Bullies, unfortunately, don't disappear after elementary school. When you run into an entire department devoted to bullying, what do you do?
My HR Department Bullies Employees
Illustration by Chesi - Fotos CC, Flickr cc 2.0
Friday, August 13, 2010
My HR Department Bullies Employees
Bullies, unfortunately, don't disappear after elementary school. When you run into an entire department devoted to bullying, what do you do?
My HR Department Bullies Employees
Illustration by Chesi - Fotos CC, Flickr cc 2.0
Making Academics More Relevant: Useful Research
Perhaps the most important session I've attended at the AOM conference featured six of its 'biggest hitters', including past presidents and genuine world class researchers who have made a significant impact on practice and published in top tier journals. Their messages deserved a larger audience and I'm sure they will get it in the near future through their new book, 'Useful Research: Advancing Theory and Practice', edited by Susan Mohrman and Ed Lawler.
The title of the book invoiced its key message and also the impassioned pleas by the presenters for academics to focus on doing more useful research which has an impact on practice (as well as theory) and for the top tier journals to reflect use value to practice in their review processes and acceptance rates. On this last point, some revealing statistics were laid out. For example, in the Academy of Management Journal, probably the top of the top tier, only 16% of articles were based on qualitative case study research - the kind of research closest to practice and most likely to influence practitioners. Apparently, however, this rates as a significant improvement on the 6% that made it a few years ago!
All six presenters grounded their talks in the notion of academic knowledge chain or system, a development of the Mode 1 and Mode 2 distinction of a few years ago. Upstream activities included Pure Research in the traditional disciplines of business and management, e.g. economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy etc., which provide the theory for the Traditional Organizational and Management Research that appear in the so-called top tier journals. Downstream activities include the development of intermediate bridging knowledge, which is really a form of 'knowledge for sale' to practice - very much the province of consultants, professional bodies such as the CIPD, and the writers of textbooks - and Practice-oriented Knowledge Products including talks and keynotes to practitioners, teaching through executive education, blogging, writing in practitioner journals, newspapers, TV and radio, etc. The main message of the presenters was that business schools should require at least some of their (senior) academics to operate in these critical downstream activities as well as the upstream ones. By engaging in 'engaged research' with practitioners - not just on them - academics benefit from grounding their upstream work in relevant problems and can make a significant impact on policy and practice. By doing so they lay claim to be genuine intellectuals in the traditional sense of that term.
All presenters were also highly critical of the current systems in elite university business schools whic rewards only publication in a limited range of highly self-referential top tier journals. As Andy Van de Ven, the doyen of engaged research has demonstrated, these journals have almost zero impact on practice and often little impact on science (some 60% of articles published in top tier management journals are never cited by other academics!).
Yet despite their arguments and positions of influence - not to mention the constant soul searching by the Academy over the last twenty years to make itself more relevant - we seem to be no further forward. The research assessment exercise in this country (the REF) with its near exclusive focus on publishing in top tier journals and the requirements for tenure in the USA have led to a 'trained incapacity' among the academic community which has made the divide even greater over the last twenty years. This divide has resulted in practitioners regarding most of us as 'skilled incompetents' at best and only good for teaching MBA courses and undergraduates (the main finding of some research I conducted with a colleague a few years ago on the views of the Scottish business community of the Scottish business schools).
Will books such as this one and the constant exhortation of senior academics in business schools that featured in this session change the system? I doubt it: what gets measured gets managed, and the new research evaluation framework for the British universities shows no real desire to measure impact, despite its ambitions to be more impactful. Maybe the new (much reduced) funding regime will though?
The title of the book invoiced its key message and also the impassioned pleas by the presenters for academics to focus on doing more useful research which has an impact on practice (as well as theory) and for the top tier journals to reflect use value to practice in their review processes and acceptance rates. On this last point, some revealing statistics were laid out. For example, in the Academy of Management Journal, probably the top of the top tier, only 16% of articles were based on qualitative case study research - the kind of research closest to practice and most likely to influence practitioners. Apparently, however, this rates as a significant improvement on the 6% that made it a few years ago!
All six presenters grounded their talks in the notion of academic knowledge chain or system, a development of the Mode 1 and Mode 2 distinction of a few years ago. Upstream activities included Pure Research in the traditional disciplines of business and management, e.g. economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy etc., which provide the theory for the Traditional Organizational and Management Research that appear in the so-called top tier journals. Downstream activities include the development of intermediate bridging knowledge, which is really a form of 'knowledge for sale' to practice - very much the province of consultants, professional bodies such as the CIPD, and the writers of textbooks - and Practice-oriented Knowledge Products including talks and keynotes to practitioners, teaching through executive education, blogging, writing in practitioner journals, newspapers, TV and radio, etc. The main message of the presenters was that business schools should require at least some of their (senior) academics to operate in these critical downstream activities as well as the upstream ones. By engaging in 'engaged research' with practitioners - not just on them - academics benefit from grounding their upstream work in relevant problems and can make a significant impact on policy and practice. By doing so they lay claim to be genuine intellectuals in the traditional sense of that term.
All presenters were also highly critical of the current systems in elite university business schools whic rewards only publication in a limited range of highly self-referential top tier journals. As Andy Van de Ven, the doyen of engaged research has demonstrated, these journals have almost zero impact on practice and often little impact on science (some 60% of articles published in top tier management journals are never cited by other academics!).
Yet despite their arguments and positions of influence - not to mention the constant soul searching by the Academy over the last twenty years to make itself more relevant - we seem to be no further forward. The research assessment exercise in this country (the REF) with its near exclusive focus on publishing in top tier journals and the requirements for tenure in the USA have led to a 'trained incapacity' among the academic community which has made the divide even greater over the last twenty years. This divide has resulted in practitioners regarding most of us as 'skilled incompetents' at best and only good for teaching MBA courses and undergraduates (the main finding of some research I conducted with a colleague a few years ago on the views of the Scottish business community of the Scottish business schools).
Will books such as this one and the constant exhortation of senior academics in business schools that featured in this session change the system? I doubt it: what gets measured gets managed, and the new research evaluation framework for the British universities shows no real desire to measure impact, despite its ambitions to be more impactful. Maybe the new (much reduced) funding regime will though?
Why Job Quitters Shouldn't Aim for Fame
So, I'm quitting. Not everything, just my US News Column. It's been a good run, but it's time for me to move on to different things. My last column is, appropriately, on quitters.
Why Job Quitters Shouldn't Aim for Fame.
Why Job Quitters Shouldn't Aim for Fame.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Guest Post from Ask a Manager on Preparing For Job Interviews
This is a first for Evil HR Lady. I'm letting someone else write today's post. (I know, you are all muttering about "what posts? All she posts now are links to posts. Well, a thousand pardons. Stick around long enough and you get something cool, like this.)
Anyway, Alison Green runs The Ask a Manager Blog where she gives fabulous advice. She asked if she could do a guest post and I said yes, because she's brilliant. So, here it goes:
I'm ridiculously excited to be guest posting at Evil HR Lady, who was my inspiration for starting my own blog a few years ago. So getting to take over her pulpit for the day feels pretty awesome.
One of the reasons that blogs like this one are so helpful is that so much relating to careers feels mysterious. The rules often don't seem clear, and yet you're expected to play by them anyway, which is a recipe for stress and frustration. And when it comes to job searching in particular, the experience can be outright awful -- especially in this economy. You've got endless application forms, companies that don't get back to you, and the overwhelming anxiety of the whole experience. What are hiring managers looking for? How can you come across well in the interview? What if you give a silly answer to an interview question? Why aren't they calling you back?
As a hiring manager, I've spent most of my time on the other side of this, and that's given me a pretty good sense of the spots where most interviewers can improve their game. I also happen to have an oddly compulsive love of sharing that information with job-seekers, in the hope that I can help take some of the anxiety and uncertainty out of the whole process.
Normally I just answer random questions on this topic on my blog as they come in -- but now I've created a more comprehensive guide to preparing for a job interview, which I'm here to offer to you for free. (Yes, free. Full disclosure: In exchange for giving you the whole thing for free, I'll put you on my email list so that you're occasionally notified about other resources I create in the future. But you can unsubscribe at any time if you hate that idea.)
To give you an idea of the sort of advice you'll find in this free guide, here are a few examples:
* The job description that was included in the initial posting is the key to knowing how to frame your answers and what to emphasize. You can use each line of the job description to figure out how to create the strongest answers. (And make sure to save that job description somewhere at the time that you apply for a job – because the employer may have removed it by the time your interview rolls around.)
* If there's an interview question that you're particularly nervous about, a lot of people will just go on being anxious about it and never really come up with a plan for how they'll handle it if it comes up. That's not helpful. Instead, you need to face it head-on, decide exactly how you’re going to answer it, and practice the heck out of that answer. Make yourself rehearse your answer out loud over and over and over.
* If you get nervous and worry that you're not going to come across completely perfectly, think about all the weird/annoying/awkward people you’ve ever worked with. They somehow got hired, and they were probably at least a little weird/annoying/awkward in the interview, right? They're living, breathing proof that you can be weird/annoying/awkward and still get hired. So when you start panicking that won't come across as a super-polished all-star, remember these people.
If this kind of thing is helpful to you, you can sign up for the full guide here, and I'll email a free copy directly to you:
Free Copy of How to Prepare for an Interview: Boost Your Confidence, Impress Your Interviewer, and Get a Job
It's free, it's hopefully helpful, and it even comes with a video version in case you don't feel like reading. Go download it!
Much thanks to Suzanne for letting me hijack this space, and good luck to all of you who are out there job-searching!
Anyway, Alison Green runs The Ask a Manager Blog where she gives fabulous advice. She asked if she could do a guest post and I said yes, because she's brilliant. So, here it goes:
I'm ridiculously excited to be guest posting at Evil HR Lady, who was my inspiration for starting my own blog a few years ago. So getting to take over her pulpit for the day feels pretty awesome.
One of the reasons that blogs like this one are so helpful is that so much relating to careers feels mysterious. The rules often don't seem clear, and yet you're expected to play by them anyway, which is a recipe for stress and frustration. And when it comes to job searching in particular, the experience can be outright awful -- especially in this economy. You've got endless application forms, companies that don't get back to you, and the overwhelming anxiety of the whole experience. What are hiring managers looking for? How can you come across well in the interview? What if you give a silly answer to an interview question? Why aren't they calling you back?
As a hiring manager, I've spent most of my time on the other side of this, and that's given me a pretty good sense of the spots where most interviewers can improve their game. I also happen to have an oddly compulsive love of sharing that information with job-seekers, in the hope that I can help take some of the anxiety and uncertainty out of the whole process.
Normally I just answer random questions on this topic on my blog as they come in -- but now I've created a more comprehensive guide to preparing for a job interview, which I'm here to offer to you for free. (Yes, free. Full disclosure: In exchange for giving you the whole thing for free, I'll put you on my email list so that you're occasionally notified about other resources I create in the future. But you can unsubscribe at any time if you hate that idea.)
To give you an idea of the sort of advice you'll find in this free guide, here are a few examples:
* The job description that was included in the initial posting is the key to knowing how to frame your answers and what to emphasize. You can use each line of the job description to figure out how to create the strongest answers. (And make sure to save that job description somewhere at the time that you apply for a job – because the employer may have removed it by the time your interview rolls around.)
* If there's an interview question that you're particularly nervous about, a lot of people will just go on being anxious about it and never really come up with a plan for how they'll handle it if it comes up. That's not helpful. Instead, you need to face it head-on, decide exactly how you’re going to answer it, and practice the heck out of that answer. Make yourself rehearse your answer out loud over and over and over.
* If you get nervous and worry that you're not going to come across completely perfectly, think about all the weird/annoying/awkward people you’ve ever worked with. They somehow got hired, and they were probably at least a little weird/annoying/awkward in the interview, right? They're living, breathing proof that you can be weird/annoying/awkward and still get hired. So when you start panicking that won't come across as a super-polished all-star, remember these people.
If this kind of thing is helpful to you, you can sign up for the full guide here, and I'll email a free copy directly to you:
Free Copy of How to Prepare for an Interview: Boost Your Confidence, Impress Your Interviewer, and Get a Job
It's free, it's hopefully helpful, and it even comes with a video version in case you don't feel like reading. Go download it!
Much thanks to Suzanne for letting me hijack this space, and good luck to all of you who are out there job-searching!
I'm Exempt: Can My Employer Deduct PTO for Doctor's Appointments?
You're an exempt employee putting in way more than 40 hours a week. So can your employer make you take PTO time if you need to be out of the office for 2 hours? Should they?
I'm Exempt: Can My Employer Deduct PTO for Doctor's Appointments?
I'm Exempt: Can My Employer Deduct PTO for Doctor's Appointments?
Monday, August 9, 2010
Why It's Better to be Underpaid
What you want is to be overpaid. Right? Wrong. What you want is to be underpaid. Here's why.
Why It's Better to be Underpaid
Why It's Better to be Underpaid
My Boss Fired Me for Sleeping
Dear Evil HR Lady,
I was just curious if you can be fired for having a sleeping disorder that causes mild narcolepsy? I disclosed to my district manager that once I became tired (after a 10-12 hours work shift) it could happen. He was already upset that he heard that I was falling asleep at work. I had explained to him that I was off the clock out of uniform and was sitting in the office chair about to go home and I just leaned back and closed my eyes for a few seconds and an employee thought I was sleeping but I hadn’t been.
Being I was a manager I felt that I would be entitled to just rest my eyes for a few seconds but I guess not. His reply was if I ever was caught sleeping again I would be fired and I wasn’t worried, About two weeks later he came in handed me my last check and said once “I heard you were sleeping on the job during a meeting.” None of which was true and I had no option; he wanted to believe them over me and I feel I was wrongfully fired. It was a few years ago but I feel I’m still entitled to damages!
My Boss Fired Me For Sleeping
I was just curious if you can be fired for having a sleeping disorder that causes mild narcolepsy? I disclosed to my district manager that once I became tired (after a 10-12 hours work shift) it could happen. He was already upset that he heard that I was falling asleep at work. I had explained to him that I was off the clock out of uniform and was sitting in the office chair about to go home and I just leaned back and closed my eyes for a few seconds and an employee thought I was sleeping but I hadn’t been.
Being I was a manager I felt that I would be entitled to just rest my eyes for a few seconds but I guess not. His reply was if I ever was caught sleeping again I would be fired and I wasn’t worried, About two weeks later he came in handed me my last check and said once “I heard you were sleeping on the job during a meeting.” None of which was true and I had no option; he wanted to believe them over me and I feel I was wrongfully fired. It was a few years ago but I feel I’m still entitled to damages!
My Boss Fired Me For Sleeping
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