Human Resources Flashcards
Organizational Capability:
Organizational Capability: The power to combine and leverage a company’s resources, including human capital, to achieve specific business goals.
Example: Toyota’s ability to continuously improve manufacturing processes.
Human capital
Human Capital: The collective skills, knowledge, and abilities of a company’s employees that are used to create economic value.
Example: A lawyer passing the bar exam or a customer service representative helping customers.
Global HR Wheel
Global HR Wheel: A cyclical relationship where a company’s global strategy influences its human capital and HR practices, which in turn shape the company’s organizational capabilities and outcomes.
HR Practices
HR Practices: Policies and processes used by a company’s human resources department to manage its workforce, ensuring the alignment of employee skills with organizational goals.
Company-Specific Human Capital
Company-Specific Human Capital:
Knowledge specific to a company’s culture, systems, and routines that helps employees navigate and perform effectively within the organization. This knowledge is valuable within the company but less applicable outside of it.
Example: A manager who knows how to navigate internal systems and procedures at Toyota.
Location-Specific Human Capital
Location-Specific Human Capital:
Knowledge relevant to a particular market or geographic location, including cultural, economic, or political understanding.
Example: An executive familiar with the customs regulations in Vietnam, helping a company import products smoothly.
Performance management
Performance Management:
The process of aligning employees’ and teams’ goals with the organization’s objectives, evaluating performance, providing feedback, and linking performance to compensation. This process can be complicated by cultural differences.
Example: In collectivist cultures, singling out an individual for praise may isolate them instead of motivating them.
Cultural Sensitivity in HR
Cultural Sensitivity in HR:
Understanding and adapting HR practices to different cultural norms and expectations. For instance, in some countries, retention bonuses may be more effective than signing bonuses.
Two-Way Communication:
Two-Way Communication:
Essential for performance management, where healthy communication between superiors and subordinates is necessary for setting goals and providing feedback, but cultural differences may complicate this process.
strategic objectives:
strategic objectives: long-term organizational goals that help make a strategy successful
competitive advantage:
competitive advantage: a condition that puts a company in a superior business position
critical behaviors:
critical behaviors: the few key areas of activity in which meeting strategic objectives are absolutely necessary
KPI
key performance indicators (KPIs): clear-cut instruments to quantify whether individuals are on the right track to helping a company achieve its strategic objectives
Local Human Capital:
Local Human Capital:
The knowledge, skills, abilities, and attributes that employees develop based on their specific location or market. It includes understanding local customer needs, cultural traditions, institutional barriers, and political processes.
Example: Employees in China developing insights into local consumer preferences for home appliances.
Subsidiary Human Capital
Subsidiary Human Capital:
A combination of local and company-specific knowledge. It represents the ability of employees to adapt company knowledge to fit local market conditions, effectively aligning corporate goals with local needs.
Example: Haier employees in Indiana combining their knowledge of local U.S. tastes with the company’s Chinese efficiency to design products for the U.S. market.
