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OMM6
1
8: Human Resources Management (MFG1
3
20A)
Professor:
Randy H.
Greetings all!
Please cite every sentence in which you use information from sources.
1. Use “” for quotes and citations with page or paragraph location information
2. Use block formatting for quotes of 40 or more words (please do avoid lengthy quotes)
3. Cite sentences in which you use information from sources even as you put those ideas into your own words
4. Please use the APA manual or APA.org as a resource for how to construct citations and references
Please do review, if you have not done so already, the Academic Research link available at the Student Responsibilities and Policies link.
In short, please do not use newsprint, popular press, other non-academic sources to justify views for initial posts, responses to peers, or papers.
Please locate and use journal articles, published books, and websites with .edu and .gov trailers. If you have questions about the quality of a source, if you see citations and references, you are probably using a good source. If you are using articles free of such attribution, please do not use.
Please let me know if you have questions or concerns about quality of sources we should be using for masters-level work.
Please note that at each
Discussion 1
and Discussion 2 throughout the course, the initial instructions include discussion forum grading rubric links. Please consider reviewing these rubrics as I use these elements to cue my feedback.
For each Assignment throughout the course, you will find grading rubric links. Please review these rubrics as well. I use these elements to cue my feedback.
Please remember to review my Faculty Expectations and weekly Instructor Guidance for additional information on what I look for in discussion and paper assignments.
Please let me know if any of this information is not helpful, begs clarity.
Thanks!
Greetings all!
I wish for my feedback to work for each of you. While I think I’m being clear in what I write, some of you may differ in how you make sense of what I write!… 🙂
So, please know I use rubrics embedded in the course and highlight scoring by using bold for related earnings. At the bottom of each rubric for discussion assignments, I will address strengths and opportunities. Reviewing those opportunities should be helpful for increasing performance and scores, as appropriate. If what I write in feedback is not helping, please do not hesitate to let me know as I want to ensure the feedback I produce is useful for you.
For papers, please know I will be using the following APA formatting criteria for scoring in the APA/writing sections of rubrics for written assignments:
1. Please integrate textbook (and, if appropriate, video) into assignment (see the Instructor’s Guidance)
2. Please write in a circle, offer a thesis and purpose with subsequent elements in the introduction, key elements, and summarize thesis and purpose
3. Please cite every sentence in which you use information from sources or know that you are technically plagiarizing
4. Aggressively set and run grammar check, resolve issues prior to submitting paper
5. Use APA style levels of headings to help with transitioning
6. Use APA style title page
7
. Use APA style running head, page numbers
8. Use Times New Roman 12 font throughout
9. Double space without special offsets (go to spacing settings in Word, modify to “0” before and after)
10. Other:
Course Syllabus
Prerequisites
OMM 618 has no prerequisites.
Course Description
This course is a study on managing people in the workplace, focusing on the important policies and processes associated with recruiting, hiring,
training
and evaluating personnel in order to achieve strategic organizational goals.
Course Design
This course prepares students for immediate action on the job by providing them with the practical tools and applications, as well as the theoretical principles, of human resource management in contemporary organizations. The course is designed to include functions that are found in human resource departments. These functions will be presented in a way so that students will be able to apply them regardless of the size or structure of their organization.
Course topics include an introduction to
human resources
, equal opportunity and diversity, personnel planning and recruitment, testing and selecting employees, training, development of employees, performance management, compensation, ethical issues in human resources, labor relations and safety and health issues.
The class sessions not only present theoretical content, but provide opportunities to apply the content to the student’s personal and organizational life. There are a number of case studies and class discussions. The Research Project focuses on select topics associated with modern organizational culture and life.
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:
1. Delineate the scope of human resource management activities within an organization.
2. Describe the significant role that effective human resource management has in achieving strategic organizational goals.
3. Explain and demonstrate the basic techniques of good HRM practice.
4. Describe contexts that influence HRM practice, including social trends, multi-cultural workplaces, legislative policies, and labor issues.
5. Design an integrated HR information system to support strategic decision making in an organization.
6. Use training models and training structures to measure processes and evaluate performance in the development of a learning organization.
7. Develop policies for dealing effectively with compliance areas such as equal employment, employee grievance procedures, and occupational health and safety.
8. Identify and apply skills that are effective in working with others, analyzing and designing positions, and evaluating performance to achieve continual organizational improvement.
Course Map
The course map illustrates the careful design of the course through which each learning objective is supported by one or more specific learning activities in order to create integrity and pedagogical depth in the learning experience.
LEARNING OUTCOME
WEEK
ASSIGNMENT
1. Delineate the scope of human resource management activities within an organization.
1
1
2
2
2
3
3
4
4
4
5
5
5
6
6
6
·
Jack Nelson’s Problem
·
A Question of Discrimination
·
Human Resource Challenges
· Passionate Prospects
· The Tough Screener
· Testing
· Reinventing the Wheel
· Appraisal
· Staffing
· Acme Manufacturing
· Ethics and Organizational Culture
· Incentive Plans
· Contract Negotiations
· The New Safety Program
· Stress and Burnout
· Expatriation
· Repatriation
· Research Project
1. Describe the significant role that effective human resource management has in achieving strategic organizational goals.
3
3
4
4
4
5
5
6
· Reinventing the Wheel
· Staffing
· Acme Manufacturing
· Ethics and Organizational Culture
· Incentive Plans
· Contract Negotiations
· Stress and Burnout
· Research Project
1. Explain and demonstrate the basic techniques of good HRM practice.
1
1
2
2
3
3
4
4
4
5
5
6
· Jack Nelson’s Problem
· A Question of Discrimination
· Passionate Prospects
· The Tough Screener
· Staffing
· Reinventing the Wheel
· Acme Manufacturing
· Ethics and Organizational Culture
· Incentive Plans
· Contract Negotiations
· The New Safety Program
· Research Project
1. Describe contexts that influence HRM practice, including social trends, multi-cultural workplaces, legislative policies, and labor issues.
1
2
2
2
3
4
4
4
5
5
5
6
6
6
· A Question of Discrimination
· Passionate Prospects
· The Tough Screener
· Testing
· Appraisal
· Acme Manufacturing
· Ethics and Organizational Culture
· Incentive Plans
· Contract Negotiations
· The New Safety Program
· Stress and Burnout
· Expatriation
· Repatriation
· Research Project
1. Design an integrated HR information system to support strategic decision making in an organization.
6
· Research Project
1. Use training models and training structures to measure processes and evaluate performance in the development of a learning organization.
3
3
6
6
· Staffing
· Reinventing the Wheel
· Repatriation
· Research Project
1. Develop policies for dealing effectively with compliance areas such as equal employment, employee grievance procedures, and occupational health and safety.
4
5
5
· Acme Manufacturing
· The New Safety Program
· Stress and Burnout
1. Identify and apply skills that are effective in working with others, analyzing and designing positions, and evaluating performance to achieve continual organizational improvement.
3
3
3
4
5
6
· Staffing
· Reinventing the Wheel
· Appraisal
· Incentive Plans
· Stress and Burnout
· Research Project
Institutional Outcomes
Graduates of Ashford University:
1. Demonstrate the ability to read and think critically and creatively.
2. Demonstrate the ability to communicate effectively in speech and writing.
3. Demonstrate the ability to communicate effectively through the use of technology.
4. Demonstrate self-worth and respect the diversity in others.
5. Understand the interdependence of life in all its forms.
6. Demonstrate competence in their major fields of study.
7. Share talents and resources in service to others.
8. Are able to draw information from different fields of study to make informed decisions.
9. Recognize learning as a life-long endeavor.
Mission Statement
The mission of Ashford University is to provide accessible, affordable, innovative, high-quality learning opportunities and degree programs that meet the diverse needs of individuals pursuing integrity in their lives, professions, and communities.
Required Text
Dessler, G. (2011). A Framework for Human Resource Management (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. ISBN: 9780132556378.
Required Journal Articles
Palmer, T., & Varner, I. (2005). Role of cultural self-knowledge in successful expatriation. Singapore Management Review, 27(1), 1-25. Retreived from the ProQuest database.
Hyder, A., & Lövblad, M. (2007). The repatriation process – a realistic approach. Career Development International, 12(3), 264-278. Retreived from the ProQuest database.
Week One Learning Outcomes
This week students will:
1. Examine the scope of strategic human resources management.
2. Propose recommendations for continual organizational improvement.
3. Evaluate the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission enforcement process, basic defenses against discrimination allegations, and basic equal opportunity laws.
Overview
Assignment
Due Date
Format
Grading Percent
Post your Introduction
Day 1
Discussion Forum
1
Jack Nelson’s Problem
Day 3
(1st post)
Discussion Forum
3
Day 3
(1st post)
Discussion Forum
3
Human Resource Challenges
Day 7
Written Assignment
Note: The online classroom is designed to time students out after 90 minutes of inactivity. Because of this, we strongly suggest that you compose your work in a word processing program and copy and paste it into the discussion post when you are ready to submit it.
Readings
Read the following chapters in: A Framework for Human Resource Management:
1. Chapter 1: Managing Human Resources Today
2. Chapter 2: Managing Equal Opportunity and Diversity
Post Your Introduction
To post your introduction, go to this week’s Post Your
Introduction
link in the left navigation.
Please post a brief bio on the first day of class. Respond to at least three of your classmates’ bios. Use this forum to get acquainted and for ongoing non-content related discussions.
Discussions
To participate in the following Discussion Forums, go to this week’s Discussion link in the left navigation:
1. Jack Nelson’s Problem
Answer the questions to the case, “Jack Nelson’s Problem,” at the end of Chapter 1. Include at least one outside source supporting your answers. Explain your answers in 200 words. Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ postings.
2. A Question of Discrimination
Answer the questions to the case, “LearnInMotion.com: A Question of Discrimination,” at the end of Chapter 2. Include at least one outside source supporting your answers. Explain your answers in 200 words. Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ postings.
Assignments
To complete this assignment, go to this week’s Assignment link in the left navigation:
Human Resource Challenges
Find at least two articles through ProQuest which discuss at least two of the biggest challenges facing human resource departments today. Summarize your findings in a 3-5 page paper. Be sure to properly cite your resources using APA style.
Week One Guidance
Greetings and welcome to Human Resources Management! I look forward to our time together as we explore related theories, models, and applications. Please let me know if my thoughts or suggestions beg clarity as we proceed through the course. Please review the Week One Assignments section below for important elements to integrate into discussion and paper assignments.
Intellectual Elaboration
Bolman and Deal (1997) offered basic human resource (HR) strategies as:
1. Develop a long-term HR philosophy – build the philosophy into the corporate structure and incentives; develop measures of HR
2. Invest in people – hire the right people and reward the well; provide job security; promote from within; train and educate; share the wealth
3. Empower employees and redesign their work – provide autonomy and participation; focus on job enrichment; emphasize teamwork; ensure egalitarianism and upward influence (p. 123) [adapted, abridged]
This HR philosophy or framework arrives with a host of assumptions, such as (a) promoting an organizational family, (b) focusing on needs, skills, and relationships, (c) projecting leadership as empowerment, and (d) challenging leaders [and managers] to align organizational and human needs (Bolman & Deal, 1997).
Personal Experience and Application
Hiring people is like forming a marriage that could be good – or not good. When I served in an administrative role for a school district, I routinely suggested for the school board who we should hire, promote, and terminate. As I sought team players as my first priority in hiring, I used committees, as possible, to develop a collective sense of whom we should hire in hopes of helping the acculturation process for new employees. This approach captured tapped into Bolman and Deal’s (1997) HR strategies of investing in people, and empowering employees and redesigning work, as I sought collaborative decision making for hiring decisions. I found offering clarity on respective roles, types of questions we should and should not use, and protocols on processing the results from our interview questions toward consensus to be helpful in managing time and expectations for hiring decision-making. Overall, I found success with this approach.
Week One Assignments Section
For question one, please read and cite portions of chapter one from A Framework for Human Resource Management (Dessler, 2011) and the intellectual elaboration from this instructor’s guidance. For question two, please read and cite portions of chapter two of Dessler’s (2011) textbook, and watch and cite portions from the video, “
How to Handle Harassment and Discrimination Complaints
” (n. d.) (available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMDnCqT-KU0
). Please use at least two academic sources from ProQuest and readings from the textbook for the paper assignment. In addition to the two discussion forums and paper assignment, please offer a brief biography to help with introductions, including academic and professional experience, and at least two expectations from this course. Thank you for your consideration.
I PROVIDED SEVERAL articles from ProQuest for Discussion 1 & 2-with APA Cites done.
If you need more give me the subject matter and I will provide. It looks like the two discussions require two cites from ProQuest for each one. I supplied several for that:
Discussions
To participate in the following Discussion Forums, go to this week’s Discussion link in the left navigation:
3. Jack Nelson’s Problem
Answer the questions to the case, “Jack Nelson’s Problem,” at the end of Chapter 1. Include at least one outside source supporting your answers. Explain your answers in 200 words. Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ postings.
4. A Question of Discrimination
Answer the questions to the case, “LearnInMotion.com: A Question of Discrimination,” at the end of Chapter 2. Include at least one outside source supporting your answers. Explain your answers in 200 words. Respond to at least two of your fellow students’ postings.
Assignments
To complete this assignment, go to this week’s Assignment link in the left navigation:
Human Resource Challenges
Find at least two articles through ProQuest which discuss at least two of the biggest challenges facing human resource departments today. Summarize your findings in a 3-5 page paper. Be sure to properly cite your resources using APA style.
Week One Guidance
Greetings and welcome to Human Resources Management! I look forward to our time together as we explore related theories, models, and applications. Please let me know if my thoughts or suggestions beg clarity as we proceed through the course. Please review the Week One Assignments section below for important elements to integrate into discussion and paper assignments.
Intellectual Elaboration
Bolman and Deal (1997) offered basic human resource (HR) strategies as:
1. Develop a long-term HR philosophy – build the philosophy into the corporate structure and incentives; develop measures of HR
2. Invest in people – hire the right people and reward the well; provide job security; promote from within; train and educate; share the wealth
3. Empower employees and redesign their work – provide autonomy and participation; focus on job enrichment; emphasize teamwork; ensure egalitarianism and upward influence (p. 123) [adapted, abridged]
This HR philosophy or framework arrives with a host of assumptions, such as (a) promoting an organizational family, (b) focusing on needs, skills, and relationships, (c) projecting leadership as empowerment, and (d) challenging leaders [and managers] to align organizational and human needs (Bolman & Deal, 1997).
Personal Experience and Application
Hiring people is like forming a marriage that could be good – or not good. When I served in an administrative role for a school district, I routinely suggested for the school board who we should hire, promote, and terminate. As I sought team players as my first priority in hiring, I used committees, as possible, to develop a collective sense of whom we should hire in hopes of helping the acculturation process for new employees. This approach captured tapped into Bolman and Deal’s (1997) HR strategies of investing in people, and empowering employees and redesigning work, as I sought collaborative decision making for hiring decisions. I found offering clarity on respective roles, types of questions we should and should not use, and protocols on processing the results from our interview questions toward consensus to be helpful in managing time and expectations for hiring decision-making. Overall, I found success with this approach.
Week One Assignments Section
For question one, please read and cite portions of chapter one from A Framework for Human Resource Management (Dessler, 2011) and the intellectual elaboration from this instructor’s guidance. For question two, please read and cite portions of chapter two of Dessler’s (2011) textbook, and watch and cite portions from the video, “How to Handle Harassment and Discrimination Complaints” (n. d.) (available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMDnCqT-KU0
). Please use at least two academic sources from ProQuest and readings from the textbook for the paper assignment. In addition to the two discussion forums and paper assignment, please offer a brief biography to help with introductions, including academic and professional experience, and at least two expectations from this course. Thank you for your consideration.
References
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (1997). Reframing organizations: artistry, choice, and leadership (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Dessler, G. (2011). A framework for human resource management (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Prentice Hall.
How to Handle Harassment and Discrimination Complaints (n. d.). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMDnCqT-KU0.
ProQuest APA Articles below
Discussion 1
Over the last two decades there has been an unprecedented increase in the number of organizations that have internationalized their operations. The international movement of labour that has been concomitant with such expansion of international business has meant that issues associated with the management of human resources across international borders are increasingly important to international human resource managers and academics. The research presented in this paper examines international human resource management (IHRM) pedagogy and practice in Australia. It reports IHRM academicians’ and practitioners’ understanding of the major issues for teaching and practice in IHRM and elucidates current developments and directions for this field. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
De Cieri, H., Fenwick, M., & Hutchings, K. (2005). The challenge of international human resource management: Balancing the duality of strategy and practice. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 16(4), 584-598. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/218134538?accountid=32521
Personnel administration/human resource management (PA/HRM) has evolved over time by responding to changing issues, concepts, and challenges, rather than following a logical and deductive path. The shift from personnel administration to human resource management signifies a shift from a human relations focus on people to a focus on people as resources in an organization. Other shifts have included: 1. administration to management, 2. human relations to organizational effectiveness, 3. human resources planning to strategy, 4. labor relations to governance, 5. morale to climate to culture, 6. individual job to teamwork, 7. problem focus to accountability focus, and 8. training to development. Much of the shift can be attributed to the integration of organizational sciences (OS). However, the integration of OS into PA/HRM has probably been more in practice than in scholarship.
Mahoney, T. A., & Deckop, J. R. (1986). Evolution of concept and practice in personnel Administration/Human resource management (PA/HRM). Journal of Management, 12(2), 223-223. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/215257610?accountid=32521
Abstract (summary)
Translate Abstract
Knowledge is becoming a critically important resource in contemporary business organizations, a development posing significant issues for
human resource management
(HRM). Various strands of theory, research, and practice is drawn together to develop a better understanding of these issues, with special emphasis on HRM practice in knowledge-intensive organizations. The difficulties of making a transition from traditional forms of HRM to post-industrial approaches are discussed. A review of traditional compensation systems serves as the basis for a series of propositions concerning preferred practice in this critically important area. The major conclusions is that existing compensation structures and routines must be rethought and several suggestions are discussed.
Despres, C., & Hiltrop, J. (1995). Human resource management in the knowledge age: Current practice and perspectives on the future. Employee Relations, 17(1), 9-9. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/235203248?accountid=32521
Full Text
·
Translate Full text
·
Introduction
Employees in developed economies have migrated from agricultural work, to manufacturing, to services-based industries over the last four decades. On average, the services sector now employs about 60 per cent of the active civilian workforce in OECD countries. This migration has been accompanied by two notable developments, both of which carry significant implications for
human resource
management (HRM). The first is an evolution from rational (engineered, fragmented, bureaucratic) to natural (organic, psychosocial, humanistic) to open systems (multiply-connected) frames of meaning in the management and organizational literatures (Perrow, 1973; Scott, 1987). As a consequence of this — and in the ideal — it is commonly observed that organizational designs and managerial practice are bearing more differentiated, less bureaucratic, less reliant on hierarchical authority structures and more psychosocially integrative.
The second development involves the post-industrial revolution (Bell, 1973) which, spurred especially by the information revolution (Postman, 1993), has installed knowledge as a primary factor of production (Drucker, 1992; Handy, 1989, 1994; Peters, 1993). It is now accepted that the productive economic core is being relocated from land, labour, capital and machinery to intellectual resources, and that the management of knowledge and information is increasingly crucial in contemporary business organizations Many analysts surmise that the nature of life and work will thus be fundamentally transformed for this and all subsequent generations. Since the late-1980s, then, various authors have advanced the idea that the knowledge age is breeding knowledge workers who are employed in what might be termed knowledge-intensive organizations.
This article attempts to clarify business-related knowledge phenomena and the resulting tensions that HRM must address to ensure its success in the knowledge age. We begin by examining the dynamics of information and knowledge in contemporary enterprises. Next, the characteristics of knowledge workers are discussed together with a series of issues facing HRM as an applied field of practice. Finally, we conclude by examining the implications for HRM in an area of work that is critical to both the profession and its organizational context, namely, compensation and
reward
systems in the knowledge-intensive organization.
Knowledge and production
Claims made for the information revolution, the knowledge age and the post-industrial society are founded on base assumptions concerning knowledge. Two analytical paradigms are in play and they are sometimes contorted and confused in the literature: knowledge can be treated as an economic variable — something an economic entity has — or it can be thought of as the base condition for human action — hence, something an economic entity is[1]. Expressions of the former view are common in the management literature and familiar to HRM (particularly in relation to the “proper” management of scientific work, engineering projects and other professional activity). Moreover, to consider knowledge a mere variable will keep HRM locked in increasingly obsolete models of organization, to the detriment HRM practitioners and their organizations. The evidence suggests that organizations are fast becoming knowledge communities and HRM must broaden its perspective to keep pace.
Knowledge has been variously described as the stuff of organizational success (Nonaka, 1991), the engine transforming global economies (Bell, 1973, 1978), the fabric stitched together by new forms of work and new types of workers (Blackler et a, 1993), the stuff of governmental controls that herald the demise of private enterprise capitalism (Heilbruner, 1976) and even the “mobile and heterogeneous [resource that will end the] hegemony of financial capital [and allow employees to] seize power” (Sveiby and Lloyd, 1987, p. 39). While only the emphatic state that knowledge work constitutes the sum total of value-added in an enterprise (e.g. Peters, 1993), nearly everyone agrees with De Gues, director of planning at Royal Dutch Shell, that “The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage” (1988, p. 71).
It should be clear, however, that producing knowledge and managing innovation have always been critically important competences (e.g. Simon, 1965), even when these are introduced as today’s significant topics. Frequent announcements of the contemporary knowledge age notwithstanding, it is simply wrong to suggest that business has gone about its affairs independent of knowledge, for the production process has always relied on knowledge to transform capital goods from one state to another. In the case of manufacturing, goods are transformed from one material state to another, which then embodies the mental processes resident in the transformation process. In the case of services, goods are transformed from one state of diffuse or unknown information to another of concentrated relevance which then carries the stamp of those who effected the transformation process.
Furthermore, claims to a present-day knowledge age rest largely on the observation that organizations are increasingly using knowledge to produce, in turn, a new knowledge product. The result of knowledge-intensive activity is again a capital good that is exchanged in the marketplace, but the fundamentals of production are distinctive in terms of process and output. The process of production is largely owned by the employee in a knowledge-intensive environment, not by the organization. Knowledge products depend almost exclusively on the uniquely human ability to manipulate symbols via cognitive processes — to effect the transformation of stimuli into data, data into information, and information into meaningful knowledge. Roles, functions, routines, procedures and machinery are a small — and in some cases even repudiated — part of the process. The distinctive competence of knowledge-intensive firms is thus individuated and transportable, resident in the people on whom the organization depends for transformational processes and product outputs The knowledge carried by the employee becomes a real and controlling resource, perhaps a decisive factor of production, but it remains with the employee and in no real sense is it ever of the firm.
Thus, the knowledge age restates the ancient wisdom that it is impossible to separate knowledge from the knower. Because of this, the products developed by a knowledge-age firm are distinctive in several ways from the objects that dotted our industrial age. While the latter relied on producers and consumers, the knowledge age deals in producers and users. The industrial-age consumer transforms an object of production, while the knowledge-age user applies a replication of the producer’s stock of knowledge. The difference between transformation and replication is represented in the difference between frozen pizzas and software programs: the consumer transforms into energy and waste the elements that a frozen pizza was, the user replicates and extends the knowledge that a software program is and remains. Knowledge products, then, do not obey the law of conservation — they are not transformed and consumed — but rather the principles of replication and extension that are native to education. Knowledge is the ultimate generative tool and rather than “saleability”, its core characteristic is “shareability”.
It is also important to note that both producer and user learn from the exchange of a knowledge product and both possess it after delivery. Thus, the knowledge firm has little control over the secondary or tertiary effects of the knowledge transfer. Knowledge, the potentially powerful tool, can be put to many uses, including ones cross-purposes with the future profit aims of a producer. The industrial-bureaucratic model of organizing is familiar in the current business environment but many find it striking an increasingly uneasy balance with these dynamics. The summary statement on knowledge and the productive function, therefore, is that, while industrial-bureaucratic companies were designed to amplify physical ability and transform material resources, post-industrial knowledge organizations must cultivate intellectual ability and manage information resources.
Knowledge and work
What then, is a knowledge worker and how does knowledge work differ from other forms of human activity? To begin with a historical perspective, it is clear that industrialism widened the gap between those who conceptualized, organized and directed tasks and those who carried them out. Knowledge work at the turn of the century was the province of intellectuals and intellectuals, in turn, were largely dissociated from private enterprise. An early work by Cuvillier, for example, stated that:
…knowledge is both the tool and the raw material, and the result is a very special kind of product. Intellectual workers enrich human knowledge both as creators and as researchers; they apply it as practitioners, they spread it as teachers, and they share it with others as experts or advisers They produce judgements, reasonings, theories, findings, conclusions, advice, arguments for and against, and so on (1974, p. 293).
Subsequent attempts to centralize knowledge as a concept in productive enterprises tended to resubmit profession as a sense-making concept — the reproducibility of expertise, the complexity or variety of tasks, the creativity and experience or length of training required (e.g. Scarbrough, 1993), and the literature review by Sumanth et al. (1990) suggests that efforts to do so date from the early- or mid-1980s. More recently, a number of authors have jettisoned existing job-classification schemes in an attempt to describe wholly new employment phenomena. Reich, for example, suggests that the difficulty of specifying with traditional concepts what a symbolic analyst does each day is indicated by the following exercise from Table I: add any term from the first column to any from the second, and then add both terms to any from the third (1991, pp. 182-3).(Table I omitted)
The illustrated issue is that new types of work are now being performed by new types of workers, and that both of these phenomena are poorly understood. By his and other accounts, these individuals identify and broker problems by manipulating symbols, paraphrasing “reality” and then developing images that eventually gain a “new reality” status, or simply drop from consideration.
It is possible, then, to define knowledge work as systematic activity that traffics in data, manipulates information and develops knowledge. The work may be theoretical and directed at no immediate practical purpose, or pragmatic and aimed at devising new applications, devices, products or processes. On an abstract level, however, it is less obvious that the knowledge thus produced becomes an assembled set of specialized information which: responds to needs and problems, frequently defining these by its existence; functions in a context to reduce ambiguity and inject a sense of order, progress or direction; and has the self-referential quality of legitimizing those who claim to hold it, thus making rhetoric and impression management-crucial[2],
To summarize, the nature of knowledge-based work is fundamentally different from that known previously and requires a different order of thinking. Table II compares knowledge work with traditional forms of employment on a variety of dimensions.(Table II omitted) In our view the key differences pertinent to the HRM domain occur in terms of work activities and career expectations. Knowledge workers manipulate and orchestrate symbols and concepts, identify more strongly with their peers and professions than their organizations, have more rapid skill obsolescence and are more critical to the long-term success of the organization.
To what extent is HRM prepared to deal in knowledge-age management and organization? The current state of the profession (Guest, 1990) and a critical reading of its accomplishments since inception (Kerfoot and Knights, 1992) provide a mixed prognosis This is unfortunate: as an applied field of endeavour, HRM draws directly on those disciplines that are most entwined with knowledge-age phenomena — psychology, sociology, economics, the information sciences. Thus, while it has access to the requisite intellectual capital, HRM may well lack the proactive and strategic mindset needed to influence matters in a significant way. The field is also badly positioned inside many organizations, commanding neither the functional power nor the prestige needed to influence strategic action.
The language of HRM infiltrated executive suites and annual reports during the 1980s but some believe that this owes more to line and strategic managers than the concerted actions of HRM practitioners (Hendry and Pettigrew, 1990), others suspect that the rhetoric often fails to match the reality of actual practice (Vaughan, 1994) and two recent cross-border investigations indicate that many HRM units are administrative backwaters that lack integration with the company’s strategic affairs (Derr et al, 1992; Price-Waterhouse, 1991). HRM practitioners are rightly concerned with the phenomenon of devolvement as an increasing number of managers consider that human and social affairs fall within their administrative domain. As one chief executive put it in a recent study, “Human resource management is more important than ever, but I can’t trust my Personnel people to do it”, while on the other side of the functional divide a senior HRM executive reported, “We are traditional, welfare-focused, administrative, the handmaiden of the line. We are the sweeper-up of problems and treat the wounded” (Derr et al, 1992, p. 9).
The current HRM agenda has definition but seems far from achieving a sense of fruition. In contrast, the post-industrial HRM agenda presents an ambiguous and changing set of requirements that complicate matters. Drucker, for example, writes that, “Knowledge workers cannot be supervised effectively. Unless they know more about their speciality than anybody else in the organization, they are basically useless” (1992, p. 101). One wonders how most HRM practitioners would respond to this statement. Clearly, knowledge-intensive organizational forms will place most HRM units on remarkably unfamiliar territory and the implications for the future viability of HRM are serious. Among the more important challenges to consider are:
* how to ensure an adequate supply of knowledge workers, a resource which promises to become scarce resources in the future;
* how to identify, develop and evaluate knowledge workers and the outputs they produce;
* how to motivate and reward knowledge workers to maximize their productivity and the quality of their outputs;
* how to structure the organization — and how to make the transition to new organizational forms — to obtain output and productivity from an increasingly knowledgeable workforce.
The coming of knowledge-age organizations?
What, then, are the indications that organizations are moving steadily towards the knowledge? The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) provides data that track knowledge-generating activity across all productive areas and not simply the service sector. The research and development activity which UNESCO analyses is defined as:
…any creative systematic activity undertaken in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this knowledge to devise new applications. It includes fundamental research…, applied research…, and experimental development work leading to new devices, products or processes (UNESCO, 1993, p. 5-1).
Using this definition as a proxy for knowledge work, the data in Figure 1 show employment by sector and occupation across the USA, Japan and Europe for 1990.(Figure 1 omitted) The percentage of knowledge workers is highest in the US service and manufacturing sectors. Knowledge work accounts for a smaller proportion of total employment in Japan and Europe, and it is interesting to note that the manufacturing sector employs more managers, technicians and professionals than does the services sector in both economies.
Figure 2 indicates that the trend towards knowledge employment has been accelerating since the mid-1970s.(Figure 2 omitted) This trend is most pronounced in the USA where the absolute number of knowledge workers nearly doubled from 1970 to 1990, and considerably more subdued in Europe where the proportion of knowledge workers in the active civilian population has remained rather flat in comparison (right side of the figure). Figure 3 uses these data to provide a trend analysis of the proportion of knowledge workers in these three economies to the year 2000.(Figure 3 omitted) The USA economy towers above the other two in terms of the absolute numbers of knowledge workers. Assuming that the trend continues (right side of the figure), Europe will lag behind the other two major economies at the end of this century[3].
Finally one is given to ask the pragmatic question: does the presence of knowledge workers make a value-adding difference? No claims to causality are made in the following, but Figure 4 does indicate that a greater proportion of knowledge workers in these European economies has accompanied a higher GDP. (Figure 4 omitted)
In summary, macroeconomic data indicate that, as a form of productive activity, knowledge work is increasing at accelerating rates in most areas of the world. HRM managers should therefore conclude that, even if it represents a small proportion of the current employment activity in their firm, the trends indicate that knowledge and information will be increasingly decisive business success factors in the future. In the following section we focus on compensation as a case example of how one might consider adapting to the new social and economic environment.
Compensation and reward systems in the knowledge age
The management of compensation and reward was once relatively straightforward: salary and job level went hand in hand. This is no longer the case. Together with the pressures of post-industrial knowledge work, global competition, slow growth, volatile financial markets and shifting social values have shattered familiar compensation frameworks (Berger, 1991). Empirical evidence indicates that many compensation and reward systems fail to deliver the expected results (Lawler, 1981) and Kanter (1989) has written that “traditional pay systems…are under attack for being neither cost-effective nor motivating people to do more”. A decade-old review of research findings by Beer et al. concluded that:
Despite the enormous amount spent on wages, commissions, cost of living increases, bonuses, and stock options, many studies have shown that in most organizations 50 per cent or more of the employees are dissatisfied with pay, and that this percentage is increasing (1984, p. 116).
The general research finding, then, is that business objectives are often frustrated — not furthered — by compensation programmes which simultaneously displease the employees involved (Gilbert, 1988). Given the fact that employees at all levels still rank compensation as a prime job factor, usually first or second in importance, one is led to conclude that many individuals believe their wages are unfair, their pay increases inequitable, their performance gains unrecognized and their creations or innovations unrewarded.
Wilson et al. (1994), among others, argue that many reward systems are biased towards management’s view and do a poor job of recognizing the individual’s experience, organizational contribution and skill development. It is also true that many compensation programmes focus on hierarchical position and nominal job content as proxies for contribution to the business, even while this is at odds with the realities of knowledge-work where insights from any level can have a profound impact on the business. Third, the demands of knowledge production often place a premium on teamwork and flexibility, while traditional reward systems usually reinforce individualism and functional specialization. Fourth, many firms continue to design structures and functions around fixed positions, although knowledge-generating positions are, to some degree, designed around people and their abilities: individuals and their talents should uniquely define the contours of their work. Finally, many compensation systems fail because of poor communication: employees are frequently left to interpret for themselves the meaning and intent of a compensation and reward system.
Given this state of affairs it is perhaps unsurprising to learn that an increasing number of knowledge workers are leaving corporate positions to start their own firms or seek alternative employment (Gomez-Mejia et al, 1990). Companies faced with the challenge of devising new compensation and reward systems often yield to the impulse to reshuffle existing ones. The axiom of paying for the position rather than the person, for example, is often at odds with knowledge-work reality: knowledge-generating positions need to be designed around people and their talents because the individuals involved uniquely define the contours of their work. This contradicts the bulk of current thinking and argues for new arrangements that reformulate the relationships between an employee’s knowledge, the organizational benefits thus derived, and the employee’s rewards.
Recommendations
Compensation and reward programmes should be viewed as comprehensive systems, integral with other organizational arrangements, which involve more than performance appraisal, non-monetary benefits, incentives, and basic pay. We suggest that, in the knowledge age, effective systems will embrace three major dimensions:
(1) They will be externally competitive in order to attract and retain competent staff, and sensitive to employees’ perceptions of internal equity.
(2) They will be perceived as rational in their organizational context, administered in a consistent way over time, and contributors to the company’s strategic direction.
(3) They will be constituted in a new order of thinking which makes cultural, socio-political and work challenge issues primary, and pay, bonus and incentive schemes secondary.
To illustrate these points consider the research conducted by Balkin (1987) and Coombs and Gomez-Mejia (1991) in a large sample of technology-driven firms. In large part some or all of the components displayed in the following list were found to be in use. Compared with the programmes offered to most other employees, these compensation systems incorporated a greater regard for individual contributions and treated the employee as a more highly valued resource. In addition, the work environments tended to have few written policies or procedures as tools to control behaviour and avoided the use of mechanistic pay approaches (e.g. formal job evaluations). They frequently promoted entrepreneurship through special programmes and incentives (i.e. the availability of company funds to start new projects or ventures with compensation linked to their eventual outcome) and used aggregate rewards to promote co-operation and team cohesiveness.
Compensation and reward elements typically found in R&D settings
* stock ownership for employees (in some cases, shared ownership);
* a menu of individual, team and organizational compensation factors, tightly integrated with R&D goals;
* longevity incentives that tie employee interests to long-term company progress;
* front-end hiring bonuses;
* special key-contributor awards;
* professional perquisites (e.g. paid sabbaticals);
* customized pay plans;
* a market-driven reward system;
* frequent external equity adjustments.
The compensation and reward elements also make it clear that knowledge-based compensation programmes place a premium on the potential value of an employee’s contributions, individualize compensation and reward practices, and recognize that knowledge workers have unique personality characteristics. We would suggest that several lessons can be learned by using the experience with these R&D professionals used as a proxy for desirable practice in the post-industrial era.
First, studies focusing on scientific breakthroughs indicate that knowledge workers who undertake pioneering research typically dislike bureaucracies, resent administration and work most creatively when satisfying their own curiosity (Root-Bernstein, 1989). In line with this, Rosenbaum (1991) finds that knowledge workers tend to have high needs for autonomy, significant drives for achievement, stronger identity and affiliation with a profession than a company and a greater sense of self-direction, making them likely to resist the authoritarian imposition of views, rules and structures.
Second, needs for autonomy, achievement and personal growth are met when job structures and leadership styles promote empowerment and self-management. Many R&D job designs promote autonomy, and the desirable leadership style is one which is more collegial than supervisory, shares information, delegates responsibility and encourages upward and horizontal communication. Collins and Yeager (1988), as an example, investigated the compensation and reward systems used by behavioural science R&D organizations and found that approximately half employed some form of employee participation in the performance evaluation process Byrne (1993) reports that some knowledge-intensive organizations involve team-mates, peers and even customs in the evaluation of an individual’s performance.
Third, while additional compensation and reward systems pivot on the disbursement of monies, those located in knowledge environments do not. Non-monetary rewards become important factors and rely heavily on symbols of personal and professional excellence. Such arrangements make it a point to recognize achievement, allow researchers to pursue their own projects and offer the praise, acknowledgement and independence which have been found critical to innovation (Freedman, 1988). General Motors, for example, sponsors the Kettering Awards, which recognize outstanding scientific achievement. Phillips Petroleum builds advertising campaigns around its innovative researchers, and knowledge workers at the Batelle Memorial Institute receive 10 per cent of the royalties on their inventions. Knowledge-intensive environments generally embrace the truism voiced by Bandura, “Most people value their self-respect and the self-satisfaction derived from a job well done more highly than they do material rewards” (Bandura, 1991, p. 257). It is possible to conceptualize this literature in terms of hierarchy of factors which form the conceptual armature of compensation systems in a knowledge environment, as given in Table III.(Table III omitted)
Conclusions
Based on the foregoing discussion we offer, below, a set of propositions regarding knowledge compensation programmes The ideal knowledge-age compensation programme should address the full range of factors that affect the individual’s performance, rather than only financial considerations and extrinsic sources of motivation such as cash and cash equivalents In the knowledge age, these monetary incentives will be only a starting-point and the focus will be on ways to encourage intrinsic human achievement motivation.
The evidence indicates that organizational environments leading to intellectual motivation, commitment and achievement involve compensation schemes that “fuzzify the boundary between personal meaning and organizational mission. Nonaka, for example, considers the centrepiece of Japanese business excellence “…tacit and often highly subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches of individual employees…” and that the key to this process is “…personal commitment (1991, p. 97). Traditional models of compensation objectify human activity to such an extent that Nonaka’s insights, intuitions and hunches — which cannot be logically predicted, rationally controlled or objectively specified –would be assigned the status of irrelevances.
Compensation and reward systems must shift from objective and rational, to subjective and “soft” performance measures. The industrial-age relied on a narrow set of business drivers — specialization, control, habituation and the supremacy of a single best way. The experience with knowledge-age business suggests that a new set of factors is coming to the fore: intuition, experimentation, wholism and the challenge of accepted wisdom. Compensation and reward systems must now encourage knowledge and information management in the organization.
Knowledge-age compensation systems should focus on challenges inherent in the work itself. The environment in many knowledge-intensive organizations differs remarkedly from traditional hierarchies: it is flat, collegial, organized around processes and managed in projects. It is most likely that knowledge work will often be focused in cross-functional teams through the temporary clustering of professional employees The organization, then, will require compensation systems that facilitate knowledge processes and team-based outputs and these will rely in part, or totally, on group-based compensation systems. Companies on the cutting edge, such as General Electric, use appraisal methods that involve peers, superiors, subordinates and, increasingly, customers and such practices point the way of the future for compensation and reward systems.
Knowledge is fast becoming a key success factor for many companies. The current employment trends indicate that an important proportion of the workforce will be knowledge workers in the future and it is reasonable to assume that their importance to a firm will exceed that of other types of employees by several orders of magnitude. HRM managers and their organizations will need to develop new ways of attracting, retaining and motivating such employees, and compensation systems will play a critical role in coping with these new realities. HRM managers will need to shift their focus from old organizing models to new ones, together with a change in compensation systems to ones which are more flexible, process-oriented and team-based, as indicated in Table IV.(Table IV omitted) These new compensation systems will be premissed on different forms of leadership, authority and structure from those that now prevail, and will be critically important in determining the environment of a successful knowledge-intensive firm.
Notes
1. As an example consider the noosphere, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s hypothetical web of determinate human knowledge which envelopes Earth, enabling us make sense of observable events such as the displacements of matter which constitute architecture. Weick (1979) popularized the noosphere’s organizational analogue with the idea that a priori cognitive structures condition one’s viewing of certain events, hence one’s action. Kuhn (1970), Rorty (1979) and others extended this constructivist argument by arguing that knowledge is little more than belief made legitimate by a community of like-minded peers and, in recursive fashion, at least partially determinate of future states in that community. The organization, in sum, knowledge.
2. This critical, non-functionalist view of knowledge goes beyond dictionary rationalism in an attempt to capture the everyday reality of how knowledge is perceived and experienced.
3. These data include individuals actively working in government, social services or the military, as well as the unemployed and retired
References and further reading
Balkin, D. (17), Compensation strategies for R&D staff”, Topics in Total Compensation, Vol. 2 No. 2, Winter; pp. 207-15.
Bandura, A. (1991), “Social cognitive theory of self-regulation”, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Vol. 50 No. 2, pp. 248-87.
Beer, M., Spector, B., Lawrence, P., Mills D. and Walton, R. (1984), Managing Human Assets, Free Press, New York, NY, p. 116.
Bell, D. (1973), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, Basic Books, New York, NY.
Bell, D. (1978), The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, Heinemann, London.
Berger, L. (1991), “Trends and issues for the 1990s: creating a viable framework for compensation designs”, in Rock, M. and Berger, L. (Eds), The Compensation Handbook, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
Blackler, F., Reed, M. and Whitaker, A. (1993), “Editorial: knowledge workers and contemporary organizations”, Journal of Management Studies Vol. 30 No. 6, pp. 851-62.
Byrne, J.(1993), “The horizontal corporation”, Business Week, 20 December, pp. 76-81.
Collins, R. and Yeager, J. (1988), “Staff evaluation and incentive practices utilized by behavioral science research organizations: a pilot study”, Journal of the Society of Research Administrators, Vol. 20 No. 1, Summer, pp. 119-34.
Coombs, G. and Gomez-Mejia, L. (1991), “Cross-functional pay strategies in high technology firms”, Journal of Compensation and Benefits Review, Vol. 23 No. 5, pp. 40-8.
Cuvillier, R. (1974), “Intellectual workers and their work in social theory and practice, International Labor Review, Vol. 109 No. 4, April, pp. 291-317.
De Gues, A. (1988), “Planning as learning”, Harvard Business Review, March-April, pp. 70-4.
Derr, C., Wood, J., Walter, M. and Despres, C. (1992), The Emerging Role of the HR Manager in Europe, IMD/The European Association of Personnel Management, Lausanne.
Drucker, P. (1992), “The new society of organizations”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 70 No. 5, September/October, pp. 95-104.
Freedman, G. (1988), “Sparking innovation through personnel initiatives”, Personnel, Vol. 65 No. 6, June, pp. 61-8.
Gilbert, D. (1988), “Flexible compensation ties rewards to performance”, Journal of Compensation & Benefits, Vol. 4 No. 2, September/October, pp. 83-8.
Gomez-Mejia, L., Balkin, D. and Milkovich, G. (1990), “Rethinking rewards for technical employees”, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 18 No. 4, Spring, pp. 62-75.
Guest, D. (1990), “Human resource management and the American dream”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 377-97.
Handy, C. (1989), The Age of Unreason, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.
Handy, C. (1994), The Empty Raincoat, Hutchinson, London.
Heilbruner, R. (1976), Business Civilization in Decline, Norton, New York, NY.
Hendry, C. and Pettigrew, A. (1990), “Human resource management: an agenda for the nineties”, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 1 No 1, pp. 17-44.
Kanter, R M. (1989), When Giants Learn to Dance, Simon & Schuster, Hemel Hempstead.
Kerfoot, D. and Knights, D. (1992), “Planning for personnel? Human resource management reconsidered”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 651-68.
Kuhn, T. (1970), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.
Lawler, E. (1981), Pay and Organization Development, Addison-Wesley, Wokingham.
Nonaka, I. (1991), “The knowledge-creating company”, Harvard Business Review, November-December, pp. 96-104.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (1993), Labor Force Statistics. 1971-1991, OECD Publications, Paris
Perrow, C. (1973), Complex Organizations. A Critical Essay, 3rd ed., Random House, New York, NY.
Peters, T. (1993), “Thriving in chaos”, Working Woman, Vol. 18 No 9, September, pp. 42-5.
Postman, N.(1993), Technology: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage/Random House, New York, NY.
Price-Waterhouse Cranfield Project on International Strategic Human Resource Management, (1991), Cranfield School of Management, Bedford.
Reich, R. (1991), The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism, Knopf, New York, NY.
Root-Bernstein, R. (1989), “Strategies of research (part 2)”, Research-Technology Management, Vol. 32 No. 3, May/June, pp. 36-41.
Rorty, R. (1979), Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Rosenbaum, B. (1991), “Leading today’s professional”, Research-Technology Management, Vol. 34 No. 2, March/April, pp. 30-35.
Scarbrough, H. (1993), “Problem-solutions in the management of information systems expertise”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol 30 No. 6, November, pp. 939-55.
Scott, R. (1987), Organizations: Rational Natural and Open Systems, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Simon, H. (1965), Administrative Behavior, The Free Press, New York, NY.
Sumanth, D., Omachonu, V. and Beruvides, M. (1990), “A review of the state-of-the-art research on white-collar/knowledge-worker productivity”, International Journal of Technology Management, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 337-55.
Sveiby, K. and Lloyd, T.(1987), Managing Know-how: Add Value by Valuing Creativity, Bloomsbury Publishing, London.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (1993), Statistical Yearbook: 1993. Paris.
Vaughan, E. (1994), “The trial between sense and sentiment: a reflection on the language of HRM”, Journal of General Management, Vol. 19 No 3, Spring, pp. 20-32.
Weick, K. (1969), The Social Psychology of Organizing, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
Wilson, D., Mueser, R. and Raelin, J. (1994), “New look at performance appraisal for scientists and engineers, Research-Technology Management, July-August, pp. 51-5.
(Charles Despres is a Research Fellow and Jean-Marie Hiltrop is a Professor, both at the International Institute for Management Development(IMD), Chemin de Belerive 23 CH-1001 Lausanne, Switzerland.)
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DISCUSSION 2
How to Handle Harassment and Discrimination Complaints
Ms. White’s attorneys contend that both the change in job duties and the suspension were illegal retaliation. Burlington Northern’s attorneys cite other reasons for the reassignment: An internal investigation of her sexual-harassment complaint revealed other employees thought her forklift assignment was unfair and should go to someone with more seniority, they say. Burlington, a unit of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., also defends Ms. White’s suspension, saying it was resolved properly and she suffered no material harm. A federal district court jury in Memphis, Tenn., awarded Ms. White $43,000 in compensatory damages. The company appealed the case to the Supreme Court after a divided federal appeals court in Cincinnati found largely for Ms. White. (Appeals courts across the country have differed over what constitutes retaliation.)
Ms. White’s attorneys and women’s groups contend that Burlington Northern’s actions, if allowed, risk deterring employees from speaking up at all. A Burlington Northern victory “would be tremendously damaging,” both to employees’ security in raising complaints and to the progress of women in traditionally male occupations, where harassment and discrimination risks are high, says Jocelyn Samuels of the National Women’s Law Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.
Shellenbarger, S. (2006, Apr 13). Supreme court takes on how employers handle worker harassment complaints. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com/docview/398969525?accountid=32521
FULL TEXT
WHILE BANS on sexual harassment and discrimination are posted in many employers’ policies these days, just how much on-the-job protection is owed workers after they step up to make charges of bad behavior?
A Supreme Court case set for oral arguments Monday will shed new light on that question. The central issue in the case, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway v. Sheila White, will examine how much latitude employers have, after an employee complains about sexual harassment or race, religious or sex discrimination, to make transfers or changes in the employee’s job duties without being subject to charges of retaliation.
The case comes amid a rising tide of retaliation complaints to the Equal
Employment Opportunity
Commission. The decision not only has implications for how such claims may be handled in the future, but also for women’s progress in nontraditional occupations.
Ms. White is a former Burlington Northern
forklift operator
who complained in 1997 that her foreman was sexually harassing her. The foreman was suspended after an investigation. On the same day, however, Ms. White’s job duties were changed. While her classification as a track laborer stayed the same, she was taken off the forklift and assigned to dirtier track work that included working on her knees on the ground. After Ms. White filed charges with the EEOC, a supervisor suspended her from her job for five weeks for insubordination, but the company reinstated her with back pay after she filed a grievance with her union.
Ms. White’s attorneys contend that both the change in job duties and the suspension were illegal retaliation. Burlington Northern’s attorneys cite other reasons for the reassignment: An internal investigation of her sexual-harassment complaint revealed other employees thought her forklift assignment was unfair and should go to someone with more seniority, they say. Burlington, a unit of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., also defends Ms. White’s suspension, saying it was resolved properly and she suffered no material harm. A federal district court jury in Memphis, Tenn., awarded Ms. White $43,000 in compensatory damages. The company appealed the case to the Supreme Court after a divided federal appeals court in Cincinnati found largely for Ms. White. (Appeals courts across the country have differed over what constitutes retaliation.)
Charges to the EEOC that include retaliation complaints have risen 13% since 1999 to 22,278. They now make up a record 30% of allegations filed, up from 27% in 2000, the EEOC says. One reason is that such claims are easier to prove in court than outright discrimination charges, making plaintiffs’ attorneys more willing to take retaliation cases.
Another reason is that more employers in recent years have adopted policies prohibiting discrimination and harassment. More employees have been speaking up about perceived injustices as a result, and this in turn has fostered disputes. “Discrimination is not an attractive thing. People don’t like to be accused of it,” says John Hendrickson, EEOC regional attorney in Chicago. “Staff and employers tend to get real angry, real fast, and some of them react in self-destructive ways.”
The EEOC’s legal standard prohibits employers hit by bias allegations from doing anything to the complaining employee that might have a chilling effect on employees’ willingness to speak up — anything “likely to deter a reasonable person from filing a charge,” says Carolyn Wheeler, an assistant general counsel for the EEOC.
Attorneys for Burlington Northern would like to map out a zone of employer conduct that is off-limits to challenges by individual employees. The railroad says in court filings that classifying Ms. White’s treatment as retaliation stands to “create a federal case out of every management decision to alter the mix of an employee’s duties.”
Ms. White’s attorneys and women’s groups contend that Burlington Northern’s actions, if allowed, risk deterring employees from speaking up at all. A Burlington Northern victory “would be tremendously damaging,” both to employees’ security in raising complaints and to the progress of women in traditionally male occupations, where harassment and discrimination risks are high, says Jocelyn Samuels of the National Women’s Law Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.
The EEOC has settled several cases recently that include far- reaching retaliation claims, ranging from bosses’ cutting work hours of complainants to assigning them back-to-back shifts without rest breaks. A federal district court judge in Chicago entered a $2 million consent decree in February against Cracker Barrel Restaurants after 51 employees charging racial and sexual harassment and retaliation at three Illinois restaurants claimed they were later punished with cuts in hours and undesirable shift changes and table assignments, says EEOC trial attorney Pamela Moore-Gibbs. A spokesman for Cracker Barrel, a unit of CBRL Group Inc., said its general counsel wasn’t available to comment.
While two-thirds of employers provide training for managers on diversity issues, according to a 2005 survey of 400 employers by the Society for Human Resource Management, Alexandria, Va., some training programs give relatively brief treatment to the retaliation issue.
Whatever the outcome of the Supreme Court case, one thing seems clear: More manager training is needed to help bosses respond calmly to discrimination charges. Casting a little more light on these issues through education could go a long way toward keeping workaday tensions from erupting into a federal case.
—
Email me at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com. Read responses to your questions in my Work & Family Mailbox column inside this section.
Word count: 887
(c) 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. Reproduced with permission of copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permissio
Executive Update How Your Firm Can Avoid Workplace Litigation You need carefully constructed procedures for investigating and acting on complaints Kathleen DolerIn this era of workplace litigation, do you know what your obligations are when it comes to investigating allegations of sexual harassment or discrimination?
Investor’s Business Daily
[Los Angeles] 27 Mar 1995: A.4.
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At a San Francisco seminar last week, Littler attorneys, including senior partner Garry Mathiason, offered a number of tips on conducting investigations.
First, Mathiason said, investigations are now mandatory in many situations – remedial action must be supported by a thorough probe. For example, employers are required to provide a safe workplace and thus they must investigate allegations of violent employee behavior or other threats to workplace safety. Employers who don’t investigate a potential threat could later be found negligent.
Mathiason suggests employers consider designating an in-house expert to handle investigations of misconduct and that this individual be given specialized training. He also said companies should develop investigation policies and procedures, including making sure prompt action is taken when allegations of misconduct are reported.
APA CITE below!
Executive update how your firm can avoid workplace litigation you need carefully constructed procedures for investigating and acting on complaints kathleen DolerIn this era of workplace litigation, do you know what your obligations are when it comes to investigating allegations of sexual harassment or discrimination? (1995, Mar 27). Investor’s Business Daily. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/250266851?accountid=32521
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Leon Valquier 5/14/2013 10:21:39 AM |
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Jack Nelson’s Problem |
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CASE STUDY 1: JACK NELSON’S PROBLEM Michelle Muldrow 5/14/2013 6:18:25 PM |
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In the readings of the case study of Jack Nelson’s Problems he found many problems in the structure of the organization, and decided what was needed to implement change, to better the performance and hiring to avoid high turnover rates. Respond |
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Dis1-Wk1-Devin Henry Devin Henry 5/14/2013 8:35:42 PM |
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1. What do you think is causing some of the problems in the bank’s home office and branches? |
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Instructive Leon… Respond |
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RE: Week 1 DB 1 Professor Heinrich 5/15/2013 7:07:18 AM |
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P. S. Please take a peek at Using Quality Sources, consider in the future not using newsprint to justify view… Thanks for your consideration…. |
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Michelle Muldrow 5/14/2013 6:18:25 PM |
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RE: CASE STUDY 1: JACK NELSON’S PROBLEM Professor Heinrich 5/15/2013 7:09:19 AM |
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Nice start Michelle… Respond |
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Dis1-Wk1-Devin Henry Devin Henry 5/14/2013 1:35:42 PM |
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1. What do you think is causing some of the problems in the bank’s home office and branches? Devin Henry Respond |
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RE: Dis1-Wk1-Devin Henry Professor Heinrich 5/15/2013 7:11:26 AM |
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Nice start Devin… |
