Hi, Carolyn,
The topics of major strategic concern to HR leaders include workforce management, talent management, employee engagement, learning, and organizational development and change. Mergers and acquisitions remain a hot topic.
· In leadership, new models, e.g., distributed models of leadership behavior, social intelligence, corporate social responsibility, triple bottom line, leaders as coaches
· In talent management, digging deeper into the organization and accelerating development of high potentials and emerging leaders, creating comprehensive and flexible talent management plans and meaningful planning processes. Strategic staffing processes, e.g., closely linking business strategy to workforce planning.
· In organization development, differentiating between managed change theories and adaptive systems theory, and the implications of that for HR professionals, departments, and programs. Service delivery, internal marketing model rather than staff function. Centers of Excellence. How to incorporate OD/CM as a strategic competency within HR in organizations that have always had traditional HR departments. Directly impacting business success and team success. The complementary roles of internal and external consultants.
· In organization structure, more developed understanding of possible configurations; managing the tension between centralized and decentralized structural elements; the challenges of matrixed organizations. Flexible part-time work arrangements as part of a workforce planning strategy.
· In employee engagement and large-scale system ("cultural" change), theories of emotional contagion are interesting and relevant, but HR departments are not talking about them yet. Here are a couple of articles on that topic:
1. Elfenbein (2008) -- Emotion in Organizations: A Review in Stages
2. Tobey and Manning (2009) -- Melting the Glacier: Activating Neural Mechanisms to Create Rapid Large-Scale Organizational Change
3. Randall Collins theory / book about Interaction Ritual Chains gets at the same topic from a different, macro-social perspective
· In learning, multinationals are worrying about technology-enabled learning and knowledge management. KM is nothing HR has ever specialized in before, but they have a role, e.g., to positively impact the process of the aging workforce leaving and the knowledge transfer, bench strength development that should occur in a planful way. Social media is a hot topic. Learning on demand still a challenge, with HR leaning toward traditional classroom and computer based training solutions.
Some ideas. These are relevant topics, more so for larger organization. I know you were looking for a syllabus and a reading list, but I thought these ideas might be helpful to you.
Patricia Millar
Organization Development Senior Staff
Lockheed Martin Corporation
patricia.a.millar@lmco.com