One of my graduate students sent me this news item. It deals with an 85 year old woman who filed an age discrimination lawsuit when she was replaced by a 75 year old.
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The Psychology Archives invites you to the first installment of the spring colloquium series on Thursday, March 4th from 3:00 – 4:30 pm in Room 310 of the Student Union at the University of Akron. Dr. Cristina G. Banks will present on “Crossing Disciplines and Innovating in Psychology: Making Something New from the Familiar”.
Dr. Banks holds a PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Minnesota (1979) and a BA in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley (1974). She is President and Founder of Lamorinda Consulting LLC, an organizational consulting firm specializing in employment law. She specializes in the areas of organizational strategy, performance improvement, human resource strategy, organizational and personnel assessment, and wage and hour laws. She is a nationally recognized expert in the Fair Labor Standards Act and California wage and hour laws. She serves as an expert witness in employment class action cases. She recently won APA’s Presidential Citation Innovation Award for her work in job analysis.
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This comes from the International Public Management Network Listserv.
For anyone interested in the role of leadership in economic growth and development, you may wish to take a look at a new paper from the World Bank Institute (WBI) that links theories of leadership and organizational change in the context of development, and offers a new analytical framework for improving our understanding of how leadership actions create space for change and reform.
DEVELOPMENT AS LEADERSHIP-LED CHANGE
A Report for the Global Leadership Initiative and the World Bank Institute (WBI)
Matt Andrews, Jesse McConnell and Alison Wescott (February 2010)
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1551375
From the abstract, you can download the paper.
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Arrangements are now underway for the 74th Annual IPMA-HR Central Region Conference at the Madison Marriott West in Middleton Wisconsin. Mark your calendars for June 6-9, 2010.
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A quick book review of The Sustainability Revolution: Portrait of a Paradigm Shift by Andres Edwards, from new Society Publishers. If you are wondering what the Sustainability fad is all about, then this is a good starting point. Sustainability seems to be all around us, and shouted by every business and group, and this book explains why. One of the best features is his inclusion of a large number of examples of sustainability statements.
Whether you want to call this a primer, a survey, or a basic introduction, I found it to be an excellent starting point. It is a quick read, I am a fast reader and it took me around an hour, but there is a lot of information packed in the book, especially at the price point offered by the publisher. It is a real value.
My three criticisms. The author tries to avoid controversies. For example, for some reason, he seems to try very hard to avoid any discussion of over population, which may be the biggest problem of all in trying to achieve sustainability.
Second, again avoiding controversies, the author praises Netherlands, justifiably, but also points out that most of their land is recaptured. He never seems to address this obvious contradiction.
Third, the author emphasized education and indicates that it will be integrated throughout the book. However, I never saw any real discussion of education or psychological change.
Although I enjoyed the book and would recommend it, I was never convinced this was a real paradigm shift, not in the classic meaning of a paradigm shift. If it is, the author fails to deal with how we will change the minds and motivations of people.
For HR professionals, we need to consider the implications of the sustainability revolution for HR practices.
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This is a quick book review of Strategic Learning and Leading Change by Stephen John, from the Elsevier New Frontiers in Learning Series. John’s book has a lot of positive aspects. This is basically the story of a global company undergoing significant changes, and the role HR plays in shaping such changes. HR leaders undergoing such challenges may find some inspiration and some practical advice in the book.
Strategic Learning is basically a book built around a case study. The case study, which appears in the middle of the book, is probably the strongest aspect. I give high marks to Chapter 3, Strategic Learning and Leading Change, Chapter 4, Globalizing Pharma, and Chapter 8, Reinventing Human Resources.
My main problem with the book is that it lacked sufficient detail. As a result, you really do not know how to make similar changes or, in many cases, exactly what HR did in various situations. For example, John indicates that he will discuss the role of importance of Social Network Analysis. However, no real detail is given on how to conduct a social network analysis or what role it actually played in the case. This is a short paperback, a rather quick read, and not a heavy academic tome. Still, I would have really liked to see more details on some of the actually methods and techniques used in the change process. At the end, I was unsure what cutting edge developments had been discussed in the book.
One of the best features of this book is the Foreword by Marshall Goldsmith. Goldsmith knows how to write for a business audience. So does John and he provides an interesting case study regarding an HR organization attempting to reinvent HR.
However, a final note, the price of this book at least on Amazon seems to me to be way too high. The book should be in the 10-20 dollar range, not the over 30 dollar range.
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Just cannot get enough HR research. Are you interested in HR findings but just need an easy way to track research? Alison Mallard has set up a site where she has students review recent research. You can find it at – http://www.ioatwork.com. It is a great site if you want to keep up on the research literature, but do not have the time to go through all the journals.
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The OFCCP is a federal agency that enforces employment discrimination laws for those organizations receiving federal funds. The Center for Corporate Equality (CCE) has released its annual report summarizing enforcement results developed by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) on their equal employment and affirmative action requirements. The report, A REVIEW OF OFCCP ENFORCEMENT STATISTICS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008, offers a detailed analysis of the agency’s fiscal year 2008 enforcement results that resulted in $67,518,982 in back pay and annualized salary and benefits for 24,508 American workers who had been subjected to unlawful employment discrimination. In addition, this report includes a comparison of enforcement results from FY 2007 to FY 2008. The in-depth results of this analysis provide useful information about OFCCP’s enforcement programs that the agency does not make publicly available. The report is available on CCE’s website at www.cceq.org.
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There is a local chapter of IPMA-HR in Northern Ohio. They currently meet quarterly at various locations in and around northern Ohio. Cost of membership starts at $25 per year and is tiered based on the number of eligible employees in your agency. If you have questions about this group, you should contact:
- Jose A. Caraballo, PHR
- caraballoj@neorsd.org
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I realize it has been awhile since I blogged. I was exploring other outlets including twitter and Facebook. I was also doing some investigation into the whole problem of googling for employment information and how it impacts communication outlets including blogs. But I am back.
Creativity has always intrigued me, especially the psychology of creativity. One of the best sources of easy data on creativity is comics. Few comics have had the impact of Calvin and Hobbes. An interesting interview with the creator of Calvin and Hobbes appears in the Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com/living/index.ssf/2010/02/bill_watterson_creator_of_belo.html
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