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"Do not look for formula solutions, but rather create processess that get problems solved" (Edgar Schein)
Bled (Slovenia), 21 September 2007
A two-day international human resource managers' forum, organized by the IEDC-Bled School of Management and supported by Telekom Slovenije and KB 1909, featured the keynote speaker Prof. Edgar Schein, the founding father of the study of organizational culture, often referred to as the world leading management thinker after Peter Drucker. The forum entitled "The Changing Roles of the HR Executive: The Impact of Globalization, Technological Complexity and Cultural Diversity", was attended by 154 human resource managers and leading executives from 17 countries.
The introductory day of the forum was marked by a panel discussion on the biggest challenges facing the HR managers in the future, led by Dr. Nadezhda Zhexembayeva, lecturer at Case Western Reserve University, USA, and the IEDC-Bled School of Management. As the greatest challenges, human resource directors Stephan Baron from AVL List GmbH, Ursula Kuntner-Schweickhardt from Erste Bank Group, both Austria, Marina Pakhomkina from TNK-BP, Russia, and Vanda Pečjak from Goodyear Dunlop CSEE, Slovenia, set out speed and flexibility, cross-cultural issues, talent management, motivation and international mobility. Professor Schein stressed that "human resource managers need to be 'culture managers', where we have a paradoxical situation: corporate culture represents both a problem and a solution to human resource managers."
Further on, professor Schein talked about the four key roles of the human resource executive: champion of the employees, payroll and contract administrator, partner in top strategy, and professional conscience and organization developer, which are all intrinsic to the human resource manager's role and are a function of local environment, personal and organizational characterisitcs; nowadays, partnership with top management tends to be the most distinct role.
In professor's opinion, the key human resource management development trends are the changing concept of career (more mobility, less loyalty, more concern for self), more variety in employees' and organizational needs, increasing need to analyze jobs and job roles, and linking organizational learning to human capital; professor Schein pointed out that "the organizations should use the talent they have got, rather to find the people they need."
Professor Edgar Schein is Sloan Fellows Professor of Management Emeritus at MIT – Sloan School of Management. Besides his numerous articles in professional journals he has authored fourteen books, including Organizational Psychology, Career Dynamics and Organizational Culture and Leadership – the last being chosen as one of the 100 best business books ever. His consultation focuses on organizational culture, organization development, process consultation, and career dynamics, and among his past and current clients are major corporations both in the U.S. and overseas, such as Apple, Citibank, Procter & Gamble, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, Exxon, Shell,... Professor Schein has received many international honors and awards.
In the final part of the forum, professor Schein spoke about the new conceptual tools for human resource managers, including "career anchors", which he defines as the adult's self-definition of his/her competences, motives and values: "people have a self-concept about what they want to do and are able to do; career anchors become their self-images, based on their personal experience." There are eight categories of career anchors, the most predominant are technical/functional competence and general managerial competence, followed by entrepreneurial creativity, autonomy, security, service, pure challenge, and life style. In every occupation and in most organizations there are all different types of career anchors, and each of them represents a different set of skills, motivations, and values. If a company wants to change its culture, it needs to work directly on employees' behavior (and later on values), which needs to include environmental responsibility. "I see a terrific need to find formula solutions, but this will not work in practice. If you want to find a solution, you need to develop your process skills so that you can create processes to solve the problems you have; it is important that you develop them locally."
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