Organizations increasingly establish Shared Service Centers, either for transactional (administrative) or transformational (organizational change) purposes. Their popularity originates from a combination of efficiency gains and an increase in service quality, without giving up control of the organizational and technical arrangements. The belief is that shared services should maximize the advantages of centralized and decentralized delivery of business functions. The volume deals with sample questions, including: What do shared service models involve? What are the structural arrangements between shared services and the organizations? Which business processes can and/or should be shared? What are the structural differences between shared services in different business processes? This ASM volume intends to move towards more systematic research action. Five main theoretical priorities shape the content of the volume: conceptualizing shared services for different types of business processes, business strategy and shared services, shared services and performance, pluralism in organizing shared services, and governance of shared services in different types of organizations.

This volume places Social Innovation between Human Resource Management (HRM) and Technology. There is a growing acceptance of the theory that HRM is strategically important for social innovation within organizations. To meet the requirements of globalization, diversity, "war for talent", and fast technological developments, HRM should allow a greater amount of flexibility and innovation in their policies and practices. In order for this to happen, however, HRM needs to be modernised by replacing inefficient and unsustainable HR practices and forms with flexible, sound, and pioneering ones, crossing inter and intraorganizational boundaries. Built within the Social Innovation research tradition, this volume views innovation of HRM from two ends of one continuum: At one end, HR practices and policies should be designed to support innovative organizational members, the creation of new ideas, an innovative organizational climate, and enlargement of the innovation capacity of organizations. At the other end, the HRM function evolves through applying new structures and new channels for delivery of the HR practices, and through involving new agents in the management of Human Resources.

This volume explores and presents challenges that "traditional" organisations experience once they take off towards self-managing organisations (or Teal Organisations). The concept of Teal Organisations is not surprising nowadays, but strangely enough it remains a dream concept: the majority of modern organisations represent hierarchical managerial constructions, with little to no evidence of self-management. The main characteristics of self-management are well-known: whole tasks; organisational actors equipped with a certain skill portfolio that is required to accomplish these tasks; work organised in teams that have autonomy for decision-making and performance management. Self-management is often accompanied by greater flexibility, better use of employees' creative capacities, increased quality of work life, and decreased employee absenteeism and turnover, eventually resulting in increased job satisfaction and organizational commitment. In this volume, we suggest that self-managing teams require a new way forward in modern organisations. Particularly, we offer a new roadmap for leaders who are responsible for the implementation of self-managing teams.

Organisations, as well as individuals and societies, continue to struggle with the complexity associated with unprecedented demographic changes. Workforce ageing and increasing age diversity are not transient phenomena, and their implications are compounded by the combination of several global trends like workers' increased mobility and migration, as well as increasing gender and ethnic differences. This demographic pressure compels organisations to question conventional ways of management thinking, doing and being in order to capitalize on the benefits of an age-diverse workforce. This volume bridges theoretical and empirical approaches in order to illuminate the challenges of valuing employees at any point in their professional lives, from youth to retirement. Embracing perspectives that span from the individual to the organisational levels of analysis, the book explores the two distinct but intertwined phenomena of workforce ageing and increasing workforce age diversity. The volume is divided into two parts. Contributions in the first section raise questions about the meanings of age and age diversity, as well as how and when age matters in organisations. The second part of the book examines the role and contribution of HR practices in forging an age-inclusive workplace.

The HRM field is entering smart businesses where the human, digital and high-tech dimensions seem to increasingly converge, and HRM needs to anticipate its own smart future. Technological developments and interconnectedness with and through the Internet (often called the "Internet of Things") set new challenges for the HRM function. Smartness enacted by HRM professionals - notions of "smart industries", "smart things" and "smart services" - all put new pressures on strategic HRM. Since the 1990s, organisations have increasingly been introducing electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM), with the expectation of improving the quality of HRM and increasing its contribution to firm performance. These beliefs originate from ideas about the endless possibilities of information technologies (IT) in facilitating HR practices, and about the infinite capacity of HRM to adopt IT. This book focuses on the progression from e-HRM to digital (d-HRM) - towards smart HRM. It also raises several important questions that businesses and scholars are confronted with: What kind of smart solution can and will HRM offer to meet the expectations of the latest business developments? Can HRM become smart and combine digitisation, automation and a network approach? How do businesses futureproof their HRM in the smart era? What competences do employees need to ensure businesses flourish in smart industries? With rapid technological developments and ever-greater automation and information available, the HRM function needs to focus on non-routine and complex, evidence-based and science-inspired, and creative and value-added professionally demanding tasks.

Social media have radically shifted the way people relate with each other and with organizations in technology-mediated ways; few areas are being impacted more strongly than Human Resources or Personnel Management. Attraction of candidates, internal communication with employees, communication with and among people; creation, design, testing and promotion of new services, new ways of organizing are appearing and changing the landscape at record speeds. This volume in the 'Advanced Series in Management' utilizes empirical and theoretical approaches to shed light on this exciting set of emerging, stimulating new uses of technology that stretch creativity beyond conventional limits.

Social media are changing the way businesses interact in technology-mediated ways with most of their stakeholders. Strategically-minded manager s, researchers and students cannot afford to ignore the new ways in which interactions with customers, employees, shareholders, and many other important constituents are taking place as a result of the widespread availability and creative use of these new technologies. Conventional wisdom is being challenged and virtual workspaces that had never been conceptualized are opening at blistering speed. This volume in the Advanced Series in Management series bridges empirical and theoretical approaches to identifying and demystify this set of emerging, exciting new family of user-gene rated content technologies. With contributions from and about a wide diverse range of countries, from emerging to established, researchers and informed practitioners will find intriguing, diverse perspectives on how the social media revolution challenging managers and management scholars. Involving disciplines as different as management, communications, information technology, personnel, finance and others, contributions in this boo k will be cited in future research projects or used in classrooms and other training settings by those more likely stay in the leading edge of this family of innovative tools.

International Business is vital to nations, to their economies. It brings wealth, it creates jobs, it opens views, it changes mindsets, and it creates economic and social stability. International Relations is important to nations too. It establishes relationships between nations, it exchanges political views between nations, it creates stability. International Business and International Relations are intertwined empirically as politicians need to boost economies through supporting entrepreneurship, international entrepreneurs need politicians and government representatives to get access to foreign markets, to deal with legal issues across borders. Commercial diplomacy is at the heart of the intersection between International Business and International Relations. Narrowly conceived, commercial diplomacy is the work of state officials in diplomatic service who carry out activities that support International Business. This book changes the conversation by studying the International Business - government relationship at the meso (organisational) and micro (individual) level, rather than focusing on the macro (national) level. This book aims to advance studies of commercial diplomacy by combing insights from two fields of study that to date have hardly spoken to each other. It brings insights from International Relations (and in particular the sub-field diplomatic studies) about the theory and practice of commercial diplomacy and it brings insights from business studies about the theory and practice of International Business. Combining the two, the book defines the field by being more holistic, it brings together in one place a thorough review of existing analysis of the subject from both fields, it outlines the basics of a new conceptual framework, it presents new empirical work based on data collected in five different countries (from the US to Indonesia), and puts forward a new research agenda.

Organizations have increasingly been introducing web-based applications for HRM purposes, and these are frequently labeled as electronic Human Resource Management (e-HRM). Much is expected of e-HRM in terms of improving the quality of HRM, increasing its contribution to company performance and freeing staff from administrative loads. The editors of this volume have been involved in a series of research projects, academic workshops, and conferences exploring the application of information technologies to various HR practices. Along with the "Special Issues of the International Journal of HRM", "International Journal of Technology and Human Interactions", and "International Journal of Training and Development", this volume is a tangible outcome of three European e-HRM Academic Workshops (2006, 2008, 2010), and two International Workshops on Human Resource Management (2007 and 2008). "Electronic HRM in Theory and Practice" brings a greater focus to the theoretical developments within the field of e-HRM research and clarifies the need to crystallize a theoretical framework for e-HRM research, raises further questions, and supports discussions.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Smart industry requires better management. As industrial and production systems are future-proofed, becoming smart and interconnected through use of new manufacturing and product technologies, work is advancing on improving product needs, volume, timing, resource efficiency, and cost, optimally using supply chains. Presenting innovative, evidence-based, and cutting-edge case studies, with new conceptualizations and viewpoints on management, Smart Industry, Better Management explores concepts in product systems, use of cyber physical systems, digitization, interconnectivity, and new manufacturing and product technologies. Contributions to this volume highlight the high degree of flexibility in people management, production, including product needs, volume, timing, resource efficiency and cost in being able to finely adjust to customer needs and make full use of supply chains for value creation. Smart Industry, Better Management illustrates how industry can enabled by a more network-centric approach, making use of the value of information and the latest available proven manufacturing techniques.

Digital advancements and discoveries are now challenging traditional human resource management services within businesses. The Handbook of Research on E-Transformation and Human Resources Management Technologies: Organizational Outcomes and Challenges provides practical, situated, and unique knowledge on innovative e-HRM technologies that add competitive advantage to organizations. This Handbook of Research expands on theoretical conceptualizations of e-HRM useful to researchers, academicians, and human resource managers.