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Lecture Notes

Influences on staffing could come from within and outside the organization. Many of these influences determine to some degree the quantity and quality of staffing in organizations. Especially if the organization is not being strategic and proactive. in dealing with the internal and external influences. One way that the organization is proactive though is with their strategy. So organizational strategy influences staffing by setting out goals, quantity and quality decisions, financial marketing goals are whom and how the organization is staffed. Organizational culture is often something we think, oh that's often something internal as well and indeed, you know many organizations internally try to determine their culture but there's also this idea that culture is a product of the people, the people make the place. That's why Ben Schneider is famous for developing using industrial organizational psychology scholar and he addressed the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology as president of the organization in 1987 and his address was all about the idea that the people make the place and this happens because organizations attract certain kinds of people and then individuals select themselves into organizations that kind of match the values and therefore the culture that they might seek in an organization. And then individuals attrite, so they leave the organization if it doesn't ultimately fit their values, if the culture doesn't match up with their values. So this model again also known as ASA, attraction selection attrition, so they would say well look, culture is kind of a difficult thing to understand causally where it comes from, it's coming from the people and so even though an organization might attempt to define its own culture it's likely simply because of the attraction selection attrition of individuals within the organization. Culture, you know the might be various degrees of hierarchy in bureaucracy, different styles of communication that different organizations are known for and this is certainly going to influence who might want to join the firm. Labor markets is something that our course on labor economics will expand on, but we're certainly going to touch on it in this lecture. This getting at the labor demand and supply. Thinking about shortages and surpluses that might occur. We can look at different types of employment relationships and different ways that labor demand and labor supply might change depending on whether we're looking at traditional employee relationships or alternative working arrangements such as independent contracting or hiring temporary workers through a staffing firm. Finally, we can think about how technology influences staffing. So technology can eliminate jobs for example shoemakers; cobblers use to be a much larger industry than it is today because shoes were, in the past, not mass produced as they are today. They were often made on site even, to your specific foot. So that was an industry that technology has largely allowed to be shifted to kind of mass production. There's many examples of that. So at the same time technology can create new jobs or expand the labor demand for specific types of jobs such as computer programmers. And you can also change skill requirements so in a nation like the United States STEM jobs are increasing. So STEM stands for science technology engineering mathematics and so the jobs that kind of fit within the purview of the skill sets are increasingly different. So these are just some of the ways you think about influences on staffing and you might want to consider other influences yourself and you can certainly look in the book force more examples.