Opening the black box: How staff training may affect innovation--论文代写范文精选

这篇essay代写范文讲述了这一问题，处理的关系之间似乎存在人力资源管理,员工培训和发展,我们的目标是提供更多的东西。我们真正渴望的是探索和理解动态、非线性的相互作用。下面的essay代写范文讲述了这一问题。

Abstract
We describe a research on the interplay that appears to exist in companies between Human Resource Management and innovation. This complex, multicomponent, non-linear and dynamic interplay is often viewed as a "black box". To help open the black box, we outline both a theoretical framework and preliminary empirical data. We view innovation as an organization-level property, favored by the organization's self-perception as a knowledge engine. Therefore, we devised a protocol to study the companies' strategies for training and development and their innovation profile. The protocol consisted in a questionnaire with 100 closed questions, suitable for companies which rely mostly on an inner training and development service. The questionnaire was administered to a sample of Italian firms from the Food & beverages and Fashion markets. The results show that certain facets of training and development are indeed correlated to innovation. Finally, we discuss the results. 
Keywords: Innovation; Human resource management; Staff training and development; Business performance

Theoretical framework 
This paper deals with the relations that appear to exist between human resource management – more specifically, staff training and development – and innovation in a given segment of Italian companies. Our aim is to provide something more than, or different from, a survey of the current state of affairs in such segment. What we really aspire to is to explore and understand the dynamic, multi-component, non-linear interplay between how, and how much, companies create and manage knowledge and how, and how much, they are capable to innovate. In this paper we outline the theoretical framework and present the preliminary results of an empirical analysis of the complex relations between the structural and dynamic components of companies' strategies for training and development and their innovation profile.

Organizations as systems 
Our view of enterprises is derived from system theory (e.g. von Bertalanffy, 1967). Like all complex agencies, a company is composed of different organizational subsystems, each with its own identity, dynamics, interactions with the other subsystems and possibly with the external environment, and (partial) autonomy (Tirassa, 2009). A crucial issue that should be added to the standard system-theoretical perspective, however, is that the individuals involved and, in however metaphorical a sense, the subsystems and the whole organization itself entertain a mind. This has several implications. 
Firstly, individuals and enterprises at their various level of organization actually make choices, using their available degrees of freedom to enact strategies and complex actions that depend in turn on a somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation of the context and of the viable spaces it affords for interaction. Secondly, both these interpretations and the strategies and actions that they allow for are best understood as narrative meanings (Clancey, 1997; Carassa, Morganti & Tirassa, 2004, 2005): what human beings and social assemblies thereof deal with, reason upon, make decisions about, trade with each other etc. is meanings and the narratives into which they are weaved. Narratives provide in turn the background needed for actions and meanings to exist and make sense. Thirdly, to study both the individuals and the organizations, as well as the interactions that they enact, it is necessary to adopt a subjective perspective (e.g. Merleau-Ponty, 1945; Nagel, 1986; Varela, 1996): interpretations and actions can only be understood from the viewpoint of the individual or assembly of individuals who entertains them. Subjective does not mean arbitrary, in that feedback coming from the external world provides a counterpoint to the agent's interpretations and actions and invites the agent to operate relevant changes whenever deemed appropriate.

Knowledge 
Interpretation and action are heavily based on knowledge. Complex systems tend to exhibit emergent properties, that is, properties that are not reducible to the properties of any specific subsystem. To put it the classic way, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This holds for knowledge too: the knowledge that an organization possesses and produces includes both the knowledge possessed by the individuals and the subsystems and the knowledge that emerges from significant relations between them, and between each of them and the whole organization and the external environment. 

Actually, the knowledge possessed by the individuals, the subsystems and the organization as a whole is only relevant to the other levels, or to the other agents belonging to the same level, inasmuch as it becomes manifest and available to them in the unfolding of the interactions that they have with each other. In this process the knowledge at play is continuingly transformed and reinterpreted. Knowledge can again be viewed as a subjective property (Mate & Tirassa, 2010), that is, one that depends on – and, of course, crucially structures – the ways in which an agent looks at itself, at the environment in which it is immersed, and at the interactions that it affords. Knowledge in interaction with other agents is therefore a matter of intersubjectivity (Tirassa & Bosco, 2008). An agent's flows of knowledge may be oriented to the self or to the environment. Selforiented knowledge contributes to the construction of meanings and narratives that may become shared between the subsystems and the individuals that participate in the organization. It is also crucial to the formation and the maintaining of a coherent identity of the whole organization. Knowledge which is centered on the environment helps the agent to maintain adaptedness to it. Adaptedness is a dynamic property which depends on the relation between the states, the flows and the events that are internal to the agent and those that are external to it (Tirassa, Carassa & Geminiani, 2000). In a company, Human Resource Management (HRM), taken as a broad functional subsystem, plays a key role in developing and managing these flows of knowledge, both those that are self-centered and those that are world-centered. It does so in several ways, ranging from recruiting policies to the management of internal criticism and so on. Among these many ways, we focused on staff training and development.

Innovation 
We view innovation as a property which is (possibly unevenly) distributed across the organization. Its scope encompasses not only technological improvement, but also the ability to scout new markets, to implement new industrial processes, to modify the relation between the company and the trade unions, and so on. So viewed, innovation turns out to be one of the most crucial facets of the enterprise's actual fitness and performance (Laugen & Boer, 2008). We think that innovation is favored by the organization's self-perception in terms of (also) a knowledge engine. 

The evidence is compelling of a relation between an organization's management of human resources and its performance. However, the models that have been proposed to understand this link (see Wright, Gardner, Moynihan & Allen, 2005 for a review) often are unclear as to 'what exactly leads to what' (Alcazar, Fernandez & Gardey, 2005; Gerhart, 2005). Katou and Budhwar (2010) ascribe this limitation to the use of inappropriate statistical methods: actually, most studies have been based on cross-sectional data, employing either hierarchical regression models or competing regression models, without proving causality. While the importance of methodology is undeniable, we believe that the problem of proving causality goes beyond just it, and that a further theoretical analysis of the very nature of the relation between HRM practices and firm performance is needed. According to Baker and Sinkula (2002), differences in learning orientation may yield differences in innovation. It has also been suggested (Day, 1994; Slater & Narver, 1995; Dickson, 1996; Han, Kim & Srivastava, 1998; Baker & Sinkula, 1999a, 1999b) that the ability to engage in higher-order learning, united to a strong market orientation, makes a company more likely to achieve long-term competitive advantage in dynamic markets. Of course, it would be factitious to look for linear causation when studying a relation which appears to be circular and complex. 

A virtuous circle may be envisaged where well-framed HRM practices impact positively on firm performance, making further investments in human resources themselves possible; and, of course, a vicious circle functioning the other way round. It may also be remarked that highly innovative companies often find it necessary to invest on training, as the specialized skills that they need are not easily recruited. Finally, there can be little doubt that the whole picture would include internal factors that are not strictly knowledge-based (e.g. corporate climate) as well as broader socio-economic ones (Purcell, Purcell & Tailby, 2004). Therefore, to capture the actual causal dynamics, time becomes the crucial factor: it should be taken into account with longitudinal studies (Katou & Budhwar, 2010). With the aim of shedding light into this "black box", we focused on two issues which we view as crucial in the interplay between HRM and performance, namely (a) the management that the company makes of knowledge by way of training and development and (b) its innovation profile.（essay代写)

51Due网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文著作权归51Due所有；未经51Due官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯著作权现象，51Due保留一切法律追诉权。（essay代写)
更多essay代写范文欢迎访问我们主页 www.51due.com 当然有essay代写需求可以和我们24小时在线客服 QQ:800020041 联系交流。-X（essay代写)