We study the resource investment decision faced by a firm that offers two demand-classes (i.e., products, services), while incorporating the firm's pricing decision into the investment decision. For this purpose, we consider a monopolistic situation and model the demand curve of each demand-class as a downward sloping linear function of its own price. The firm can invest in dedicated resources, which can only satisfy a specific demand-class, and/or in a more expensive, flexible resource, which can satisfy both demand-classes. We consider a two-stage stochastic decision model: In the first stage, the firm determines the dedicated and flexible resource capacities to invest in under demand uncertainty. In the second stage, demand curves are realized and the firm optimizes its revenue through pricing and resource allocation decisions, constrained by its capacity investment decision in the first stage. Our analysis provides the structure of the firm's optimal resource investment strategy as a function of price elasticities and investment costs, and shows how the value of resource flexibility depends on these parameters and demand correlations. Based on our analysis, we provide principles on the firm's optimal resource investment strategy under uncertainty. We show that it can be optimal for the firm to invest in the flexible resource when demand patterns are perfectly positively correlated, while it is not always optimal to invest in the flexible resource when demand patterns are perfectly negatively correlated. / Master of Science

Tendencies such as the increasing spread of market globalisation, new technological developments, the reduction of product life cycles and aggressive competition, are generating high levels of environmental changes and uncertainty for organisations of all types (Volberda, 1996; Sanchez, 1997). These circumstances require rapid responses through adaptations of organisational attitudes and capabilities, which lead to innovative management approaches and organisational methods (Bueno, 1996: 262). Traditional sources of competitive advantages are changing and it is imperative to deploy new strategies to successfully compete under changing external conditions. For example, flexibility is emerging as a competitive weapon that allows organisations to counteract current market evolution and competitive levels (Ahmed et al., 1996; Volberda, 1996). Flexibility is a broad concept that can refer to operational issues such as manufacturing flexibility, or to strategic decisions such as alterations in the organisation's product-market combinations. All these factors are associated with the organisation's efforts to adjust available means to external challenges. Regardless of the specific response adopted by organisations, it is broadly believed that environmental dynamism forces managers to pay increasing attention to the management of the organisation's social issues (Wright and Snell, 1998). From a managerial point of view, human resource management activities used by organisations in the new competitive landscape are changing. This can be seen, for example, in job descriptions. Nowadays individual contributions to organisational goals are being substituted by team accomplishments. Furthermore, technological advances (e.g. the introduction of Internet in companies) are making it difficult to assess and manage employee performance in the workplace. As a result High Commitment Management (HCM) is emerging as the optimal system to manage the employment relationships in modern organisations. HCM is a particular approach to human resources management characterised by certain features such as the emphasis on the development of employee skills, job enrichment and the provision of equitable incentives. A number of authors in recent decades have demonstrated the impact of HCM on organisational outcomes. From an employee-based perspective, organisations require a new type and level of contribution from their workforce. In order to successfully compete under dynamic conditions, people's performance of a fixed set of prescribed tasks is no longer considered adequate. Instead, competitive advantage comes from employees who are engaged in broad open-ended and interdependent roles (Campbell, 2000; Parker, 2000). In sum, from an individual perspective, human resource flexibility is a key success factor in current competitive environments. However, to date no accepted definition of human resource flexibility has been put forward; attempts should be made to provide this concept with a more solid theoretical background (Looise et al., 1998). In this study, I propose a conceptualisation of HR flexibility based on the premises of the Resource-Based View of the firm (RBV) (Wernerfelt, 1984; Barney, 1991; Amit and Shoemaker, 1993). Similarly to the role that value, rareness, inimitability and non-substitutability play in the consideration of resources as strategic assets (Barney, 1991), flexible resources are characterised by certain features, such as their applicability to a variety of uses or the ease with which they can be modified (Sanchez, 1995). One of the aims of this research is to apply these concepts to the conceptualisation of human resource flexibility.All things considered, social factors are essential to the successful deployment of organisational flexibility, as are the activities used to manage employees (Dyer and Shafer, 1999). Not only are individual responsibilities different in dynamic environments, but also the human resource activities used by organisations to manage their workforce will alter. The present study focuses on these two questions and analyses their interrelationships.The general purpose of this research is to examine the contribution of HCM to organisational performance by considering the role that human resource flexibility plays in this relationship. That is, I question whether a high commitment approach is important to determine the workforce's flexibility and to what extent a flexible workforce enhances organisational outcomes.

Professional workers are the core value contributors to an enterprise in today¡¦s highly competitive environment of knowledge economy. Under the pressure of global competition, employment flexibility is an unavoidable trend. Contract workers with professional background have been growing rapidly in recent years, and it has been regarded as a competitive strategy to integrate corporate resources to enhance business performance. While more and more enterprises are adopting flexibility strategies as well as utilizing different types of contingent employment to replace traditional long-term employment, the other existing employees not only have to face the changes of employment relationships, but also have to get used to cope with lots of contract-based professionals working in the organization. The purpose of this research is to understand different cognition, attitude and behaviors from the professionals under different employment relationships, as well as the way they interact, while the organization is adopting the human resource strategy of numerical flexibility. The information was collected and analyzed based on qualitative research method and used the professional workers as sampling, including one regular employee and one contractor for every comparative pair. There are total twenty-four professionals from four leading global high-tech companies were interviewed. The result shows that both the regular and contract-based professionals recognized the employment flexibility strategy negatively, and believed that it¡¦s mainly for reducing employment cost only, which might reflected the short-term benefit, but would cause the negative impact on the organization¡¦s performance in the long run. The implementations of differentiated treatments to different employment models caused disagreement from the workers who had expected their employers to provide a fair working environment, sufficient human capital investment and stable career development in the organization. The findings are, a respecting and open-minded organizational culture, a fair workplace, proper contingent employment proportion, and supportive management are the key factors to facilitate the positive interaction among professionals under different employment relationships. Moreover, professional workers have higher motivation and take into account the importance of personal performance, therefore, regular employee will invest personal resources to solve problems from interacting with contract professionals in order to achieve tasks. Meanwhile, the contract professionals are affected by occupational commitment as well as their intention to extend employment contract in the future. Employment status does not influence their performance, however, reduction of unfair treatments regarding human resource practices will motivate their willingness on organizational citizenship behavior and performance improvement.

Abstract As various forces rendering the business environment more dynamic, for survive and prosper, organizations nowadays must rapidly correspond to changes. In order to lower labor cost and develop competition advantage, enterprises always apply human resource flexibility strategy to achieve purposes. However, the practices of human resource flexibility strategy change the job related characteristic, and cause the effect on the psychological contract of employee. And then, it will be the factor for the attitude and behavior of employee in the enterprise. The current human resource arrangement should be adjusted in order to respond to the changes in the market in a timely manner. It is available to implement task flexibility, numerical flexibility, working-time flexibility, and wage flexibility to meet the practical work demands. Our object was domestic bank enterprises, we adopted questionnaire to discuss ¡§the perception of the practices of human resource flexibility strategy¡¨ and ¡§the condition of the psychological contract¡¨ by employees. And then, we explore the relationship between ¡§the perception of the practices of human resource flexibility strategy¡¨ and ¡§organizational commitment¡¨ of employee by the intermediary variable ¡§the violation of psychological contract¡¨. Our results of the research are as the following: There are some practices of human resource flexibility strategy in the bank enterprises, and the employees really have experienced the violation of psychological contract. Finally, through the relation of social exchange, the consequences of Psychological contract will response on Organizational commitment.

We study the optimal resource portfolio for a price-setter firm under a consumer choice model with supply and demand risks. The firm sells two products that are vertically differentiated, and has the option to invest in both dedicated and flexible resources. Our objective is to understand the effectiveness of the two hedging mechanisms, resource flexibility and demand management through production differentiation, under demand and supply risks. We show that the presence of consumer-driven substitution does not always reduce the need for the firm to offer differentiated products. In particular, when the firm faces demand risk and differential production costs, it might invest in the flexible resource and offer differentiated products for a wider range of parameters. Interestingly, more uncertainty (in the form of additional supply risk) does not always make the firm more eager to adopt a hedging mechanism. This depends on the relationship between resource risks, product attributes, and resource investment costs. On the other hand, when the firm invests in the flexible resource, this never completely replaces the dedicated resources, and always results in a "diverse" resource portfolio. While this happens in the supply risk setting mainly due to resource diversification advantage, it also happens in the demand risk setting due to the vertical differentiation between the products. Finally, in the absence of differential production costs, demand management by itself (without resource flexibility) becomes powerful enough to hedge against the demand risk, but not the supply risk, due to the additional resource diversification benefit of the flexible resource in the latter setting. / Ph. D.