Exploring the Role and Importance of Human Capital in Resilient High Performing Organisations: Evidence from Business Clusters

This paper investigates and explores the link between the resilience of organisations, its human capital and firm performance. We base our analysis on the resource-based view of the firm, cluster strategy, and conservation of resources theories. Our contribution is contextualised by comparing the performance of business clusters across two observational periods, namely pre-recession (2005–2007) and recession (2008–2009) period. We identify six relevant indicators from the extant literature that capture economic dynamism, human capital, and financial viability of firms in order to capture the performance across clusters and capture resilience to the global financial crisis. We contribute by identifying organisations in business clusters that perform better due to being more resilient, particularly during challenging times. Through triangulation we find overwhelming evidence of the overarching role and importance of human capital (people) in driving more successful organisations in business clusters as they possess greater resilience during challenging times such as the recent global financial crises. We show that strong clusters not only improve regional employment and turnover growth over time, but improve resilience of regional economies to downturns through resource gain and crossover processes. We further illustrate that understanding the impact of resource reservoirs, resource passageways and crossover provides a framework for further research and intervention to promote resilience in organisations.     

DOES CLEAVAGE WORK AT WORK? MEN, BUT NOT WOMEN, FALSELY BELIEVE CLEAVAGE SELLS A WEAK PRODUCT

We examined whether men, but not women, would be distracted by a female sales representative's exposed cleavage, leading to greater perceived efficacy for a weak, but not for a strong product. A community sample of 88 men and 97 women viewed a video of a female pharmaceutical sales representative who (a) had exposed cleavage or dressed modestly and (b) pitched an ineffective or effective product. Although men were not more distracted or persuaded by cleavage, they gave the cleavage-exposed (versus nonexposed) sales representative more favorable hiring recommendations in the ineffective-drug condition and less favorable ratings in the effective-drug condition. Women generally rated the sales representative similarly regardless of cleavage exposure. On a postexperimental questionnaire, men, but not women, believed that female sales professionals ought strategically to use sex appeal to distract from a weak (but not a strong) product.     

Was the Original Lokāyata a ‘Live-in-the-Present’ Spiritualistic School?: An Alternative Perspective

Journal of Indian Council of Philosophical Research - Almost all schools of Indian philosophy including Buddhism and Jainism have condemned Lokāyata as a very base philosophy and relegated it...