People.Processes.Networks

We all often hear that it is very difficult to teach and work with Yers and that they do not deliver. I beg to differ. This generation has so much potential. They do need a lot of intrinsic motivation (they are quickly bored and who’s to blame them in today’s hyper content flowing world) and the right challenges. Especially in schools and universities we will have to offer new ways to attract their attention and engage them to do their best. This year we decided that instead of good old project presentations the students will do video clips, publish them on You tube and compete for attention. Their task was to present one HRM-related concept so that every student in Slovenia will understand it. Here is what they did and we all liked it a lot! Soon, the authors of the best videos will visit the studios of one of the commercial television networks in Slovenia, where their videos will be evaluated by the experts.

This year the Academy of Management was in San Antonio, Texas. For people from Europe it was a bit different from usually because it was quite inconvenient to fly there and because it was hot like h…. (I think the average max temperature was around 40 C during the Academy). So, staying indoors was the best way to spend your time (I did violate this rule only once, that is, when a group of around 7 assistant professors did their morning jogging at 6.00!!! – I managed to survive the heat and the early hour, though) .

My schedule was very intense. I started before the conference even started with a day meeting of the 5C group (we study careers across the globe) in a very nice historical hotel. We made good progress and are getting ready for the global survey phase. Then I was involved in a PDW about new research methods in HRM, where I talked about using social network methods in HRM, I participated in the Advanced social network PDW, where I really enjoyed the dialogue between Martin Kilduff and Ron Burt about attributes of individuals and their network-related behavior. Two other highlights were the inspiring talk bt the CEO of HTC Peter Chou, who talked about how East meets West in HTC and the launch of our Global HR casebook, a product of HR Division Ambassadors.

Once again I have met so many great people and got so many ideas. I flew out of San Antonio, drafting plans for the coming academic year and anticipating the next AOM in Boston. Hopefully, some of these ideas will end on a nice paper.

It is a great pleasure to share with you that Eva Repovš, my master student, just got a note from Economic and Business Review that her first research paper has been accepted for publication. Eva examined how Slovenian accountants and auditors identfy with their profession and with the organization where they are employed and discussed differences. Congratulations and keep up the good work!

Strategic human resource workshops organized by EIASM provide a very friendly and constructive atmosphere to present your work in progress and get good feedback. This time we really wanted to get feedback because our papers were at a decisive stage when this was most needed. My colleagues Saša Batistič, Sachiko Yamao and I were lucky to get feedback from some eminent names that were present at the conference. We presented the cocitation paper “The development of HRM-firm performance debate domains: A co-citation analysis” and a social network, international HRM paper ” Interunit Ties and Social Networks of Expatriates in MNCs:Towards a Cross-Level Process Model”. The Reykjavik University, which was hosting the workshop, is instrumental for Iceland’s further development. The country that virtually bursts with geothermal energy is aware of its limited talent pool and tries to do everything to create the best conditions to attract global talent, even shaping the university building as our solar system.

One of my favourite students Saša Batistič has received the University of Ljubljana Prešeren Award for his thesis. This is the most prestigious award for student theses at the University in Ljubljana. He examined the development of academic debate on HRM-firm performance debate using the cocitation analysis. Congratulations Saša!

Saša now moved  to Reading, UK, where he works on his doctoral dissertation - looking at newcomers and their social networks while onboarding in organizations. I am sure we will hear more from Saša…

For the past year I have worked with a team of enthusiastic HR professionals on redesigning/restrucutring the Slovenian HR Association. Last week at the Autumn meeting of Slovenian HR Association we presented our plans & initaitves for the transformation and energized our members to go for it. There were a lot of areas that needed change (i.e., publich ralations, web communications, facilitating more engagement of the members, restructuring the formal bodies) and we hope that our proposals will help the SHRA to serve its members, grow and prosper. You can see the new logo – hope you like it!