Managing The Personnel - A study by Artur Victoria

The responsible heads of departments, from the managing director downwards, find that amongst their duties one of the most vital is the selection and handling of the personnel of the staff, particularly those of the staff who can promote, or retard, the progress of the business. The head of a department must exercise fairness; he must possess considerable will power and the power of decision, a courteous firmness of manner and an optimistic outlook. Estimating Character

The ability to read a character is a great asset where an appointment has to be done depends on forming a true estimate of the character and mental qualities of the applicant. One attribute is usually fairly easy to detect; that is, the quality of ambition. The young man who is of a naturally ambitious turn of mind is at least "a starter"in the race to the top. He must not be taken at his own valuation, for no doubt he has some flaw that he has not detected himself. However, ambition is an essential trait in the character of an assistant, because the man whose mind is continually set on climbing the ladder will certainly get as high as his capacity permits. leia todo o artigo

Human Resources Simple Hierarchy - A study by Artur Victoria

Employees cannot be compelled to work more than eight hours a day, five days a week. However, except for that and for some other basic rights (such as, employees cannot be compelled to do anything illegal or immoral), the custom in this firm is that employees work at whatever assignments they are given by the boss. If she tells them to dig ditches, they dig ditches. If she tells them to file papers, they file papers. If she insists that they work a night shift, from 10 P.M. to 6 A.M., they must do that. Or, rather, they must do these things or else be fired or quit-they always retain that right-or convince the boss to give them a different assignment.

Why do the employees agree to such a terrible scheme of employment? That's a loaded question, and we should be clear in the ways it is loaded. First, whether terrible or not, it is certainly a contractual arrangement that a priori is open-ended in precisely the sense we described in our outline of the framework: What employees will be doing a day or a month or a year hence is initially unspecified, to be determined only as necessary. Second, there is nothing terrible about the scheme if the employees can quit and find other employment without cost. If, say, the work involved is carpentry, if the employees are all skilled carpenters, and if skilled carpenters can find work easily in the local economy, then the boss is disciplined by the market; she can't ask for labor more onerous than the market-determined conditions without paying better-than-market wages, or her employees will exercise their right to quit. leia todo o artigo

Equity In Human Resources Evaluation - A study by Artur Victoria

There are no doubt some occasions in which employees will believe it is fair for a supervisor to hold a particular co-worker to a lower performance standard-for instance, a colleague whose entire family was just killed in a car crash, or who lost a finger, or who has a learning disability, or who is brand new to the job. However, appraisal systems that permit evaluators to establish a separate baseline for each person being evaluated can invite perceptions of subjectivity and bias among those being evaluated. They certainly invite ferocious politicking and the possibility of corruption. Besides worrying about perceived (and actual) justice in comparative evaluation schemes, you have to worry about the impact that such schemes can have on the behavior of those being evaluated. It can happen that some likely behavioral reactions:

1 - Politicking and possible attempts at corruption may occur at the time the criteria for evaluation are established or handicaps are employed. We know of no fool-proof response to this problem, but for several reasons it often helps to have criteria set and handicaps determined by a committee of supervisors: a) it is usually harder to corrupt or influence a committee than an individual; b) individual supervisors are less likely to be capricious or biased when they have to defend their actions in a group; and c) committees can stiffen the backbone of individual supervisors, by giving them a "cover" or excuse for decisions that are made. leia todo o artigo

Commitment In Human Resources - A study by Artur Victoria

One manifestation of the processes of attribution and self-perception concerns the formation of commitment. The balance between effort and reward has powerful effects on the attributions people make about why they engage in certain behaviors. For instance, it possible to induce commitment by persuading individuals to expend considerable effort on an activity in the absence of a clear external reward for doing so. Psychologists call this insufficient justification; unable to identify a clear external rationale for exerting effort on a task, the person can either believe that the effort was wasted or, alternatively, that there was some higher purpose served by the effort. Because we generally dislike perceiving ourselves as having done things that are foolish or that lack efficacy, there is a tendency to take the other cognitive route and divine a higher purpose in our behavior, thereby psychologically inducing commitment to that course of conduct.

The process of commitment has a strong self-reinforcing quality. The more we invest in a specific course of conduct, the more difficult it is psychologically to abandon that path, and therefore the stronger the inclination is to reaffirm our commitment to the activity. This process of escalating commitment is strongest when the person got involved in the activity voluntarily (rather than through coercion), has exerted considerable effort, has done so Visibly and publicly, and when the course of conduct is difficult or impossible to undo. Intrinsic Versus Extrinsic Motivation leia todo o artigo