Chapter

2. Chapter 7 Staffing

3. Stages of Development • Characteristics of a business – such as its growth rate, product lines, market share, entry opportunity, and technology – change with the organization’s stage of development • Four major stages of development: • Embryonic (new organizations) • High growth • Mature • Aging

4. The Link Between Development Stages & Staffing Strategies • Embryonic Stage (new organizations) • High growth rates, basic product lines, heavy emphasis on product engineering, and little or no customer loyalty • Management selection strategy: • Entrepreneurs who thrive in high-risk environments

5. The Link Between Development Stages & Staffing Strategies • High-Growth Stage • Refine and extend product lines; build customer loyalty • Concerns: fighting for market share and building excellence in the management team • Management selection strategy • Entrepreneurs for growth • Growth directors to build stable management systems

6. The Link Between Development Stages & Staffing Strategies • Mature • Maintenance of market share, cost reductions through economies of scale, more rigid management controls over workers’ actions, and the generation of cash to develop new product lines • Less flexibility and variability • Management selection strategy • Bureaucrats who are comfortable with repetition and can develop economies of scale

7. The Link Between Development Stages & Staffing Strategies • Aging • Struggle to hold market share in a declining market, and extreme cost control obtained through consistency and centralized procedures; economic survival becomes the primary motivation • Management selection strategy • Entrepreneurs who will cut, reorganize, and survive

8. Organizational Culture • Culture is the pattern of basic assumptions a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to adapt both to its external and internal environments • Organizational culture is embedded and transmitted through mechanisms such as the following: • Formal statements of organizational philosophy and materials used for recruitment, selection, and socialization of new employees • Promotion criteria • Stories, legends, and myths about key people and events • What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control • Implicit, and possibly unconscious, criteria that leaders use to determine who fits key slots

9. The Implications of OrganizationalCulture for Staffing Decisions • Cultures vary across organizations; individuals will consider this information if it is available to them in their job-search process • Recruiters assess person-job fit by focusing on specific knowledge, skills, and abilities; they assess person-organization fit by focusing more on values and personality characteristics • Linking staffing decisions to cultural factors may ensure employees have internalized the strategic intent and core values of the enterprise, making it more likely that they will act in the interest of the company and as dedicated team members, regardless of their formal job duties • Individuals who choose jobs and organizations that are consistent with their own values, beliefs, and attitudes are more likely to be productive, satisfied employees

10. Screening & Selection Methods:Employment Application Forms • Statistics show a relationship between applicant responses to specific questions and later measures of job performance; these weighted application blanks (WABs) are highly predictive • High rate of accuracy for determining those who will stay on the job longer • Research has found that items “conventional wisdom” might suggest, or those used by interviewers, did not predict employee turnover accurately

11. Screening & Selection Methods:Recommendations • Evidence shows, unfortunately, that there is little candor, and therefore, little value, in written recommendations and referrals, especially those that must, by law, be revealed to applicants if they petition to see them • Meaningful recommendations include four major characteristics: • Degree of writer familiarity with the candidate • Degree of writer familiarity with the job in question • Specific examples of performance • Individuals or groups to whom the candidate is compared

12. Screening & Selection Methods:Reference Checks • Request job-related information only • Obtain written permission from the job candidate • Stay away from subjective areas • When possible, use public records to evaluate on-the-job behavior or personal conduct

13. Improving Pre-Employment Interviews • Six ideas to shape interviewer behavior non-biased hiring: • Focus only on the competencies necessary for the job, and distinguish between entry-level and full-performance competencies • Screen resumes and application forms by focusing on three elements: • Key words that match job requirements • Quantifiers and qualifiers that show whether applicants have these requirements • Skills that might transfer from previous jobs to the new job • Develop interview questions that are strictly based on job analysis results; use open-ended questions; and use questions relevant to the individual’s ability to perform, motivation to do a good job, and overall “fit” with the firm

14. Improving Pre-Employment Interviews • Six ideas to shape interviewer behavior non-biased hiring (continued) • Consider asking “What would you do if...?” questions • Conduct the interview in a relaxed physical setting • Develop a form containing a list of competencies weighted for overall importance to the job, and evaluate each applicant relative to each competency

15. Work-Sample Tests & Staffing Decisions • Work-sample tests, or situational tests, are standardized measures of behavior whose primary objective is to assess the ability to do rather than the ability to know • Difficult to fake since they are miniature replicas of actual job requirements • Unlikely to lead to charges of discrimination or invasion of privacy • Produce smaller minority/non-minority group differences in performance, along with modest losses in predictive validity; however, since the content of the test reflects the essential content of the job, the tests demonstrate content-oriented evidence of validity • Not cost-effective when large numbers of people must be evaluated

16. Most Popular Situational Tests • Leaderless Group Discussion • A group of participants is given a job-related topic and is asked simply to carry on a discussion about it for a period of time • No one is appointed leader; no one is told where to sit • Observers rate the performance of each participant according to preset characteristics • Accurately forecasts managerial performance in virtually all the functional areas of business

17. Most Popular Situational Tests • In-Basket Test • A situational test designed to simulate important aspects of a position, the “in-basket” tests an individual’s ability to work independently • The job candidate does not say what he would do; he/she performs the tasks as though he/she were actually on the job • Scores are determined by describing or evaluating what the candidate did in terms of such dimensions as self-confidence, organizational and planning abilities, written communications, decision making, risk taking, and administrative abilities • Major advantages • Flexibility to fit many types of situations and modes of administration • Permits direct observation of individual behavior within the context of job-relevant, standardized problem situations

18. Most Popular Situational Tests • Business Game • A living case in which candidates play themselves, not an assigned role, and are evaluated within a group • Major advantages • Flexibility to fit many different types of situations • Compressed time – events that might not actually occur for months or years are made to occur in a matter of hours • Interesting because of their realism, their competitive nature, and the immediacy and objectivity of their feedback • Increased understanding of complex interrelationships among organizational units

19. Most Popular Situational Tests • Business Game (continued) • Drawbacks • In the context of training, some participants may become so engrossed in “beating the system” that they fail to grasp the underlying management principles being taught • Creative approaches to solving problems presented by the game may be stifled

20. The Assessment Center • A method that evaluates a candidate’s potential for management based on three sources: • Multiple assessment techniques • Standardized methods of making inferences from such techniques, because assessors are trained to distinguish between effective and ineffective behaviors by the candidates • Pooled judgments from multiple assessors to rate each candidate’s behavior

21. Advantages in the Use of Assessment Centers • May be used in a wide variety of settings and for a variety of purposes • May be tailored to the characteristics of a specific job • In addition to evaluating and selecting managers, the method may be used for other purposes • Train and upgrade management skills • Encourage creativity among research and engineering professionals • Resolve interpersonal and interdepartmental conflicts • Assist individuals in career planning • Train managers in performance appraisal • Provide information for workforce planning and organization design • Cost-effective

22. Potential Problems with the Use of Assessment Centers • Adoption of the assessment center method without analyzing the need for it and without adequate preparation to use it wisely • Blind acceptance of assessment data without considering other information on candidates, such as past and current performance • The tendency to rate only general “exercise effectiveness,” rather than performance relative to individual behavioral dimensions, as the number of dimensions exceeds the ability of assessors to evaluate each dimension individually • Lack of control over the information generated during assessment. • Failure to evaluate the utility of the program in terms of dollar benefits relative to costs • Inadequate feedback to participants