Human Resources

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 may 2014

The value of education is often gauged on the basis of the acceptability of students in the job marketplace. The skills and competences that students learned and imbibed during their stint at colleges and universities are generally directed towards getting gainful employment in the real world. The common perception is that students who took STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) have better job prospects. But according to Professor Edward J. Ray of Oregon State University, 'in today's world with changing demographics, 24/7 news cycles and a highly competitive global marketplace, the liberal arts are critical to success in every professional field'. He further mentions that, 'all careers require critical thinking, teamwork, sensitivity to cultural, demographic, economic and societal differences and politcal perspectives. And a liberal arts education normally provides these capabilities'. LEAP (Liberal Education and America's Promise) is an initiative that champions the importance of 21st century liberal education. The findings of the national survey conducted by Association of American Colleges and Universities also emboldens the value of liberal arts education. About 93% of those surveyed say that 'a demonstrated capacity to think critically, communicate clearly, and solve complex problems is more important than (a candidate's) undergraduate major.' Read on...

Huffington Post: The Value of a Liberal Arts Education in Today's Global Marketplace
Author: Edward J. Ray

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 15 may 2014

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) holds a promise to expand educational reach to those with limited resources to pursue education in colleges and universities. Research has suggested some concerns for this education tool as the completion rates are low and those who access them already have substantial learning experience and prior education. Professor Jennifer M. Morton of City University of New York provides a perspective on how MOOCs can possibly influence and alter the dynamics of the current socio-economic class structure that traditional college education entails. According to her, college education is considered to be the first place where students with low-income families have to consistently engage with middle-class students and professors and navigate middle-class social norms. Moreover, in addition to cognitive skills like mathematical, scientific and historical knowledge, college education also imparts practical skills like social, emotional and behavioral competencies. But full adoption of MOOCs by large public universities can potentially harm the prospects of the students for whom college education is essential to elevate their status into middle-class. Online education may not provide them social and practical skills that are considered a necessity in highly competitive workplace environment. Tenacious, confident and socially competent employees have an edge over equally cognitively talented employees who lack practical skills. Professor Morton suggests that with extensive adoption of MOOCs by institutions that provide an environment to disadvantaged students to break the barrier of poverty and deprivation, the socio-economic segregation of the US educational system will further expand to the postsecondry level and widen the gap between haves and have-nots. When these students that lack social skills apply for employment with degrees they will more likely be considered lacking competencies by their prospective employers and unfit to effectively contribute to their organizations. Read on...

The Chronicle of Higher Education: Unequal Classrooms - What Online Education Cannot Teach
Author: Jennifer M. Morton

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 14 may 2014

Human resources department plays an important role in providing and managing organization's people assets. It supports and develops the human talent and aligns them with the goals of the organization. Although their work dynamics and relationships are centered around employees but their loyalty is focussed on the objectives, interests and success of the organization. Article provides an inside take on the working of the HR department and the secrets that employees should be aware of - (1) HR isn't there to be your advocate (2) HR isn't obligated to keep what you tell them confidential, even if you request their discretion (3) HR knows things that they aren't telling you (4) HR's job is to support the company's managers, not to dictate how they operate (5) Your HR department might be great, or it might be awful. Read on...

US News & World Report: 5 Secrets You Should Know About HR
Author: Alison Green

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 13 may 2014

Organizations try to develop leaders at all levels to survive the highly competitive and evolving business environment. Businesses in US spend more than US$ 170 billion annually on leadership-based curriculum, says Association of Talent Development (ATD). Inspite of all the needed efforts businesses find it difficult to effectively manage leadership related challenges. Moreover most leaders in organizations are not proactive to accept and make the changes that are needed to create and develop a thriving enterprise capable of enduring. These leaders stick to the old ways of doing business and seldom make the paradigm shifts required to survive and sustain their businesses in the rapidly changing business scenarios. Mike Myatt, author of 'Hacking Leadership', suggests businesses to transition from the old paradigm to the new paradigm to remain relevant in the times to come. Some of the selected transitions are - Have a Leader -> Create a Cuture of Leadership; Invest in Tools -> Invest in People; Play the Game -> Change the Game; Compete -> Collaborate; Discourage Independent Thinking -> Embrace Dissenting Opinions; Trivialize Youth -> Give Youth a Seat at the Table; Reward Potential -> Reward Contribution; Ideate -> Innovate; Message -> Engage; Have a Plan -> Have a Purpose; Manage Risk -> Manage Opportunity; Train -> Develop; Destination Mentality -> Continuum Mentality; Think Span of Control -> Think Span of Awareness & Influence; Goal Driven -> Discovery Driven; Observe -> Understand. Read on...

Forbes: 30 Outdated Leadership Practices Holding Your Company Back
Author: Mike Myatt

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 01 may 2014

For ethical decision making both quantitative and qualitative approaches have to be considered for better results. Research by Dr. Chen-Bo Zhong of Rotman School of Management advocates a decision strategy that gives importance to both reason and intuition. He suggests that organizations can improve their decision making strategies as they plan and develop incentive structures by balancing economy with psychology and they should emphasize the value of people's intuition and emotions. In today's socially networked and interconnected world consequences of people's actions are more significant and impact wider society. So it becomes important to study unethical behavior and understand why it happens and how we can counteract it. Most current theories in ethical decision making are based on Lawrence Kohlberg's model of moral development that holds that moral reasoning, the basis for ethical behavior, has six identifiable development stages - two stages within three levels. (1) Pre-conventional level - judging the morality of an action by its direct consequences. (2) Conventional level - judging the morality of actions by comparing them to society's views and expectations. (3) Post-conventional level - is marked by a growing realization that individuals are separate entities from society and individual's own perspective may take precedence over society's view. The ethical decision-making research that follows in the Kohlberg tradition considers decision-making as very linear and cognitive, with it broken into discrete steps: recognize the moral dilemma -> reason based on your moral principles -> make a moral judgment -> act on that judgment. But Dr. Chen-Bo Zhong's research challenges the idea that moral reasoning is so much systematic and linear. It builds on NYU Psychologist Jonathan Haidt's findings, that first questioned the rationality-based moral judgment. Dr. Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory considers the way morality varies between cultures and identifies six foundations that underlie morality in all societies and individuals. He names them using pairs of opposites to indicate that they provide continua along which judgments can be measured: care/harm; fairness/cheating; loyalty/betrayal; respect for authority/subversion; sanctity/degradation and liberty/oppression. Haidt showed that oftentimes, moral judgement follows not from the analysis of harm, but from a very instinctive and intuitive reaction of disgust, and as a result, moral judgment is often based on intuition. Based on this line of research, moral judgment and decision-making is not just a systematic process: peoples' affect, or emotion, plays an important role in these judgments. Dr. Zhong's research shows that there are two distinct processes involved in moral decision-making: one is very reasoned and systematic, while the other is more intuitive and affective. He believes that our affective reactions actually play a role in regulating our ethical behaviour. This is in line with University of Southern California Professor Antonio Damasio's work on 'somatic markers'. Prof. Domasio has shown that reactions such as guilt, disgust and happiness play an important role in regulating behaviour. Dr. Zhong further explains that as economics is substantially based on rationality, reason and incentives, its education influences people towards numbers and calculations i.e. to quantify things. Economics tends to under-emphasize things that are less tangible, less quantifiable, and that can have impacts on multiple domains. Research shows that when people are asked to use a numeric metric to evaluate a product it actually dampens people's enjoyment of the product. This is even recognized by economists. Robert Frank showed that students trained in economics tend to be more competitive and often make more selfish choices. It is possible that being reminded of money, a standard quantitative measure of value, automatically activates a calculative mindset that suppresses emotional influence and disinhibits unethical behaviours. Dr. Zhong's hypothesis is that over emphasis on reason and excessive deliberation might actually have negative ethical consequences. Read on...

Forbes: The Downsides of Deliberative Decision Making
Author: Chen-Bo Zhong

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 apr 2014

Healthcare collaborations work towards bringing academia and industry together by pooling their resources and expertise to save costs and to bring breakthrough research, products and services for the benefit of society. To create such a collaborative ecosystem, three entities - Spectrum Health, Michigan State University and Van Andel Research Institute - have come together. A new lab is being developed to have basic and translational research to already existing Spectrum's competence in patient care and clinical trials. It brings academic focus as biomedical research is essential for medical advancements and developing novel treatments. According to Jeff Dwyer of Michigan State University, 'Life sciences and biomedical research linked to the clinical healthcare environment has really been growing already. It's been going so well, there is just need for more of this kind of space.' VP of research for Spectrum, Dr. Sandra Rempel says, 'The ability for us to bring new doctors opens up the door for future growth. The whole aim is to be able to come up with new discoveries we can publish and disseminate to the world and bring new information to enhance the field and cure illness.' In addition to their duty as clinicians they would now have an opportunity to focus more on research as principal investigators. Another goal is to create and build an academic framework for physician-scientists, medical students and graduate and undergraduate students to work together through established partnerships with VARI and MSU's College of Human Medicine. Dr. Rempel further explains, 'One of the things that really attracted me here is a very strong collaboration that already exists between all of the institutions. That kind of synergy allows us to grow beyond what each of us can do on our own. From collecting data to securing grants, the collaborations go beyond practical lab experience. We now have researchers who can take them into their labs. We see this as a great win-win situation for all the institutions involved. The whole idea is that when we collaborate, we get together as a group and exchange all our clinical and scientific ideas. We can write papers together, put grants together. MSU might get a grant, or we might get the grant and they would help... If we had a project, postdocs and students would come in and work on that project.' Read on...

Rapid Growth: Good Medicine - Medical research collaboration booms
Author: Marla R. Miller

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 25 apr 2014

In today's world there are diverse technologies that make social collaboration happen both at personal and professional level. These technologies provide workers ability to interact, participate and collaborate anytime and anywhere more efficiently without the need for their physical presence. Over the years this process of social collaboration has been consistently improving due to advancements in communication technologies. Autodesk has developed an infographic depicting and explaining the evolution of social collaboration. The main stages of this development include - Ray Dolby, Charles Ginsburg and Charles Anderson invented the first video camera with both image and sound recording (1956); Samuel Morse created Morse Code (1836); Alexander Graham Bell created telephone (1876); ENIAC was invented as the first all purpose computer (1946); Computer-aided design created for Watergate structure (1962); Xerox photocopying machine developed (1959); Doug Engelbart and Bill English invent computer mouse (1960); PLATO computer system developed at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign had started providing innovative communication tools like email, chatrooms, instant messaging, remote screen sharing, emoticons (1976); First network email sent by Ray Tomlinson on ARPANET (1971); First mobile phone call made by Martin Cooper on Motorola DynaTAC prototype (1973); PARC's Knowledge System Area created CoLab with workstations for group meetings and to collaborate on projects (late 1980s); Internet TCP/IP by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn (1982); First commercial mobile phone DynaTAC 8000x (1983); Mac Portable by Apple (1989); Microsoft Outlook 97 as a communication hub with email, scheduling, contact management, task management etc (1997); World Wide Web made available that was developed by Robert Cailliau and Tim Berners-Lee (1991); WWW made free to anyone by CERN (1993); AOL connects email system to Internet and allowed users to chat and IM in real time (1997); GoToMeeting is launched for online meeting, desktop sharing and video conferencing (2004); Growth of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest etc (2010s); 2.5 billion people are using Internet worldwide (2012). Read on...

Online Social Media: Evolution of social collaboration from 1950 to present
Author: Mark Chubb

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 24 apr 2014

Collaboration is an essential element of leadership and organizational success. But to bring people together, with their diverse views, skills, personalities etc, and then ignite, nurture and support collaborative effort towards a common goal is a challenging task for the leader. Technology provides effective tools to facilitate collaboration and imbibe it in workplace culture. Following are the 5 ways to achieve smart collaboration - (1) Build an online infrastructure for social learning and networking; (2) Set necessary limits for personal information sharing and always try to focus first on the work at hand. Keep it professional and respect other team member's privacy; (3) Disagreements and other negative issues have to be dealt with quickly, honestly and openly. Festering resentment undermines collaboration; (4) Ignite inspiration. Create a culture of sharing. Passion and engagement bring liveliness and provide inspiration. (5) Be natural and true to oneself. Don't fake personality traits and skill set. Sustained collaboration requires honesty and openness. Read on...

Forbes: 5 Leadership Secrets Of Collaboration Success
Author: Meghan M. Biro

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 17 apr 2014

Collaborative environment encourages individuals and teams to work together with their full potential towards a common goal. But for effective collaboration, ability to face & handle dissent and criticism is essential alongwith respecting and understanding opinions of others. In many cases power differences and habits of remaining passive results in people avoiding to raise their voices, share opinions and express their views. Miki Kashtan, author of 'Spinning Threads of Radical Aliveness: Transcending the Legacy of Separation in our Individual Lives', shares her experiences on the effectiveness of encouraging free speech to foster collaboration. Her work primarily focuses on how full ownership of a common purpose increases motivation, how transparency and information-sharing result in wiser choices, and how effective feedback supports learning. According to her collaboration works when people know that others, especially those in power, take their suggestions seriously. Read on...

The New York Times: Want Teamwork? Encourage Free Speech
Author: Miki Kashtan

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 06 apr 2014

Innovation can become the part of the organizational culture when it permeates into organization's rank and file and doesn't just remain with the top leaders. Effective leaders develop innovation culture by encouraging and involving employees at all levels. Managers play an important role in bringing and building creativity and innovation into every aspect and section of the organization. Article suggests steps for managers that can bring valuable change in their company - Get everyone involved; Get rid of red tape; Free up the brainstorming experience; Build innovation into culture (Promote collaboration; Make innovation part of the performance review; Eliminate blame; Empower team members to make decisions); Act now; Get ambitious; Reward innovative thinking. Read on...

Business Management Daily: How to Be an Innovation Manager
Author: Lee Polevoi

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