Why Human Capital is Important for Organizations: People Come First

218 Pages·2014·0.985 MB·English

by  Amelia Manuti, Pasquale Davide de Palma (eds.)

Why Human Capital Is Important for
Organizations
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Why Human Capital
Is Important for
Organizations
People Come First
Edited by
Amelia Manuti
University of Bari, Italy
and
Pasquale Davide de Palma
dashumankapital.com
Selection and Editorial content © Amelia Manuti and
Pasquale Davide de Palma 2014
Individual chapters © Respective authors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-41078-8
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries
ISBN 978-1-349-48907-7 ISBN 978-1-137-41080-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137410801
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managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
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Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Preface v iii
Acknowledgements xiii
Notes on Contributors x v
Introduction x xiii
Nigel Nicholson
Part I Setting the Scene
1 Work between Fordism and Post-Fordism 3
Giacomo Pisani
2 Job Fatigue and the Emancipation of Workers:
Past Scenarios and Future Perspectives 14
Nicola Costantino, Pasquale Davide de Palma, and
Gaetano Veneto
3 Organizational Resilience and Individual
Employability: Psychological Capital and
Change Management 33
Amelia Manuti
Part II The Cornerstone of Human Capital
4 Entrepreneurial Employees 53
Francisco Diaz Bretones
5 Leading with Heart: The Impact of Emotionally
Intelligent Leadership 62
Kenneth S. Rhee and Tracey H. Sigler
6 Expectation Theories and Internal and External
Components of Work Experience: Reflections on and
for Candidates 76
Grazia De Benedictis and Pasquale Davide de Palma
v
vi Contents
7 A ssessment in the Work Context 9 2
Clive Fletcher
Part III Measuring Human Capital
8 M easuring and Managing the Financial Performance
of Human Capital Investments 1 09
F rank DiBernardino
9 T he People Performance Plan: It Goes beyond the
Present into the Future 1 25
Pasquale Davide De Palma
Part IV Good Practices from Abroad
10 H uman Capital Management in Asia: The War for
Talent Continues in This High-Growth Region 1 37
Fermin Diez
11 T alent in Transition: The Dynamics and Constants
of Transience 1 51
Sandeep Apte
Conclusion: (Why) People (Really) Come First 162
Amelia Manuti and Pasquale Davide de Palma
References 1 67
Index 1 95
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
5.1 Two-by-two matrix view of emotional intelligence 65
5.2 Integrated model of emotional intelligence
development 71
8.1 Human versus financial capital costs 110
Tables
5.1 Goleman’s emotional competence framework 64
5.2 Essential competencies future leaders need to be
successful 69
7.1 The average validity achieved by the different methods
reviewed based on diverse studies 100
10.1 Countries in Asia with double-digit staff attrition
rates in 2010 139
10.2 Top five drivers of employee engagement by selected
countries 146
11.1 Era-based main differences 158
vii
Preface
Why Human Capital Is Important for Organizations is a very unusual book.
It grew out of the casual meeting of people, scholars and practitioners
who live and work in different parts of the world. Their common theme
is their interpretation of how human resource management actually
works in the present-day organizational context. The book consists of
11 chapters dealing with some of the most important issues in the field
of human resource management.
Chapter 1, “Work between Fordism and Post-Fordism”, argues that
postmodernity has placed subjects in neutral spaces and deprived them
of their communal character that had previously rooted individuals
and shaped their long-term planning. At the level of the workers, post-
Fordism, rather than supporting the emancipation of work and cognitive
abilities from the toil of capital, has produced a greater distance to the
value of life. At the corporate level, the postmodern subject has been also
absorbed from a cognitive point of view into business logic. The reversal
of the paradigm presupposes the development of the personality of the
worker and a reshaping of the corporate vision to centre on humans. At
a social level, a universal minimum income would be a factor of decon-
struction of the market as absolute articulation of reality. This line of argu-
mentation allows us to set the scene for the further discussion of human
capital (re)enhancement.
Chapter 2, “Job Fatigue and the Emancipation of Workers: Past
Scenarios and Future Perspectives” by Nicola Costantino, Pasquale
Davide de Palma, and Gaetano Veneto, investigates the role played by
“fatigue” in current human resource management strategies. The experi-
ence of a great economic crisis has led people to reconsider the existing
models of business management. In this chapter, Nicola Costantino,
Pasquale Davide de Palma, and Gaetano Veneto, starting from a reflec-
tion on the concept of “fatigue”, argue for a new vision of work experi-
ence and human resource management that focuses on the central role
played by people in organizations.
Chapter 3, “Organizational Resilience and Individual Employability:
Psychological Capital and Change Management”, by Amelia Manuti
supports the assumption according to which in the past several decades
organizations have operated in the belief that sustained competitive
advantage derives from a variety of hard factors, such as technological
viii
Preface ix
supremacy, patent protections, and government regulations. But enlight-
ened managers today recognize the importance not only of tangible assets,
data, and physical resources but also of the intangible human capital (some-
times called intellectual capital) – “human” refers to the people working
at all levels of the organization, and the economic term “capital” refers
to the resources withdrawn from consumption and invested for future
anticipated returns. On the basis of this perspective, Manuti examines the
concepts of organizational resiliency and individual employability as two
faces of the same coin. Organizational resiliency, then, is not simply the
sum of individual employability skills but rather depends on the ability of
individuals to make sense of change and to manage it by enhancing their
own knowledge and skills and thus develop psychological capital.
Chapter 4, by Francisco Diaz Bretones, is entitled simply
“Entrepreneurial Employees”; it aims at analysing the features of entre-
preneurial employees. Employees falling in this category show dyna-
mism, innovation, personal development, and ongoing adaptation.
This assumption leads the author to an investigation of the notion of
entrepreneurship, which is not simply a distinctive feature belonging
to businesspeople. Scientific literature offers abundant research devoted
to the development of theoretical models on entrepreneurship both as
a personal trait and as a cultural feature of the postmodern social and
organizational context. In his review, the author takes into account both
the individual as well as the organizational factors that may develop
and influence entrepreneurial behaviour, which is certainly a very inter-
esting scientific and practical issue in the area of organizations.
Chapter 5, written by Kenneth S. Rhee and Tracey H. Sigler and entitled
“Leading with Heart: The Impact of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership”,
underlines the need for outstanding leadership. The authors focus
on today’s leaders who have to face great challenges in dealing with a
complex and changing environment. In the face of a diverse employee
population, intense global competition, and rapid technological changes,
leaders need to demonstrate inspirational but adaptable leadership that
will sustain organizations through turbulent times. Emotional intelli-
gence has emerged as the core concept that most consistently predicts and
explains outstanding leadership. Indeed, it is difficult to find emotionally
intelligent leaders (i.e. outstanding leaders). Leaders too often believe that
acting in emotionally intelligent ways is just common sense, until they try
to use their emotional intelligence in practice, which can be quite a chal-
lenge. Unfortunately, other people in the organization bear the cost when
leaders fail to demonstrate emotional intelligence. Rhee and Sigler provide
a case study illustrating the negative impact of a leader who is deficient in