Week One Discussion Questions: Strategic Role of Human Resources (Oct 21 – 27, 2020)

Available until Tuesday, October 27, 2020 11:59 PM EDT Must post first.Subscribe

Instructions:

After reading the assigned material for the week, post your original response to the questions by 11:59 PM EST Saturday and your responses to your colleagues by 11:59 PM EST Tuesday.  You want to include a minimum of 2 references from the classroom for each question/response. In addition, make at least two value added responses to your classmates. 

Discussion One:  Describe, in your own words (but using the course material provided):

a) What internal and external factors have influenced the Human Resource Management function over the past ten years toward serving in the role of a strategic partner or leader in the organization?  Discuss some positive and negative contextual influences that will continue to impact the HR function from today forward.

b) Explain what it means to be an effective HR strategic business partner. Why is it important for HR to be involved in all aspects of the strategic planning process? Discuss one example of a human resource management strategy that supports an organizational strategy.

c) What factors could be holding HR professionals back from serving in the strategic HR role? Share some ideas or strategies for enabling HR to be more successful toward working in a strategic capacity.

Be sure to provide the references for the sources of the information you used to inform your comments including the material provided in the classroom.

Discussion Two:  Application: After reading the case study about the organization HSS in the module included in this course for this week, do the following:

Write a memo to the CEO of HSS in which you justify HR’s role in drafting a strategic plan. The report should be written using language the CEO will understand and can relate. The document should be complete enough to convince the CEO of the importance of the HR function being part of the strategic plan at HSS.

It is important for you to locate and include academic sources (at least two) that support the content in the memo. You must show the reader that what you assert is accepted practice at other companies or organizations. You may use a word document if you like or provide your proposal in the content of your response window.

Marketing Management

Performance management is an important HRM function as it involves the actions taken to align employee performance with organizational objectives. After reading the article Ten Biggest Mistakes Bosses Make in Performance Reviews, discuss three mistakes you have experienced or witnessed in the workplace. What would be your recommendations to correct these mistakes? Explain how your recommendations would contribute to effective performance management. Your initial post must be a minimum of 300 words. Cite at least one scholarly source to support your response.

Individual Reflection Paper

After your group has completed your team charter, each person in your group will then write a 2-3 page reflection paper (not counting cover and reference pages) discussing: (1) what you personally learned from working on developing the team charter; (2) your thoughts on how the process worked within your group; and (3) the advantages and disadvantages of using this process to create team charters. Since this is a reflection paper, you may write it in the first person (e.g., I, we, me, our). There is no minimum number of references required for your reflection paper; however, the paper should cite appropriate sources to support your statements and opinions and can include sources cited in your team’s charter. Use APA style for all citations, quotations, and references. Your paper should be double spaced, with one inch margins and a font size of 11 points or larger. 

Name your reflection paper this way:
YourLastNameFirstInitial_Reflection

(Example: StudentJ_Reflection)

Please include this academic integrity statement on the cover page of your Individual Reflection Paper:

This paper is my own work that I created specifically for this course and this section.  All research or material that I used in preparing this paper has been properly acknowledged within the assignment in accordance with academic standards for complete and accurate citation of sources.

Due Date: Tuesday, June 30, 11:59 p.m. Eastern time.

Your grade for this assignment will be a combination of a team grade for the charter and an individual grade for your reflection paper. The team charter is worth 55% of the total grade and your reflection paper is worth 45% of the total grade. Please review the grading criteria on the following pages.

***I AM ONLY RESPONSIBLE FOR QUESTION 2***

This is a Collaborative Learning Community (CLC) assignment.

Create a PowerPoint (PPT) presentation of 10-15 slides (excluding the introduction and references) that provides a brief overview of global HR concepts. 

Be sure to provide the following in the presentation:

1. A description of your selected organization as well as the country in which the organization is intending to do business internationally.
2. A discussion of how the four factors that affect HRM in international markets would affect your selected organization’s approach to global HRM: (a) cultural dimensions, (b) education-human capital dimensions, (c) economic systems, and (d) political-legal systems.
3. Selection of expatriate managers.
4. Training and development of expatriates.
5. Compensation and employee benefits offered.
6. Conclusion.

Include a title side, introduction/outline slide, and references slide. Each slide should contain no more than five bullet points.

Incorporate three to five references to support your presentation. These references should provide support/justification for HR actions as it relates to the international culture the organization is entering.

While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and documentation of sources should be presented using APA formatting guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

Please see the attached template. Some things to note:

• Bullets should be high-level of the content you are writing in the speaker’s notes section
• Don’t worry about the sizing and fonts; I will rework the fit and fill the slide appropriately
• If a picture or graph makes sense, include it, but don’t overfill
• The slides on benefits, compensation training and development can be broken out into two slides each, if needed
• Each slide should contain no more than five bullet points, per assignment requirements

The value of negotiation in labor management relations is such that both parties bargain in good faith and are able to come to agreement on all mandatory collective bargaining items. It is important to understand details of this process to avoid an impasse. A strike or lockout might occur if there is an impasse. An impasse can have costly consequences for the union, management, and consumers.

With your fellow classmates, discuss the following:

• What is good faith bargaining?
• What items are mandatory and illegal in the collective bargaining process?
• If labor and management come to an impasse over employee benefits and a strike occurs, what strategies would you recommend to break the impasse? Provide an example using a real-life case.

DISCUSSION QUESTION 5-1

MH681 Health Care Human Resources Management

Lesson 5: Labor Relations

Upon completion of the Required Readings, write a thorough, well-planned narrative answer to the following discussion question. Rely on your Required Readings and the Lecture and Research Update for specific information to answer the discussion question, but turn to your original thoughts when asked to apply, evaluate, analyze, or synthesize the information. Your Discussion Question response should be both grammatically and mechanically correct, and formatted in the same fashion as the question itself. If there is a Part A, your response should identify a Part A, etc. In addition, you must appropriately cite all resources used in your responses and document in a bibliography using APA style.

Discussion Question 1 (50 points)

Visit the following website: www. http://www.aflcio.org/. Then discuss five (5) reasons why employees decide to join or form a union. Cite examples offered in your text or in the above-named website. (50 points) (A 2-page response is required.)

HR Issues Papers (50%)

You will research and prepare two papers covering any two of the articles from the textbook that you don’t write discussion items for. Each paper will be worth a maximum of 25 points. The text of each paper (excluding the cover and reference pages) must be a minimum of five full pages and no longer than six pages in length and must be single-spaced (not 1.15, which is the default setting for recent versions of Word) and printed using Times New Roman, size 12 font, with 1.25 inch margins on the side and 1 inch margins on the top and bottom (Office 2003 default in Margin settings in Page Layout).  Also, please do not use any space saving techniques such as adding extra space between paragraphs (the first sentence of each paragraph should be indented and the After setting in Paragraph should be set at ‘0 pt’), using bulleted or numbered items, using sub-titles or footnotes, including diagrams or tables, or including your name/paper title at the top of any of the5-6 pages.  You will not receive full credit for a review that has more than a few grammatical errors.  Your grade on a paper will be reduced if you do not follow these technical requirements.  In addition, you must attach a cover page that includes the issue you have chosen and a page of references at the end of your paper (the cover page and reference page do not count toward the 5-6 page requirement).  You must use at least four references for the paper in addition to the textbook article that is the basis for your paper and none of the four references should be other articles from the textbooks.  No more than one page of the paper can be based on the textbook article.

In each paper, you should include your summary and analysis of the topic and your opinions regarding how an employer and, in particular, the HR function of the employer, should address the issue.  Please see the note regarding plagiarism in the class policies section of this syllabus.  Your papers should be submitted to me as Word attachments to either a Blackboard or email message.  Information in the text of your papers must be properly cited using the method that is used in Are You a Leader or a Laggard in the textbook.  Do not include any footnotes at the bottom of any of the 5-6 pages of your paper.  In preparing the papers you should avoid using more than three direct quotes and no quote should be longer than two sentences.  Following are the deadlines for the submission of your papers.  You do not have to wait until the deadlines to submit your papers.

Please respond to the following:

• Imagine that your organization has expanded into a new country requiring several employees to live there for the duration of their employment. Create one social and control function to assist the expatriate’s experience, and then suggest a systematic approach using one psychological function to share with future expatriates. Justify your response. Note: You may reference any country of your choice in your response.

Research questions that lend themselves to a qualitative approach often address questions about how people construct meaning. In this way, qualitative research questions set the stage for open-ended, inductive inquiry.

For this Discussion, review the case study entitled, “Social Work Research: Program Evaluation.” Consider the kinds of questions that inform a qualitative approach. Think about the quantitative method described in the case study and consider methods you might use to investigate the effectiveness of a program from a qualitative perspective.

Post your explanations of the following:

• What kinds of research questions lead to a qualitative approach?
• If you chose to conduct quantitative research in your Week 4 proposal, how might you reframe the research question in a way that lends itself to a qualitative approach?
• If you focused on a qualitative proposal in Week 4, describe the qualitative research question and explain the rationale for choosing a qualitative approach.
• Be sure to explain how you might collect the data.
• Consider which qualitative method (case study, grounded theory, ethnographic research, cross-sectional research, feminist research, or participatory action research) would be most suitable for answering the research question.

Please use the resources to support your answer.