Tuesday, February 13, 2018

Research Reveals the Personality of a "Bad Hire"

Hiring the wrong employee can cost your company time, money and piece of mind! While the most aggressive "go getter" employees look great in the interview they may not be the person you want working for your company. Research shows that aggressive personality traits may impact their ability to work with others and may damage the long-term goals of your company.

The study sought to determine what type of personalities impacted workplace deviance. They analyzed 150 permanent non-manager employees in a Fortune Global 500 Company. They found that diminished conscientiousness (r.39, P<.05) and agreeableness (r.29,P<.05) was often associated with workplace deviance.

1. Conscientiousness and agreeableness are negatively associated with organizational and interpersonal deviance.

2.Organizational commitment partially mediates agreeableness and organizational deviance.

In other words, employees that ranked low on conscientiousness and agreeableness often displayed behaviors that were antithetical to running a strong organization. They argued, lied, manipulated, caused descent, took credit for work they did not complete, and damaged a productive work environment. In contrast, employees who ranked high in conscientiousness and agreeableness not only helped the organization but also had pro-social behaviors that improved their work environments.

As organizational mangers we often assume that those who are pushy are confident and those who show extreme confidence are result oriented employees. We hire them based on the outward behaviors that were designed to manipulate the interviewer in the first place. We fail to take into account that organizations are social networks that require polite, honest, and hardworking individuals.

Organizations that adjust their hiring and performance evaluations to include positive pro social behaviors will find that the "right" hire is someone who contributes to the organization and to the higher functioning of others. As we hire employees with these pro-social behaviors our organization begins to operate better through better social exchange and positive interactions that lead to informational and resource efficiency.

The study helps managers and strategic planners to better understand what type of personalities they should be looking for in their next employee. Organizations are collectives of transactions and people that work together to create organizational efficiency and thus rely heavily on pro-social behavior. Hiring to better ensure that internal transactions run smoothly and employee collaboration stay high is essential for long-term planning.

Russell, G., et. al. (2016). Why people harm the organization and its members: relationships among personality, organizational commitment, and workplace...Human performance, 29 (1).


Wednesday, February 7, 2018

2018 International Conference on Business, Information, Tourism, and Economics (BITE 2018)

2018 International Conference on Business, Information, Tourism, and Economics (BITE 2018)
Bangkok Thailand, August 8-10, 2018
http://soci-science.org/bite/

We cordially invite you and your colleagues to participate and submit papers to 2018 International Conference on Business, Information, Tourism, and Economics (BITE 2018) which will be held in Bangkok, Thailand, August 8-10, 2018. We welcome submissions from all over the world and we encourage you to join us in Bangkok, Thailand to share your research and knowledge. To submit abstracts/papers for presentation or participate as an audience member, please visit the conference website for more details. All submissions will be subject to a double-blind review process. All accepted manuscripts will be published in the conference proceedings, under an ISSN reference, on CD-ROM support. Please join us in Bangkok, Thailand for the great academic events. BITE will be held together with the other two conferences. These two conferences are
IConEGS 2018-Summer: https://soci-science.org/iconegs-summer/
LIS 2018: https://soci-science.org/lis

The objectives of the conference are:
Provide a platform for the researchers to seek further opinions, comments, and suggestions.
Contribute knowledge in the fields of Business, Information, Tourism, and Economics.
Provide wider opportunities for participants to interact and create networking.
Deliver your research findings to global audiences.
Participate in a truly international, interdisciplinary and intercultural event.

Bangkok, the Thai capital, is one of the world's top tourist destination cities. Bangkok's multi-faceted sights, attractions and city life appeal to diverse groups of tourists. MasterCard ranked Bangkok as the global top destination city by international visitor arrivals in 2016 and 2017. Bangkok was also named "World's Best City" by Travel + Leisure magazine's survey. Royal palaces, temples as well as several museums constitute Bangkok's major historical and cultural tourist attractions. Shopping and dining experiences offer a wide range of choices and prices. All participants not only will have a fruitful stay at the conference, but also an enjoyable stay at the city of Bangkok.

Conference Website: http://soci-science.org/bite/
Online Submission: https://my-ecase.org/bite/
Enquiries: conf.bite@gmail.com
Submission Deadline: April 22, 2018

Conference Chairs
Norbert Jesse, QuinScape GmbH, Germany
Zne-Jung Lee, Huafan University, Taiwan
Tie Su, University of Miami, USA
Worarak Sucher, National Institute of Development Administration, Thailand

Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Europe's Economy is Improving. Why?

2017 was the European Union's best since 2007 with a 2.5% growth rate. While news is good for the EU it does indicate an increasing confidence in the EU's political sustainability and economic prospects in general. It also shows that some of their debt crisis has passed and they are not free to focus on other agendas. The three main factors why this growth is occurring is below:

1.) Debt Crisis Handled: The debt crisis where Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus needed a bail out have been dealt with. While they will continue to be a drag on the EU economy they have a plan going forward and the immediate crisis is over.

2.) Global Trend of Growth: Global markets are changing, technology is innovating, and communication is connecting to create greater value for consumers. Demand is rising and people are buying more items. EU fits within a general global upward swing the same as the U.S., India and China.

3.) Global Adjustments: Major global adjustments such as ISIS and international conflict have temporarily subsided. Likewise, countries and their way of interacting and trading is become more settled and there is a level of trust in the global economic system.

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

New Book Discusses the Misleading Economic Numbers that Don't Include Pollution

The new book The Growth Delusion: Wealth, Poverty, and the Well-Being of Nations by David Piling indicates that we may be calculating the wrong thing in determining overall growth of our economy. The premise is that we are not calculating the costs of pollution. His ideas seem to make sense considering these are lost costs that eventually will come out of economic output. 

Local pollution is a cost while global pollution impacts overall economic output over all economies. This is a cost that according to the book isn't well calculated. 

These numbers are just numbers. They are samples and indicators but the real economy is often very different. The real economy is based on human behavior and costs and rewards of opportunities. In this case, we are taking advantage of today and not worrying about the higher cost of pollution tomorrow. 

That doesn't mean we can do much about it but as those costs rise there will likely be innovative ways of reducing pollution and managing waste. These are costs and production factors that should be calculated. 

Whether or not all countries will calculate them in the future is difficult to tell. It sounds like a negative drag on the economy. It already exists but we are not actually looking at them and that is misleading. What leader would like to encourage those numbers in their time at the top?





Monday, January 29, 2018

The 5G Economy

There are new ideas around that the U.S. should engage in a possible 5G nationalized network that is either built by companies or the government itself. While experts have brought forward the idea that companies building this network doesn't protect the economy from foreign hackers. However, there are other considerations why this may be the best long-term approach.

The first is culture. There is a general push back against nationalized anything. We just don't like such powerful institutions being in the hands of government. All of the countries, and much of the worlds, data in one place may not sit well. Having companies manage this network makes more sense from a historical and economic background.

There are some issues of security but there are abilities to regulate the security of this industry by using the largest carriers of the networks to run this system (i.e. shared governance or other industry mechanism) according to government rules/regulations. Smaller industries can rent the system like any others but security is managed by an adaptive independent system.

The biggest advantage is growth in innovation which often leads to more jobs and opportunities. A large system like this will naturally influence on information movement, e-commerce, business networking, and the amount of content for consumption.

This would definitely be a big movement forward in our data infrastructure. It is one of the things that could have a big impact on multiple aspects of society that "connect" into the faster speeds. As data infrastructure improves so does the overall environment that businesses operates in and can have a larger organic approach to improving GDP.

There is also the issue of competitiveness and investment. Companies want highways, roads, sewer, trash, etc... In the United States we have fairly solid systems in place for everything except data infrastructure. We are not there yet in terms of a cohesive system. By putting in place a strong national data structure we are helping to ensure we are covering the needs of businesses in a way that can lead to greater investment on a local and national scale.