

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Social capital: a theory of social structure and action

Начала политической экономии и податного обложения = The principles of political economy and taxation

This paper presents a framework for studying the concepts of fit and flexibility in the field of Strategic Human Resource Management (Strategic HRM) focusing on HRM practices, employee skills, and employee behaviors and reviews past conceptual and empirical work within that framework. A model of Strategic HRM is presented and this model is used to explore the concepts of fit and flexibility as they apply to Strategic HRM. The concepts of resource and coordination flexibility are applied to Strategic HRM, and the implications of the framework for both the practice of and research on Strategic HRM are discussed.

Toward a Unifying Framework for Exploring Fit and Flexibility in Strategic Human Resource Management

Developing a capacity for organizational resilience through strategic human resource management

From its origins at the end of the 1970s, strategic human resource management has developed quickly. After its uncertain first steps, the number of models and explanations proposed grew exponentially, especially after some theoretical revisions presented in the 1990s. The present explosion of literature requires a systematic revision of the state of the art in this field of research. This is the objective of this paper, which classifies the literature theoretically into four generic perspectives. The principal conclusion derived from this analysis is that, despite the differences among the universalistic, contingent, configurational and contextual approaches, it is possible to make their contributions compatible balancing their limitations. Finally, to illustrate this, we present an integrative exploratory model representing our actual understanding of the complex phenomenon of strategic human resource management.

Strategic human resource management: integrating the universalistic, contingent, configurational and contextual perspectives

University of Ca´diz, Facultad de Ciencias Econo´micas y Empresariales, Plaza Carlos Cano,s/n 11002 Ca´diz, SpainCorresponding author email: gonzalo.sanchez@uca.esDrawing on Snow and Thomas’s (Journal of Management Studies, 31 (1994), pp. 457–480) matrix, we empirically explore the state of the art in human resource management(HRM) research. The data were obtained through a questionnaire directed to HRMscholars all over the world, in which they were asked about their particular theoreticaland methodological approaches. The evidence obtained shows clearly that HRMscholars are progressively abandoning the universalistic perspective and completingtheir models with contingent and contextual variables. Trying to classify the diﬀerentcontributions proposed and discuss their integration, HRM is described as a ﬁeld ofresearch with three dimensions: subfunctional, strategic and international. The paperconcludes that to provide reliable explanations and valid responses to professionalproblems, HRM research must advance simultaneously in these three dimensions. Asfollows from our analysis, there are certain HR issues that still need to be addressed: (1)the strategic use of HR practices, (2) their international applicability, (3) global HRstrategies and (4) the synergic integration of HR activities. Nevertheless, to advance ourknowledge in these issues, it seems necessary to integrate previous research insubfunctional, strategic and international aspects of HRM.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2007.00540.x

Human Resource Management as a Field of Research

The purpose of this study is to examine how workgroup diversity can be managed through specific strategic human resource management systems Our review shows that ‘affirmative action’ and traditional ‘diversity management’ approaches have failed to simultaneously achieve business and social justice outcomes of diversity As previous literature has shown, the benefits of diversity cannot be achieved with isolated interventions To the contrary, a complete organizational culture change is required, in order to promote appreciation of individual differences The paper contributes to this discussion by exploring the implications of this change for human resource management, and explaining how the systems of practices should be changed when they are directed to diverse groups The model designed to test this notion includes: (1) demographic and human capital diversity as independent variables, (2) group performance (measured as innovation outcomes) as the dependent variable and, (3) the orientation of the strategic human resource management system as a potential moderator of this relationship The main conclusion of the empirical analysis developed is that different patterns of human resource management practices can be used, depending on the type of diversity that the organization faces, and the specific effects that it wishes to manage Concretely, three alternative management systems are identified in this paper, with different moderating effects This result has interesting implications for human resource management professionals, explained in the last section The limitations of this study are also discussed, as well as some issues that future research in this field should address

Transforming Human Resource Management Systems to Cope with Diversity

The purpose of this paper is to describe the development and validation of an instrument for measuring intellectual capital in the academic research context. The current research context describes a new paradigm of scientific production characterized by interdisciplinarity, heterogeneity and the intensification of the relations between the generators of knowledge. In this scenario, traditional measures of intellectual capital do not capture all the variables that make up the environment in which the research activities are carried out. This transformation of research processes suggests the need to bring theories of organizational behavior, more appropriate to an organizational context, to the study of scientific context. Thus, the paper contextualizes the intellectual capital approach, thereby explaining how the different attributes that build it influence scientific productivity and providing a measurement instrument to evaluate relative levels of intellectual capital in an academic research context.,The scale was designed through a double qualitative–quantitative scale development process. The literature on intellectual capital does not provide strong theoretical support for the definition of a specific set of items to be applied in the specific academic research context. Consequently, the scale constructs and observable variables were initially conceptualized through a Delphi panel. This initial set of indicators was empirically validated through a second quantitative stage to a sample of 1,798 Spanish academics. Given that no prior published studies have examined the construct validity of the proposed scale, and the proposed scale is not based on other previously validated scales, the authors used exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to assess the internal consistency, using Cronbach’s α to determine reliability.,Drawing on the evidence obtained from a double qualitative–quantitative process, a scale consisting of 47 items was proposed to measure the three dimensions of intellectual capital, namely, the researcher’s human capital, as well as the nature of the social capital and organizational capital of the team in which the scholar is integrated. The process of identifying and validating indicators of intellectual capital allowed the authors to identify certain intangible elements that are key in the research process and that, therefore, determine scientific productivity. Thus, the proposed scale contributes by conceptualizing new variables that could be used to deepen and broaden the study of the determinants of research performance. The contextualization of intellectual capital approach can also help to assess the value of intangibles, offering an external reporting tool and making universities’ social contributions more visible to public and private stakeholders, justifying the efforts made by societies in the generation of academic knowledge.,The empirical analysis was carried out with an initial sample of 1,798 Spanish scholars. The validation of the scale should therefore be confirmed in different national contexts, with larger data sets. Likewise, the use of longitudinal data sets could help to study the effects of intellectual capital in academic research, thereby contributing to the ongoing debate on the determinants of research performance.,From a practical perspective, the instrument could be considered both as a management and an external reporting tool, providing a self-assessment instrument of the levels of intellectual capital. As a management tool, a specific measure of intellectual capital in an academic context could help to identify training needs, the implementation of practices that encourage the capability for building research networks and the development of reports with intellectual capital-related inputs for the justification of the resources received. At an institutional level, the proposed set of indicators also identifies the attributes of scholars linked to higher scientific performance, and the scale could be used as an instrument for selection processes in academic institutions, to develop practices related to the distribution of workload or the publication of intellectual capital indicators of its researchers in a healthy exercise of transparency.

https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JIC-09-2018-0152/full/pdf?title=conceptualizing-academic-intellectual-capital-definition-and-proposal-of-a-measurement-scale

Conceptualizing academic intellectual capital: definition and proposal of a measurement scale

In spite of its strategic relevance, functional flexibility has still not been clearly defined by the literature. Drawing on different conceptualizations and measurement tools, empirical studies have reached different and even contradictory findings. This paper proposes a construct to define and measure functional flexibility in the field of Human Resource Management. In doing so, we will try to clarify this concept, classifying previous definitions and contributing with an integrative conceptualization. In the first part of this work we discuss and justify the need for certain level of functional flexibility in human resource management systems, which helps the organization to improve its capacity to adaptat to current environments. From this point of view, this capacity is considered as a relevant source of competitive advantage. Drawing on our theoretical analysis, we propose a new functional flexibility construct and a measurement model that could help to develop deeper analysis on this topic. This construct would serve as a starting point in the definition of a measurement scale for functional flexibility. Future research lines derived from this analysis are discussed in the last section of the paper. Specifically, we discuss the need to analyse how exploration and exploitation of human capital can be combined in flexible human resource management strategies.

/pdf/functional-flexibility-in-human-resource-management-systems-g5em0j6n4x.pdf

Gonzalo Sánchez-Gardey

Papers

Strategic human resource management: integrating the universalistic, contingent, configurational and contextual perspectives

Human Resource Management as a Field of Research

Transforming Human Resource Management Systems to Cope with Diversity

Conceptualizing academic intellectual capital: definition and proposal of a measurement scale

Functional Flexibility in Human Resource Management Systems: Conceptualization and Measurement