Thought Leadership

In this short video, Professor David Wilson, Professor in Organisation Studies at The Open University Business School, discusses the changes that have impacted on HR's standing in organisations over the past 10 years and what he sees as the challenges ahead.

Systems thinking is a highly effective approach to managing organisations.To get the complete picture, leaders need an in-depth knowledge of the entire organisation, its various moving parts, and how each component impacts upon the rest. But there’s more to systems thinking than that.

Has the HR function changed? The HR professionals I talk to, and perhaps most importantly, the students working towards a career in HR, still seem to struggle with a ‘caught in the middle’ positioning between employees and employers. 

Research undertaken by Secondsight (1) found that 67% of the working population receive no financial education from their employers. Only 20% of employees had a coherent financial plan. Clearly there is a financial education gap that needs filling – but why should this be the responsibility of employers and their HR functions?

The automotive sector is not only continuing to adapt and improve itself, but through the adaptation and spread of its techniques to manage operations more effectively in other sectors, it is also continuing to change the world. Dr Paul Walley, Lecturer in Operations Management at The Open University Business School, explains.

We have come a long way from the late 1990s and the first inklings of what the emerging internet might mean for executive education. A model of the efficient transfer of knowledge held sway as delegates were ranged before banks of cathode ray tubes and plugged into programmes of learning. With computers in charge, what could possibly go wrong?

Following the 9/11 attacks in 2001, a raft of legislation was introduced in the UK and in Europe mandating data sharing between the private sector and government. Post Snowden, the appetite for such surveillance waned. However, after the attacks in Paris and Copenhagen earlier in 2015, this appetite seems to have been renewed.

Leadership is widely regarded as important and, if you want to develop a career in any organisation, you will certainly be expected to develop and demonstrate leadership skills. Unfortunately, there is much less unanimity about what constitutes good leadership, although many have tried to answer this important question. 

Increasingly leaders need to deal with and manage a range of stakeholders with diverse goals, values and priorities; political astuteness, aka understanding the lay of the land and using it to your advantage, is a valuable tool in influencing and engaging stakeholders. It also helps leaders to understand others and achieve organisational outcomes.

Around the world, governments are predicting serious employment challenges relating to a pending shortage of key skills. What can be done to address this and how does it impact on HR, L&D departments and the companies and institutions that design and deliver development programmes for them?