Understanding Kindness – A Moral Duty of Human Resource Leaders

The role of leaders in the modern organization has evolved as scholars and practitioners have recognized that a key element to long-term profitability is the creation of high trust and high commitment work systems that treat employees as valued partners (Kim & Wright, 2011; Block, 2013; Beer, 2009; Caldwell & Floyd, 2014). Effective leaders create aligned organizational cultures with systems, processes, practices, and programs reinforcing the organization’s espoused values in achieving its mission (Schein, 2010). Human resource professionals (HRPs) play a critical leadership role in ensuring that human resource management (HRM) cultural elements are properly integrated, communicated effectively to employees, and followed in a manner that builds trust and increases commitment (Lengnick-Hall, 2009; McEvoy, et al., 2005). The purpose of this paper is to identify the importance of kindness as a moral duty of HRPs in serving their organizations and the employees within them. As HRPs perform their strategic and operational roles in the modern organization, properly understanding the nature of kindness is an important factor in carrying out HRM roles. This paper begins by defining kindness and its specific application to HRPs — equating the definition of kindness as a leadership trait with six elements of kindness and seven kindness-related ethical perspectives. The paper concludes with a summary of its contribution for HRP practitioners and scholars in understanding the nuances of kindness as a morally-and ethically-related HRM leadership virtue

“I See You!” – The Zulu Insight to Caring Leadership

Although the role of leaders in building relationships with team members has been well-established as a foundation for improved performance (Beer, 2009), the complex challenges in directing the modern organization in a highly competitive global marketplace often mean that leaders of organizations are more focused on tasks rather than people. Nonetheless, a growing body of research about the importance of leader-member relationships confirms that leaders who demonstrate a caring commitment to the welfare of organization members also create organizations that are more profitable, more innovative, and more effective at meeting customer needs (Cameron, 2003; Kouzes & Posner, 2012)

Class number formulas via 2-isogenies of elliptic curves

A classical result of Dirichlet shows that certain elementary character sums compute class numbers of quadratic imaginary number fields. We obtain analogous relations between class numbers and a weighted character sum associated to a 2-isogeny of elliptic curves.Comment: 19 pages; To appear in the Bulletin of the London Mathematical Societ

Human Resource Professionals as Strategic Leaders — A Behavioral Opportunity for Improving Information Management

Human Resource Management is an often overlooked and underutilized strategic tool that has the potential to shape organizational objectives. Authors Caldwell and Ndalamba attempt to identify when, where, and in what fashion HR sources can be more fully utilized to coordinate and fully develop an entity’s interlinking structure to achieve a successful, common purpose