Learning Reflection

My class has been giving presentation to the class about their research paper and what they have learned. It is very interesting to see the various topics chosen by my classmates and how much they have actually learned. We all have put a lot of time and effort on this paper that I believe we all have learned so much about our topic.

I presented a topic about objective vs. subjective employee evaluations at a service industry. It is easier for a service industry to use subjective measures of evaluation because people who receive services might use their perception to evaluate the service.

I found that there could be some inconsistencies in the evaluation, for example, sometimes there are inconsistencies in the type of goals managers and overall organization has, some information collected might not be recorded well in the system, and perhaps the information is bias.

I'm still working on my paper, but I am almost done. This semester has gone by fast for sure.

Learning Reflection

In class, we talked about 3 different ethical perspective:

*Utilitarianism
*Deontology
*Virtue Ethics

Utilitarianism is commonly known as the greatest good for the greatest number of people. Deontology is also known as a duty or obligation. Virtue ethics emphasize moral agent.

There are different ways to look at a behavior and see how people's point of view differs from other. Something interesting is that there is not a right or wrong answer. It is just a different way to look at things.

Learning Reflection

Today in class we talked about some conditions that contribute to a high performance. Some of those conditions are to have constant feedback to improve the process. Feedback helps the employee know where he or she stands and what things need to change or keep working on. Training is also a condition that is important. Employees need to have trainings to know what is the desire goal. Teams perform work is another condition,and it helps see who can work in teams, who is working, who is not. Work design can help the employee work on a variety of kills to not make the work being the same and boring all day long, but to use different skills that can help the organization.

There are many other conditions that can contribute to a high performance, but the ones mentioned above are important and necessary in the organization if we want the company to succeed and make the employees feel valuable.

Learning Reflection

Today in class, we learned how we look at culture and how to manage people in the two different levels in the company:
- individualism/collectivism
- power distance
- understanding avoidance
- masculinity/femininity
- long-term/short-term orientation
It is important to know how to treat and managed employees from different cultures because we want to respect them, and at the same time they are in the company to learn the culture around the organization.

CH 16 Analyzing the effect of HRM programs

Concept and Brief Description

One way to analyze Human Resource Management effectiveness is through the different programs or activities. This can help to see is if the program was successful according to their goals. Whether is an economic approach they could see If the value is greater than the program’s cost. The different programs should be able to improve their performance through some combination of greater efficiency and greater effectiveness. As the book mentions, greater efficiency means what the HR department does has a more beneficial effect on employee’s and the organization’s performance.

Emotional Hook

It is very important to set goals first to be able to accomplish the desire program. At the end they can see if it help the company to continue on or to change something and see what can be done.

Key Points to Elicit Discussion

To be able to analyze, the company should have some specific objective goals. At the end of the program, it is asked about their experiences and learning and rate what they have accomplished. Later, the department measures whether the employees’ performance has improved or whether if their behavior has changed.

Facilitative Questions

What kind of things you need to have to have a perfect combination of greater efficiency and greater effectiveness?

CH 15 Selecting Expatriate Managers

Concept and Brief Description

How to select expatriate managers? To be able to choose a person who can represent the organization needs to have technical competence in the area of operations. The organization should consider each candidate’s skills, learning style, and approach to problem solving. An expatriate manager to be successful, he or she must be sensitive to the host country’s cultural norms, adapt to those norms, and survive to the culture shock. Table 15.2 in the book provides a list of topics for assessing candidates for overseas assignments. The topics consist of motivation, health, language ability, family considerations, resourcefulness and initiative, ability, career planning, and financial.

To be able to adapt, an expatriate manager requires three kinds of skills: ability to maintain a positive self-image and feeling of well-being, ability to foster relationships with the host-country nationals, and ability to perceive and evaluate the host country’s environmental accurately.

Emotional Hook

It is very interesting the process of selecting an expatriate manager because he or she represents the organization and needs to be able to accomplish the organization’s goals to be able to be successful in that country. If the expatriate manager does not succeed because he or she cannot see the cultural differences to be able to adapt and learn form it, the expatriate will fail and the organization will fail too.

Key Points to Elicit discussion

The expatriate’s family is very involved in the expatriate assignment. They need to adapt to the culture as well as the expatriate. The family, as well as the expatriate can learn culture experience.

Facilitative Questions

If you were selected to be an expatriate manager, would you go and take your entire family? Once in a life time opportunity,

Learning Reflection

We talked about how a company can select what benefits to offer to their employees. This is very crucial because many employees look for those benefits packages. For an organization to know what the employees want one way is to give the employees a survey and see the results, but a downside on surveys is that employees are actually expecting those benefits. If organizations do not come up with those benefits after giving the survey, the employee might feel discourage after their hopes where high.

For the organization, after selecting certain benefits that will offer to the employees, the organization needs to make sure it goes with he organization's goals and objectives. Also, seeing what type of a culture the organization is, benefits should resemble that.