Contents  1/2015     Contents  2/2015


Zuzana Kozubíková:  Editorial.

Muath Khalid Almansour: 
Human Resources Discrimination.
[abstract]   [article]

Irena Bakanauskienė, Daiva Brasaitė: 
Responding to Challenges in HRM Environment: The Case of Lithuanian Organisations.
[abstract]   [article]

Marzena Fryczyńska, Joanna Fierla, Christina Ciecierski: 
Employee Networking Behaviors in Poland: Pursue for Intercultural Competences Linkages.
[abstract]   [article]

Algirdas Giedraitis, Rimantas Stašys, Julius Ramanauskas: 
The Identification of the Individual Relevance in a Group Through the Value Contamination Process.
[abstract]   [article]

Violeta Grublienė, Evaldas Gedvilas, Loreta Venckevičė, Rasa Grigolienė: 
Development of Creativity – The Case of Lithuanian Production Companies.
[abstract]   [article]

Jolanta Navickaitė, Rūta Dačiulytė, Jolanta Urbanovič: 
Transformational Leadership: Is It Easy to Be Visionary and Oriented to Empowering Organization Community and Distributing Leadership? A Case Study of Lithuanian General Education Schools.
[abstract]   [article]

Hana Stojanová, Pavel Tomšík, Eva Tesařová: 
The Approach to the Work Mobility in Generation Y – Enthusiasm for Change.
[abstract]   [article]

Jan Vaněk, Radka Vaníčková: 
Managament of the Innovation in the Company: Knowledge Sharing or Autonomy?
[abstract]   [article]

Milota Vetráková, Lukáš Smerek: 
The Impact of Corporate Culture on Human Resources Development in an Intercultural Environment.
[abstract]   [article]

Marcin Żemigała: 
Bibliometric Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility – Different Countries’ Perspective.
[abstract]   [article]



 Abstracts  1/2015   


Muath Khalid Almansour: 
Human Resources Discrimination.
[contents]   [article]
Searched company has a policy that they will provide tuition reimbursement to employees on classes and workshops, which benefit the company, or classes, which apply to a degree program. However, the most challenge part is that it turns out that reimbursement for graduate level classes is available only to employees at the managerial level. This policy essentially excludes the majority of the employees from gaining a graduate degree and is inequitable in its impact on employees, since managers already have degrees and higher wages, thus putting them in a position to benefit more from many company benefits such as thrift plan in the first place. The theoretical analysis in this study follows Kotter’s eight-step model for change and identifies the obstacles and benefits for maintaining a successful management team. This model offers a well-defined linear approach for CEOs and leaders. The eight stages designed by Kotter will help to define barriers for managers such as a low level of trust among employees, human resources discrimination, arrogant attitude, and lack of leadership skills in middle management. In addition, this study describes and discusses the various elements and aspects of the general and specific responsibilities and activities of the CEO in an effective organization. First, the CEO must assess and address the wants and needs of subordinates that directly relate to organizational growth. Another critical requirement/responsibility is to be aware of organizational change both present and projected that effects company growth. The CEO must be consciously aware of changing cultures and assess the validity of seeming changes. Another vital responsibility is to examine former and current policies directly related to the issue of organizational change. Within an organization, often there are factors that create success or cause failure. The CEO must constantly seek to identify those factors since efficient leadership is one of the key components of assuring organizational success.


Irena Bakanauskienė, Daiva Brasaitė: 
Responding to Challenges in HRM Environment: The Case of Lithuanian Organisations.
[contents]   [article]
The article deals with the topic of human resource management from the viewpoint of response to challenges posed by environmental changes. It presents the results of empirical research as well as theoretical and methodological backgrounds for its accomplishment. The goal of the research presented in this article is to determine what challenges arising in organisations’ environment, including internal, micro-, and macro-environment are significant for human resource management in organisations in Lithuania. This goal has been reached by the set of objectives, which allow firstly, to determine main changes occurring in human resource management environment, then to define current and recurrent challenges to human resource management. Finally, to examine which of these challenges are significant and which are irrelevant to human resource management in organisations in Lithuania and to discuss the reasons behind. The results of empirical research disclose that the most significant challenges for human resource management in Lithuania are corporate social responsibility, and performance/results-oriented organizational culture. The analysis also revealed a number of challenges which appear to be not relevant to organisations in Lithuania. Absence of interest in differences in business environments and in managing geographically dispersed team, and low score on diversity management show that despite scientific and professional human resource management literature arguing globalisation to be highly important, it does not play such important role for human resource management in Lithuania.


Marzena Fryczyńska, Joanna Fierla, Christina Ciecierski: 
Employee Networking Behaviors in Poland: Pursue for Intercultural Competences Linkages.
[contents]   [article]
The article explores the phenomenon of networking in human capital management. Specifically, it addresses the problem of employee networking behaviors. The goal was to present the general trends in employee networking behaviors in Poland as well as to verify how networking behaviors are differentiated by socio-demographic factors: gender, age, education attainment, the length of professional experience or employment status and job position level. In order to achieve that goal, an empirical study involving 373 respondents was designed and conducted by the authors, using the adapted version of a networking behaviors questionnaire first designed and applied by for studies in the USA. The questionnaire measured the frequency of networking behaviors in general, as well as the frequency of five sub-types of networking behaviors identified on the basis of previous studies: Maintaining Contacts, Socializing, Engaging in Professional Activities, Participating in Church and Community, Increasing Internal Visibility. The article presents the scope of up to date research findings in the field conducted by other scientists. It then describes the study sample, setting and method, as well as the hypotheses. Data overview is presented to show the general trends in the findings. The hypotheses are verified. The data shows that the frequency of employee engagement in networking behaviors is rather low and counts 2.62 on a 6-point scale, and it differs between the specific scales. Furthermore, the authors found out that gender, age, education attainment, the length of professional experience or employment status do not differentiate the frequency of undertaking networking behaviors. Only in the case of job position level (managers vs non-managers) statistically significant difference exists in the frequency of networking behaviors. This goes along with other research findings. These findings are shown to support intercultural competencies research and propose further research directions.


Algirdas Giedraitis, Rimantas Stašys, Julius Ramanauskas: 
The Identification of the Individual Relevance in a Group Through the Value Contamination Process.
[contents]   [article]
When seeking personal or company’s goals a need occurs to share values in order to ensure an appropriate formation of a group. Values identified by an individual and a group help to fine-tune employee personal and professional goals as well as to emphasize career priorities. Values determine inner views to the most important things as they can express a relation and interaction between an individual and a group. Company managers who aim for the individual and group contamination should not only take into consideration abilities and experience of a candidate but also identify the values. The objective of this article is to identify the individual relevancy inside a working group using the process of the value contamination. Quantitative research was completed at the furniture production company. The following elements of individual and group values were identified: company strategy, company reputation, motivation system, work organisation, working environment, team work, and personal liability. The most important values inside the groups are related to the company strategy and reputation while the team work and personal liability are the values that are least important. After the identification of the individual and group values a manager may form a suitable (effective) group which would be aiming to achieve company goals.


Violeta Grublienė, Evaldas Gedvilas, Loreta Venckevičė, Rasa Grigolienė: 
Development of Creativity – The Case of Lithuanian Production Companies.
[contents]   [article]
The article analyses the importance and problems of, and opportunities for, creativity development. The article points out that creativity is a multidimensional phenomenon, which occurs in a variety of fields and contexts – from art and design to entrepreneurship, science and research, and it is associated with the abilities to analyse and process information, data, and to take risks. It should be noted that creativity is perceived in the modern society as a positive, promoting quality, but its role in a company is ambiguous. The analysis and generalisations of scientific sources allowed us to formulate a hypothesis, which was verified in the research.
The research is based on three Lithuanian production companies, discussing the main factors that affect their employees’ creativity. The emphasis is placed on the fact that creativity affects the innovativeness of organisations. It should be noted that creativity is researched in different ways in a variety of contexts, meanwhile in scientific literature, it is typically twofold: as a trait of a personality capable of creative thinking, and as a process of organisation resulting in a creative product. Applying the methods of survey of experts and employees, the situation of personal creativity assessment of managers and employees, as well as the level of usage of methods for creativity development, were determined. A conclusion was drawn that too little attention is paid to creativity development in organisations, and measures for improvement of creativity development have been provided.


Jolanta Navickaitė, Rūta Dačiulytė, Jolanta Urbanovič: 
Transformational Leadership: Is It Easy to Be Visionary and Oriented to Empowering Organization Community and Distributing Leadership? A Case Study of Lithuanian General Education Schools.
[contents]   [article]
The article presents a research based on transformational leadership theory. The aim of the research is to establish whether, according to the teachers’ opinion, school principals are visionary in their daily activities, able to empower the school community to act and distribute their leadership. The research method used is a written survey. 379 teachers from 17 Lithuanian general education schools were involved. The research results reveal that teachers believe that the principals are visionaries, however, only some of them are able to empower the school community to act and even less of them are able to distribute their leadership to others. Besides, the research reveals that although transformational leadership is characteristic of school principals, some of its aspects are expressed in daily activities of school principals differently. School principal’s transformational leadership’s some aspects depend on the period the school principal has been the head of school, i.e. school principals who have worked in this position from 5 to 10 years tend to be more optimistic when speaking about the future of the school, empower different school teams to act and believe in the talents and unlimited possibilities of each member.


Hana Stojanová, Pavel Tomšík, Eva Tesařová: 
The Approach to the Work Mobility in Generation Y – Enthusiasm for Change.
[contents]   [article]
The access to human resources management by the various generations’ categories becomes an actual topic as each generation is different from the other and requires different leadership approach. Understanding generational differences can help companies improve efficiency, sharing know-how and reduce staff turnover. The main objective of paper is mapping of approach of Gen Y to the work mobility. The partial objective is to compare needs, values and expectations of the Gen Y to changes in the labour market in Czech Republic and France.
The research was carried on samples of employed and potential job seekers aged 18–30 years, graduates of secondary and tertiary education in the Czech Republic and France. Primary data from the 170 returned questionnaires are processed by statistical methods of chi square contingency test and are interpreted in tables with absolute and relative frequency. They were set for the research purposes hypothesis concerning the existence of differences between Czech and French Gen Y, their satisfaction with conditions in the work environment and career possibilities in their country. The paper findings of serve as a foundation for employers, helping them to improve the adaptation process of Gen Y to the working environment.


Jan Vaněk, Radka Vaníčková: 
Managament of the Innovation in the Company: Knowledge Sharing or Autonomy?
[contents]   [article]
In this overview study author points at the crucial innovation strategies of the companies: innovation of the product or service. Then it describes necessary step in innovation: identification of strategic gap in order to gain competitive advantage and implementation of learning or training. Study mentions also three important ways and attitudes which lead to the innovation: support of the leaders (transformational leadership); knowledge sharing (which can be associated with experiential learning and with realizing the hidden potentials of the experience); and the need of the knowledge worker to autonomy. The leadership has to consider when it is preferable to let the knowledge workers to work independently; and when it is better to search the ideas in group (for example brainstorming or collective mind mapping). On the other hand, the method of mind mapping can be used in group, but also it is an instrument, tool to look for new ideas for independent person, individual par example for planning, making decision and writing of articles. Conclusion part of the study contains Table with defined crucial opportunities and risks of autonomy and knowledge sharing.


Milota Vetráková, Lukáš Smerek: 
The Impact of Corporate Culture on Human Resources Development in an Intercultural Environment.
[contents]   [article]
The aim of this paper is to confront the opinions of academic and business experts in corporate culture and human resource development with emphasis on the distinctiveness of intercultural environment. In drafting the review methodology, the axiom that the primary objective of every business is to achieve success was considered. The factors which significantly affect the welfare of the enterprise are creative and dynamic management, employees able to develop and accept corporate culture. Businesses that are a part of multinational companies operate alongside national enterprises in intercultural environment. In addition to an advanced technology, know-how, business partners and other key organizational elements, multinational companies bring along their cultural and social values. Managers and employees meet people from different cultures who bring their ideas, values and norms in communication, corporate culture, management and human resources development. Understanding other cultures presupposes knowledge of our own culture and acceptance of differences in cultures of other nations. In order to achieve the aim of this paper, the examination in selected Slovak enterprises was necessary. Respondents were human resources or senior managers who are responsible for the level of corporate culture and human resources development. The result of the study, based on initial assumptions, is the impact of corporate culture on the human resources development. Experts verified the credibility of the results of the questionnaire using the Delphi method.


Marcin Żemigała: 
Bibliometric Analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility – Different Countries’ Perspective.
[contents]   [article]
The following article is devoted to show the geographical regional concentrations: national and continental, in the area of the scientific research being conducted on corporate social responsibility. The author, by using bibliometric analyses on the representative data set (bibliographic records concerning scientific articles) taken from the global bibliographic database Scopus, reveals which countries and continents are characterised with the greatest and most valued achievements of scientific research over corporate social responsibility.
Firstly, the evolution of theoretical models of corporate social responsibility is presented, which shows how wide and polymorphic research area the analysed conception is. Furthermore, the basis of bibliometric analyses, which the author uses to realise the goal of the article, is outlined. The review of previously conducted bibliometric analyses of corporate social responsibility has been also presented, and the lack of these concentrating on national and continental aspects is stressed. Then, there are four research questions formulated and the procedure of undertaken researches, according to which the author has carried out adequate analyses.