Pre-Master Business Administration
Leadership & Management 2016
University of Amsterdam
,Leadership and Management
Chapter 1 (Building and Managing Human Resources) and Article 1 (How much do high-
performance work practices matter? A meta-analysis of their effects on organizational
performance).
Chapter 1: Building and Managing Human Resources
Human Resource Management (HRM) = Activities that managers engage in to attract and
retain employees and to ensure that they perform at a high level and contribute to the
accomplishment of organizational goals.
Five major components are:
- Recruitment and selection: attract and hire new employees who have the abilities,
skills, and experiences that will help an organization achieve its goals.
- Training and development: ensure that organizational members develop the skills
and abilities that will enable them to perform their jobs effectively in the present and
future.
- Performance appraisal and feedback: (1) can give managers the information they
need to make good human resources decisions and (2) feedback from performance
appraisal serves a developmental purpose for members of an organization.
- Pay and benefits: by rewarding high performing organizational members, managers
increase the likelihood that an organization’s most valued human resources will be
motivated to continue their high levels of contribution to the organization.
- Labour relations: encompass the steps that managers take to develop and maintain
good working relationships with the labour unions that may represent their
employees’ interests.
Strategic Human Resource Management = The process by which managers design the
components of an HRM system to be consistent with each other, with other elements of
organizational architecture, and with the organization’s strategy and goals. Four building
blocks of competitive advantage: efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness.
Equal employment opportunity (EEO) = The equal right of all citizens to the opportunity to
obtain employment regardless of their gender, age, race, country of origin, religion, or
disabilities.
Recruitment = Activities that managers engage in to develop a pool of qualified candidates for
open positions.
Selection = The process that managers use to determine the relative qualifications of job
applicants and their potential for performing well in a particular job.
Human Resource Planning = Activities that managers engage in to forecast their current and
future needs for human resources.
- Current human resources: employees an organization needs today to provide high-
quality goods and services to customers.
- Future human resources: employees the organization will need at some later date to
achieve its longer-term goals.
Advantages:
- Flexibility
- Costs
Disadvantages:
- Managers lose control
- Individuals performing outsourced work have less knowledge of organizational
procedures and less commitment
- Unions resist outsourcing because it ahs the potential to eliminate some of their
members
Outsource = To use outside suppliers and manufacturers to produce goods and services.
Offshore = When work is outsourced to other countries.
,Demand forecasts estimate the qualifications and numbers of employees an organization will
need given its goals and strategies. Supply forecasts estimate the availability and
qualifications of current employees now and in the future, as well as the supply of qualified
workers in the external labour market.
Job Analysis = Identifying the tasks, duties, and responsibilities that make up a job and the
knowledge, skills, and abilities needed to perform the job.
External recruiting= Look outside the organization for people who have not worked for the
organization previously.
- Advantages
o Access to a potentially large applicant pool
o Able to attract people who have skills, knowledge and abilities
o Able to bring in newcomers who may have a fresh approach to problems.
- Disadvantages
o Relatively high costs
o Those need more training as they don’t know the company
Internal recruiting = Managers turn to existing employees to fill open positions.
Lateral more = A job change that entails no major changes in responsibility or authority levels.
- Advantages
o Already familiar with the organization
o Managers already know the candidates
o Help boost levels of employee motivation
o Less time consuming and less expensive
- Disadvantages
o Limited pool of candidates
o Often no suitable internal candidates
Selection process:
- Background information: can be helpful to screen out applicants who are lacking key
qualifications and to determine which qualified applicants are more promising than
others.
- Interviews: structured, situational, unstructured
- Paper-and-pencil test: ability tests and personality tests
- Physical ability test: measure physical strength and stamina as selection tools
- Performance test: measure job applicants’ performance on actual job tasks
- References: provide references from former employers or other knowledgeable
sources.
Reliability = The degree to which a tool or test measures the same thing each time it is used.
Validity = The degree to which a tool or test measures what it purports to measure
Needs assessment = An assessment of which employees need training or development an
what type of skills or knowledge they need to acquire.
- Training = Teaching organizational members how to perform their current jobs and
helping hem acquire the knowledge and skills they need to be effective performers.
o Classroom instruction (videos, role playing, simulation)
o On the job training (training that takes place in the work setting as employees
perform their job tasks)
- Development = Building the knowledge and skills of organizational members so they
are prepared to take on new responsibilities and challenges.
o Classroom instruction
o On-the-job training
o Varied work experiences (top managers need to develop an understanding
of, and expertise in, a variety of functions, products and services, and
markets. Mentoring)
o Formal education (college, advanced degrees)
,Performance feedback = The process through which managers share performance appraisal
information with subordinates, give subordinates an opportunity to reflect on their own
performance, and develop, with subordinates, plans for the future.
Performance appraisal = The evaluation of employees’ job performance and contributions to
their organization.
- Trait appraisals = when managers assess subordinates on personal characteristics
that are relevant to job performance, such as skills, abilities or personality
o Disadvantages
1. Possessing a certain personal characteristic does not ensure that
the personal characteristic will actually be used on the job and result
in high performance.
2. Because traits do not always show a direct association with
performance, workers and courts of law may view them as unfair and
potentially discriminatory.
3. They often do not enable managers to give employees feedback
they can use to improve performance.
- Behaviour appraisals = How managers assess how workers perform their jobs. Actual
actions and behaviours that workers exhibit on the job.
o Advantage
Giving employees clear information about what they are doing right
and wrong and how they can improve their performance.
- Results appraisal = When how people perform is not as important as what they
accomplish or the results they obtain.
- Objective and subjective appraisal
o Objective appraisal = An appraisal that is based on facts and is likely to be
numerical
o Subjective appraisal = An appraisal that is based on perceptions of traits,
behaviours, or results.
360 degree appraisal = A performance appraisal by peers, subordinates, superiors, and
sometimes clients who are in a position to evaluate a manager’s performance.
Formal appraisal = An appraisal conducted at a set time during the year and based on
performance dimensions and measures that were specified in advance.
Informal appraisal = An unscheduled appraisal of on-going progress and areas for
improvement.
Pay level = The relative position of an organization’s pay incentives in comparison with those
of other organizations in the same industry employing similar kinds of workers.
Pay structure = The arrangement of jobs into categories reflecting their relative importance to
the organization and its goals, levels of skill required, and other characteristics.
Cafeteria-style benefit plan = A plan from which employees can choose the benefits they
want.
Labour relations = The activities managers engage in to ensure that they have effective
working relationships with the labor unions that represent their employees’ interests.
Unions exist to represent workers’ interests in organizations. They would represent workers’
interests.
Collective bargaining = Negotiations between labour unions and managers to resolve conflicts
and disputes about issues such as working hours, wages, benefits, working conditions, and
job security.
,Leadership and Management
Lecture 1 – November 1st – Managing people
Management is, above all, a practice where art, science and craft meet (H. Mintzberg)
HR knows who they want to select and who not. Having managers who know how to execute
these people is important.
What do employees need to be managed well? Line
manager is responsible ultimately.
Image from lecture slides
Components of a system to manage people each
component of an HRM system influences the
others, and all five must fit together managers
essential in all of these components all practices
should be closely aligned.
- Recruitment and selection
- Training and development
- Performance appraisal and feedback
- Pay and benefits
- Human resource planning & Job analysis
The recruitment and selection system:
Human Resource Planning Determine recruitment and selection needs Job analysis
- Activities that managers engage in to forecast their current and future needs for
human resources
- Forecast of demand and supply
- Identifying the tasks, duties and responsibilities that make up a job (=job description)
and the knowledge, skills and abilities needed to perform the job (= job specification)
- Method: observing/ describing what current workers do.
Human Resource Planning: it is important to find those workers that you want at the good
time. Think ahead and find highly talented people. Because of demographic changes there
are more younger people to fill these.
Combination of internal and external hiring because you need diversity.
Without standardizes interview procedure you often like people sooner (similarity attraction).
This has an influence on how you interact with the candidate. That is why you should not
design interviews around each candidate’s unique background.
Image from lecture slides
Selection tools:
- Background information
- References
- Paper- and- pencil tests (Written tests typically tests of intelligence, ability,
personality, interest. Intelligence tests are particularly good predictors for jobs that
require cognitive complexity. Super difficult to fake, you can fake downwards but not
upwards. Very valid way to select people)
- Physical ability tests
- Performance tests (Performance-simulation tests have high face validity and their
popularity has increased. Examples are work sample tests, situational judgement
tests, assessment centres) face-validity is what meets the eye of the applicants
leaves a good impression.
o Work sample test
o Situational judgement test
, - Interviews (The most frequently used selection device. Unstructured interviews are
ineffective. Structured ones, particularly behaviour-structured interviews are
effective).
o Best practice: STAR Method (behavioural description interview)
Reliability and validity:
- Reliability
o The degree to which the tool measures the
same thing each time it is used.
o The degree to which several rates agree
- (Content) Validity
o The degree to which the test measures what it
is supposed to measure.
- Criterion-related (predictive) Validity
o The degree to which the test allows to predict
the criterion (job performance)
On average, no matter what type of job, it is always better to pick the more intelligent than the
less intelligent person. Even though that person will move on quickly/ get bored. It will perform
better.
Training and development
Training = teaching organizational members how to perform current jobs and helping them to
acquire the knowledge and skills they need to be effective performers.
Development = building the knowledge and skills of organizational members to enable them
to take on new responsibilities and challenges.
