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B811 – Tutorial 1 – Human Resource Management in Context

Internal (Pricing) Decisions vs External (Supply Chain) Factors

Introducing the term: VUCA

Something very interesting has come up in the tutorial slides from Week 0 of B811. The term VUCA has emerged and is being used broadly to describe external influences on the functioning of the organisation, which translate as volatile, uncertain, complex or ambiguous (VUCA) influences. Phonetically, it may sound like a slightly graphic cross-reference to an insult and movie title where Ben Stiller was cast, but in fact, VUCA is anything but in nature, as we will come to see it is a reasonably productive abbreviation. One that may very well dictate the analysis of (external) threats in a corporate SWOT matrix.

PESTLE and STEEPLE

In Tutorial 1, the introduction to our module, we’re given the example of a high-fashion store offering clothes for sale that use fabrics sourced from ethical suppliers. Let’s refer to this store’s business as Firm X. We’re asked to critically analyse a situation where business pressures create the need to evaluate whether disbanding the value of its ethical brands, which would be categorised as being under the STEEPLE factor – which is just PESTLE with an ethical dimension – could save Firm X enough by way of its manufacturing, and production process to yield a greater level of profit.

Where do we start with this? My approach is basically to look at two aspects of the scenario and by extension, two further aspects which may inform our thinking on strategic decision making.

• Look at: Ethical constraints and the possible depreciation of brand value (Internal)
• Look at: Strategic matters concerning business decision-making (Internal)
• Observe: Market size for ethical brands in fashion (External)
• Observe: Price elasticity in ethical consumption (External)

What dynamics are at play here? Well, aside from the obvious theories that may apply (that of Ronald Coarse's theory of the firm and Milton Friedman's imperative on Firm X as a profit-seeking entity) if we focus solely on the latter two aspects of our second approach, we find various factors may come to fruition, namely, a hypothetical dichotomy arising from the timely distinction between import restrictions (relevant for US based emporiums) and logistics and supply chain synergies from the procurement of domestic ethical fabric brands.

By extension, local currency valuations also become a factor of relevance. How do foreign exchange rates for overseas ethical brands compare to procurement from domestic brands that offer similar value?

Approaching the topic like this essentially narrows the issue of effective pricing decisions to the influence of supply chain factors. How does Firm X address this practical assumption? One way is by looking at evidence-based models of price elasticity using a package such as R, where Marshallian (uncompensated) price elasticities and Hicksian (compensated) price elasticities can be estimated. Assuming a price vector that combines a dataframe reflecting sale prices and quantities.

Q: Can you think of any scenarios where there may be a conflict or tension between volatility and regulation affecting Firm X?

This is a great warmup question to get the loins gurgling. Not only is the topic of volatility a matter for globalisation, but it is also a matter for regulation. Take, for instance, the example of Credit Suisse Group and its case as a defendant in a trial where the Group and its then Chief Executive Thiam Tidjane were wrongly accused of manipulating a key market volatility benchmark (the inverse VIX). The V in VUCA also reminded me of what the Canadian environmental activist and writer, Naomi Klein, eloquently refers to as ‘Beyond Borders’ in a 2001 conference speech come New Left Review article entitled: ‘Reclaiming the Commons’. I am reminded at this juncture of Prof. Alan Barrell’s use of the same language in his presentations on ‘Entrepreneurship Without Borders’.

Q: Any crossover between external factors affecting Firm X and internal factors?

• External: PESTLE - environment (COVID-19’s HR response given treatment of racial discrimination in frontline occupations in England and Wales).
• Internal: Strategic changes/Managerialism (Al Mahameed, Yates, & Gebreiter, 2024)
• Africa and Nigeria – where studies focused on the link between 1) trade union survival strategies, 2) the new employment relations climate, and 3) the subject of globalisation (Betchoo, 2013)

References 

Al Mahameed, M., Yates, D., and Gebreiter, F. (2024). Management as Ideology: “New” Managerialism and the Corporate University in the period of Covid‐19. Financial Accountability and Management, 40(1), 34-57 (Accessed on 04 May 2025)

Betchoo, N. K. (2023) ‘Youth empowerment as a human resource development strategy in Mauritius’, Issues in Business Management and Economics, 1(8), pp. 218-229. Available at: https://journalissues.org/ibme/abstract/betchoo/ (Accessed on 04 May 2025) 

Holbrook, P. and Beadle, H. (2025) ‘B811 - Human Resource Management in Context Tutorial 1 - introduction’, Open University Business School (Accessed on 03 May 2025)

Klein, N. (2001) ‘Reclaiming the Commons’, New Left Review, Available at: https://newleftreview-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/issues/ii9/articles/naomi-klein-reclaiming-the-commons (Accessed on 04 May 2025)

Interpreting and adapting Cochrane’s “PICO”framework to the example of a systematic review of literature on type-2 diabetes concerning patients who may be positively affected as a result of the possible interventions offered by a new patented drug such as Ozempic, what one finds is a perfect example of a T1 or T2 research opportunity. Depending on how you might categorise such a study.

But because it is scientific in its premise first and foremost as opposed to being focused on the science of applicability we’ll call it T1.5. One might define the T1.5 research question (using a PICO systematic review) as follows:

Reading Gubbins and Rousseau (2015), the first thing I realised is its very critical of Government's perception of University funding, which reminded me of a few interesting examples where I had encountered first-hand how research and practice are mutually disaggregated. Then I recalled when I attended a 1-day workshop held by Recruitment Leaders Connect. Bill Boorman was the instructor for the day leading us through the presentation, bless his socks. He was a great speaker nonetheless. 

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sat next to Howard and Billy, who each were presenting two contrasting bits of information. Howard, how recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) was the next big thing in recruitment. and Billy who was a 360 recruiter, was outright promoting the contingent agency recruiter grind.

This then reminded me of Gubbins' and Rousseau (2015) who in their paper mention this coupled concept of translational research - where research on theory informs interventions and outcomes in practice. What's so important about this. What does it represent? How does it apply to my example of Howard and RPO at the conference I attended? and HRD in practice, more generally?

The truth is I don't yet know and I can only guestimate because there are various factors at play. Race, level of experience, cultural competences, differences and significances across time between RPO and agency work. But what I do know is (academic) research can be seen to inform events such as Recruitment Leaders Connect - to an extent. If you believe I am talking rubbish, I am not. All you have to do is watch UChicago's YouTube video on how to write academically to understand that academia can be a very self-centered profession that occasionally misses and ignores its various audiences. 

As Gubbins and Rousseau (2015: 110) put it in their article: "Bennis and O’Toole (2005) argued that business schools emphasize research that speaks to the concerns of academics, while ignoring the connections to problems of management practice. According to their logic, by ending the knowledge generation process with articles that only other academics read, business schools are on a path to their own irrelevance."

I'll aim to complete Gubbins and Rousseau before I reflect conclusively on my opinion on these existential questions.

References

So, I've read the module outline and have a brief idea how the process of creating impactful difference in Human Resource Development (HRD) looks from an academic perspective.

I've noted HRD Professionals and Consultants should, when aiding an organization:

• Highlight L&D Challenges, Difficulties and Obstacles is the starting point - Ascertain organization hurdles
• Follow Evidence-Based Philosophy - Briner's 6 A's in an organizational context
• Source Relevant HRD Data - Based on informed conversation, surveys, and feedback from colleagues
• Pinpoint a credible HRD Strategy - Decide on the approach
• Inspect and Engage Empirical Data - Run regressions, spot patterns that respond to and inform the challenge
• Create and Finalise HRD Policy - This is the final step in my notes from the module outline and involves amalgamating the challenges with relevant solutions that are most widely accepted to be unique to the original obstacle.

How close is this to the actual accepted process? 

NB: I also found that this optional module structure is very consistent with the other F93 modules (it includes critical perspectives, theory and practice, ethics, and sustainability), making the module content very digestible and much easier to follow.

Thank you Open University for a great welcome and equally impressive introduction to the module.

I’m pleased to share with my fellow Open University colleagues that my recent article has been accepted for publication on arXiv.org.

This paper presents a study into an econometric analysis of competitive equilibria through the lens of static game theory. Specifically, it applies Bertrand's duopoly framework—where prices converge to marginal cost at equilibrium—to illustrate how Pareto efficiency can arise when forbearance emerges as a strategic profile under conditions of incomplete information.

🔗 Read the full article here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.22825

Road to 100k

Thanks for the 80,000 blog views. Guess what? Only 20k more to a whopping 100,000. Wow!

Anyway, so, this morning, I was prompted to reflect on personal pursuits by Dr Kaul in our meeting. One thing about pursuits, both academic and professional, is that these endeavors have become relatively narrow and streamlined in recent years. The only paid work I have ever applied for or been in for have been executive staffing roles, mainly because as anyone who knows can testify, staffing is a sector I am quite interested in, alongside Learning and Development (B814), and Employee Relations (B813). 

However, as the fit notes era is well and truly behind me, I have become quite "choosy" in my adult years concerning opportunity (I guess some of us have to be) and in terms of my outlook and career potential. 

In utopia, I tabled the pursuit (it is much rather an aspiration) of becoming a Research Assistant (Post-Doc) to a prominent Professor of HRM at London Business School or King's College's Department of Human Resources, which is a bricks-and-mortar University, which I greatly admire. 

However, even I had to acknowledge to Dr. Kaul, that there is a very small caveat that this career path inherently has. Though strikingly rich in vernacular and academic esteem, I may choose its course (spotting gaps, conducting original research, co-authoring, etc) and live to realize it was perhaps a feat only a lucky few could accomplish in their careers in academia.

That got me thinking. Whatever happened to good old shareholder capitalism? 

A major element of Tianxi Wang's module is controversial. We all know what shareholder capitalism is though, right? Well if you didn't, I'll briefly explain. This term generally describes theories that deal with the concern of investors as owners of corporations (Jensen and Meckling, 1976) which are equally important to the rise of startups and smaller enterprises. It aims to answer the question: How can shareholders, who have the long-term value and ownership of the firm at heart, best delegate the control of decisions made by managerial actors who are entrusted to maintain this value, to varying degrees of stewardship? This is often called the 'separation of ownership and control' in the United Kingdom and other countries.

In Jensen and Meckling's (1976) abstract, we find the familiar problem of principal agency. It reads: "We define the concept of agency costs, show its relationship to the ‘separation and control’ issue, investigate the nature of the agency costs generated by the existence of debt and outside equity, demonstrate who bears costs and why, and investigate the Pareto optimality of their existence." What exactly do Jensen and Meckling mean here by the use of the word "costs"? 

Well, Prof. Edmans, and others such as Varela (2017), have argued, that they mean agency costs, which "arise when the firm is run by a manager who owns less than 100 percent of the company—so there’s a separation between shareholders (the ‘principal’) and the manager (‘agent’) who acts on their behalf. Agency costs arise when there is a ‘divergence between the agent’s decisions and those decisions that would maximize the welfare of the principal’. Human Resources as a function, are therefore quietly implicated in a very real sense in ideas that go above and beyond the importance of something as simple and simultaneously as complex as strategic planning. We are talking more along the lines of what value, governance, and stewardship on behalf of the principal owners of a firm, are, and in what Prof. Edmans refers to - as the overall "welfare" of the firm. To sum up, shareholder capitalism is of great importance to our perceptions of pluralism in Human Resource Management as a discipline and should be given more credence and granted more clemency. 

References

1. Jensen, M.C. and Meckling, W.H. (1976) 'Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs, and ownership structure', Journal of Financial Economics, 3(4), pp. 305-360 - Available at https://www.sfu.ca/~wainwrig/Econ400/jensen-meckling.pdf

2. Edmans, A. (2021) 'What Stakeholder Capitalism Can Learn from Jensen and Meckling'. Oxford Law Blogs - Available at https://blogs.law.ox.ac.uk/business-law-blog/blog/2021/05/what-stakeholder-capitalism-can-learn-jensen-and-meckling

3. Varela, O. (2017) "Agency costs” when agents perform better than owners, Finance Research Letters, 23, pp. 103-113 - Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.frl.2017.07.019

This note presents a question on the legitimacy of the so-called ‘dualist’ approach to the implementation of international law into domestic law (Ministry of Justice, 2021: ss.48)

My arguments are supported by three concise references:

• McGoldrick’s (2001: 914) position paper on the incompatibility of UK law with the European Convention on Human Rights, which cites an area known as ‘new’ interpretive obligation
• Transformative constitutionalism is a type of generalized political philosophy (used in a discursive context) according to Prof. Karl Klare (Hunt, 2002: 88)
• Prof. Edwin Egede and Cheluchi Onyemelukwe’s view, according to Ebenezer Durojaye, is that the Nigerian Constitution is superior and not equivalent to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (in Nigeria) but that the African Charter should nevertheless be afforded the privilege of full effect in Nigerian Constitution (Killander, 2010:159)

How is ‘dualism’ perceived among employment law, labour law, and human rights practitioners?

References

Hunt, M. (1999). The Human Rights Act and legal culture: the judiciary and the legal profession. Journal of Law and Society, 26(1), 86-102. (Accessed on 23 October 2024)

Killander, M. (2010) International law and domestic human rights litigation in Africa. Pretoria University Law Press PULP. (Accessed on 23 October 2024)

McGoldrick, D. (2001). The United Kingdom's Human Rights Act 1998 in Theory and Practice. International & Comparative Law Quarterly, 50(4), 901-953.

Ministry of Justice (2021) ‘Human Rights Act Reform: A Modern Bill of Rights: A consultation to reform the Human Rights Act 1998’, Crown copyright, Available at https://consult.justice.gov.uk/human-rights/human-rights-act-reform/supporting_documents/humanrightsreformconsultation.pdf (Accessed on 23 October 2024)

Shale, Itumeleng. (2019). Historical perspective on the place of international human rights treaties in the legal system of Lesotho: moving beyond the monist-dualist dichotomy. African Human Rights Law Journal, 19(1), 193-218. (Accessed on 23 October 2024)

My question here is: How else do election manifestos affect immigration policy and wage growth?

One well-researched answer has been given by my academic advisor while at Essex Economics Department, who is now teaching at Warwick Economics Department, Prof. Francesco Squintani. He agrees with the above, and in an outstanding theoretical economics paper that focuses on the micro-theory of pandering in elections, he and 2 co-authors argue that politicians overindulge in scrupulous policy announcements, to the detrimental welfare of the electorate.

This got me thinking about the task of comparing election promises (manifestos and wider announcements) in US. UK and to a lesser extent, French incumbent electoral campaigns. In his paper, Prof. Squintani argues that a politician’s motive is essentially viewed as a singular outcome - to be elected by voters - which poses an obstacle to precise information gathering and complete information because both politicians along a Hotelling location model (which is explained in the paper) pander around policies and create informational asymmetries.

I wrote in the original draft of “Pareto-Nash Reversion Strategies” (Mayaki, 2024) that burden of ascertaining skilled immigration demand must rest in the hands of institutional employers and not left at the doorstep of central government. The figures from this report by Pierce and Selee (2017) highlight the enormity of the task at hand when identifying precise immigration policy. 

Pierce and Selee (2017) argue that in the U.S. seven executive orders signed by newly elected President Donald Trump which restricted immigration policy and led to a 3.9% reduction in tourism to the United States in the first six months of 2017, a 9% reduction in newly arriving international students, and a decline in H-1B visa applications by employers’ with only 199,000 applications received that year – the lowest number since the Great Recession. These are not mercantilist numbers. If anything, they represent exactly that which won Trump’s election against H. Clinton. Promises of this sort are usually not credible, but what makes them credible is swift action immediately after an election victory as opposed to delayed implementation.

In that sense, I am completely fascinated by the discussion surrounding this WSJ / US Bureau of Labor Statistics chart, posted by Jason Furman on X (formerly known as Twitter). As Furman's argument goes, based on this chart, foreign-born workers have been and are more likely to be in post-pandemic employment (albeit at a much lower wage) than US-born workers. Furman (Former Chief Economic Adviser to President Barack Obama) says it reflects the work ethic of immigrant labor and by extension, the positive sentiment toward favorable migration policy in the United States.

My only response as a left-leaning economist is to highlight that because of an absence of a notable contribution in the form of structural unemployment shortages in the US-born population, the consensus around the debate fails to acknowledge that the wage at which workers enter the US labor market is not only directly affected by the level of legal migration, as my latest arXiv paper outlines but this threshold is often set arbitrarily and may be interrelated to the overall price level, particularly in the most populous states in America.

References

Charles, K. K., and Stephens Jr, M. (2013). Employment, wages, and voter turnout. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 5(4), 111-143, Available at https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w17270/w17270.pdf (Accessed on 03 July 2024)

Kartik, N., Squintani, F. and Tann, K. (2024) “Pandering and Elections: Information Revelation and Pandering in Elections”, University of Warwick Working Paper Series, Available at https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/fsquintani/research/pandering.pdf (Accessed on 03 July 2024)

Mayaki, A (2024) “Pareto-Nash Reversion Strategies: Three Period Dynamic Co-operative Signaling with Sticky Efficiency Wages”, SSRN: Optimisation & Control e-Journal, pp. 1-12, Available at https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4858795 (Accessed on 27 June 2024)

Pierce, S. and Selee, A. (2017) “Immigration under Trump: A Review of Policy Shifts in the Year Since the Election”, Migration Policy Brief, December 2017, Available at https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/publications/TrumpatOne_FINAL.pdf (Accessed on 03 July 2024)

Event Description

This symposium provides a forum for high-quality work in labour economics and brings together economists in the field from across Europe as well as key researchers from outside the region.

The event also provides an opportunity for researchers from different universities and countries to discuss their work in a relaxed atmosphere and to develop long-term collaborative relationships; and for young researchers to meet and discuss their work with senior economists.

Download programme.

Registration

• This event is free and open to all, to register please email Jemila Benchikh.

Organisers

• Alan Manning, CEPR and CEP, LSE
• Guy Michaels, CEPR and CEP, LSE
• Barbara Petrongolo, University of Oxford, CEPR and CEP, LSE

Venue

• SAL 1.04, Sir Arthur Lewis Building, 32 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London WC2A 3PH
  

Much of the peer-reviewed literature I’ve read up on since my final year happens to be focused on the topics of Christian thought according to André du Toit and Irving Hexham. This blog was originally written in 2009 as a research proposal for one of my lecturers, H. M. Hopfl (Essex), and a potential supervisor, Dr. Ruth Watson (Cambridge). In the following blog, I engage briefly with the theme of polity from the perspective of Hexham and Du Toit in preparation for B813, which commences on 04 May 2024.

Did the Socio-Politics of Reformed Thinking Influence Social Outcomes in South Africa?

Many an author on Afrikaner Calvinism has gone to great lengths to structure books on aspects of Calvinism in the sixteenth century. Irving Hexham is an interesting contributor to Calvin’s biographical oeuvre and an inspiration when writing about the history of the Dutch Reformed Church (henceforth "DRC") and when attempting to interpret the complex ambiguities that exist in The Cape. I plan to use the debate between Hexham and Andre de Toit as the groundwork for a central discussion (which is arguably unresolved). From there it should prove possible to lay hold of some more concrete lines of discussion such as the question of worker ethic, racial discrimination, and religious separatism in the seventeenth-century age of enlightenment^[1].

The groundwork of Hexham (1975) cites many authors in its critique of the Afrikaners, among them Susan Ritner (1967) who explains categorically that a decision by the 1857 Synod of the DRC to condone separate worship in the Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa shows “evidence of racial discrimination”. Hexham makes such claims as “to this day Calvinists are a small group in the DRC and their real power Is probably far less than many commentators would like to believe (1975:202). The impression given by Hexham here is one of unsavory disillusionment in the epistemology of the DRC and its relationship with Calvin’s original sixteenth-century philosophy and that of his followers in Europe.

Hexham leads us to a very interesting place in the literature, stating:

“du Toit (1847-1911) did not pretend to be an author or a television celebrity. All he claimed to do was to uphold the ideas of Dutch Calvinism in South Africa, or rather, as he would have put it, to propagate “true” Calvinism in South Africa. He admitted freely that Calvinism which he advocated originated in the Netherlands and he made no pretence about the fact that his political philosophy was based upon the views of Abraham Kuyper in the Netherlands”

Hexham writes, “It may be possible to trace back to Calvin’s theology some of the terms used by Afrikaner Nationalists as part of their political vocabulary, but most important ‘Calvinist’ theories and attitudes are ones connected with Christian-Nationialism. Yet these cannot be traced back to Calvin.”

André De Toit has published literature in direct response to the issues raised by Hexham (de Toit, 1983^[2]), where he refers to “the cluster of construct that has been used to justify racial inequality and repression in latter-day Afrikaner societies” as a “historical myth” referred to as the “Calvinist paradigm of Afrikaner history”. In a latter text, de Toit (1985^[3]) supports this view concerning what apartheid meant through the lens of Calvinist history by stating that “very little of this purported historical explanation will stand up to scrutiny”. Here, de Toit is referring to the central thesis of the “Calvinist paradigm of Afrikaner history; the ideology of a Chosen People functioned to legitimate racial inequality and oppression”.

To interpret fully the role of Dutch Calvinism, one must spend time researching the origins of its reform (that of the Netherlands), unlike towns in France and Scotland, Calvinism did not settle in the same manner during the fifteenth century. Also, the major work of Cornelius Van Til as well as other leading Dutch neo-Calvinists (such as Meow, Waltershtorf, and Plantinga) require one to appreciate the history of ‘presuppositional’ apologetics and its conflict with ‘classical’ apologetics within the Afrikaner tradition.

There exists a self-evidential concern relating to the principle of ‘common grace’ and the ‘covenant common grace’ which maintains controversy due to its revered conflict with both ‘prevenient’ and ‘special’ grace for its self-justification of divine potestas within Presbyterian establishments which in itself would cause a series of social phenomenon to perpetuate themselves, such as discipline and order. Furthermore, the more intellectually stimulating area of research will undoubtedly also constitute an interesting theoretical aspect; i.e. an inquisition that shall involve analyzing the doctrines that underpin Lapsariaism and Antelapsarianism concerning the Supralapsarianism advocated by Kuyper. We know the historical context of this debate goes as far back as the 1618 Synod of Dordrecht, where the confessional unity of the Reformed churches in the Netherlands^[4] and South Africa can be traced to and where the departure from traditional Calvinism was arguably initially conceived. It is therefore important to distinguish the “elements of disparity” and help continue and contribute to this outstanding literature.

1.     Meara, D. O. (1978) “Analysing Afrikaner Nationalism: The ‘Christian-National’ Assault on White Trade Unionism in South Africa”, 1934–1948. African Affairs (London). [Online] 77(306), pp. 45–72 – Available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/721347 (Accessed on 02 May 2024)