An Essay by Phin Upham – UPenn Wharton School of Business

Abstract:

In this essay we examine some effects of recruiting broadly or narrowly on organizations and on those who are recruited. Much HR literature has argued firms should work to keep turnover low and hire the best most qualified person for a given job. We argue that there is some firm-wide value in recruiting standard employees with more varied knowledge backgrounds as a fraction of their employees. There is a curvlinear relationship or “cradle of creativity” performance between focusing on gaining depth in one’s own field with homogeneity within one’s firm and on the integration of other areas of experiences different skill sets into one’s organization.

[full paper : Druid]

By Phin Upham

Abstract:

In addition to potential external customer attraction benefits, there are also possible powerful internal benefits for a corporation that gives to charity. In this essay we lay the groundwork for a rational and strategic set of principles that could guide a company to maximize the positive effect of its giving on its employees. Aligning a corporation behind a charitable goal can have, I will argue, a powerful positive effect on a company’s employees by increasing employee retention, boosting identification with the firm and raising helping behavior.

http://demo10.wizzy.co.uk/content/pdfs/jcc22upham.pdf

Phin Upham has a PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania). Phin us a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He can be reached at phin@phinupham.com

Unemployment and America’s competitive advantage is discussed in an article by Phin Upham.

Recent work by the OECD sheds light on the dynamics of big business and small business sectors of developed countries. Data collected by governments across the world suggests that the US has a relatively small business sector compared to other developed countries. A recent study places the US as second only to Luxembourg in how small a percent of GDP the United States’ small business sector is, well below European competitors. This holds no matter how you cut it, from focusing on manufacturing, by excluding farmers, or even looking at technology alone. The statistics suggest, contrary to expectations, that what America excels in in small businesses, rather, is not their number or size, but the ability to let them fail or scale into very large companies. The difficulty of this should not be underestimated and is among the central problems China’s fractured corporate markets struggle with today.

This holds even more true when we examine the value added by different sized businesses ‘”statistically the US also has one of the lowest value add by small businesses in the world and, unexpectedly, statistically one of the highest value add by large companies. President Coolidge said “the business of the American people is business” ‘” in the modern world, for better or worse, this seems to increasingly be big business.

[full article: Associated Content]

How influenced are we by the world around us? How much are our personality, our observations, our actions, and even our thoughts are deeply influenced by what we believe will be effective or by the norms of the social world around us. Phin Upham reviews some of the seminal pieces on the topic.

What is emotion and how can it be studied? Is it hardwired or learned? A review of some of the seminal works on the topic.

by Phin Upham

The study of emotion is a difficult one from many perspectives. For one, it seems to suffer from a lack of agreed upon definitions; Or it suffers from too many common, everyday definitions and this creates too hazy a realm to fully capture with one definition. For another, it is an intrinsically maddening concept to try to study. One must rely on what people say about their emotions and people are not always fully aware of the order, complexity, or magnitude of their emotions. The size of an emotion seems a hard question, and different emotions are rather incommensurable. Emotion seems to play an enormous role in our life and, along with consciousness, another heavily debated concept, it is one of those perplexing things of which we are fully aware and about which we are almost fully ignorant.

[full story: Associated Content]

Phin Upham has a PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania).  Phin is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He can be reached at phin@phinupham.com.

In a broad intellectual tour, Phin Upham takes us through a set of theories of organizations using the core propositions contingency theory, resource-dependence theory, transaction-cost theory, institutional theory, and organizational population ecology.  Using these intellectual frameworks be looks as organizational structure and its functions, authority, the environment.  Lastly, Phin asks what, if anything, do organizations maximize?

Organizational theories are divided into many, many schools of thought. These schools posit different tenants, take on different simplifying assumptions, and use very different methodologies.  Given that there are these divides in the field, it is an interesting question to ask why?  One possible explanation is that they are not mutually contradictory, but that they deal with different sorts of organizations and that they are thus a jigsaw puzzle of the truth – neither contradicting each other nor stepping on each others toes.  But while many organizational views focus on different domains, this happy state does not seem to hold (at least not always).  It does seem that theories posit different, conflicting, or at least mutually exclusive, causal inferences, basic driving forces, etc.  Thus, we might hope, different schools are each pursuing a different facet of organizations, viewing reality through differently colored glasses.  Thus, one might argue that they each illuminate a different aspect of reality, perhaps sometimes overstating its importance, but nevertheless all valuable.  This is a possibility I will discuss. Lastly, we could view this multiplicity of views, this quagmire of predictions, this tangle of tenants as indicative of some fundamental inscrutability of reality, some fundamental limitation of the field.  If organizations are either 1) enormously, hopelessly complex or 2) societal embedded reality – where organizations exist – is not neatly or easily partitioned into cause-effect or static models (i.e. changes over time) then this provides a reason for the lack of unity of organizational theories.  Is this quilt work of theories is a good thing for the field of organizational theory, or at least necessary for the field.  Other fields, such as physics, for example, are neater and more universal with their theories (though complexities and conflicting theories emerge there too so it is hard to say whether this is a type of token distinction!).  So we will explore “what is it about organizational theory that produces conflicting or non-complementary theories?” and “what effect does this have on the field?”. While each of the above points could be a book (or a library of books) I will attempt to begin an exploration into these questions.  While answering these questions, I will draw on contingency theory (Thompson, Lawrence and Lorsch), resource-dependence theory (Pfeffer, Burt), transaction-cost theory (Williamson), institutional theory (principally Selznick, Scott, Meyer and Rowan, DiMaggio and Powell), and organizational population ecology (Carroll and Hannan) in order to attempt to reify these theoretical considerations with specific examples.

Each theory of organizations can be seen to have some core propositions which capture the essence of that approach.  While there will be much confusion and simplification in the presentation of these propositions in substation for the richness and details of the works themselves, it is necessary in this essay and for simplicity and clarity.

For the full story, visit Ground Report

Phin Upham has a PhD in Applied Economics from the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania).  Phin is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He can be reached at phin@phinupham.com