Washington, Aug 7 (IANS) Exclusion from a group can have negative outcomes like bad mood, reduced self-esteem and a sense of being cut off, according to research.
Jessica L. Lakin, Tanya L. Chartrand and Robert M. Arkin of Drew, Duke and Ohio State Universities, respectively, studied people's tendency to copy with behaviours of others in order to find out how this can be used as an affiliation strategy.
In one experiment, participants played an online ball-tossing game with three other computer players, and were either excluded or included in the game. After reporting their enjoyment of the game and what they thought of the other players, participants were asked to describe a photograph to a female confederate who constantly moved her foot, but not enough so that it was consciously noticed by the participant.
The researchers hypothesized that participants in the excluded condition would move their foot more to match the confederate.
In the next experiment, the procedure was kept mostly the same. This time, however, all of the participants were female. They were excluded from either a group of males or females during the ball-tossing game and interacted with either a male or female confederate during the photo description task.
Participants were also questioned more thoroughly on how they felt after the game, such as how much they felt they belonged to the group. The researchers predicted that if the female participants were ostracised by females and later interacted with a female confederate, then they would mimic the confederate more than other participants.
The results provided strong support for the researchers' hypotheses. In the first experiment, participants who had been excluded from the game mimicked the confederate during the second task more than other participants.
In the second experiment, participants excluded by members of their own sex mimicked a confederate of the same sex more than participants in other conditions. There was also an inverse relationship between feelings of belonging and nonconscious mimicry.
The study suggests that although nonconscious mimicry is an automatic action, it is still influenced by a variety of factors, such as situation and the target of the affiliation.
'People whose need to belong is threatened do not necessarily mimic the first person they see; they take into account aspects of the situation and act accordingly, all unconsciously,' the authors conclude.
The results appeared in the current issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Friday, 8 August 2008
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Can HR in India can pull it off ?
Dear Readers,
These are indeed trying times for the entire Management of the IT / ITeS sector. The result quarterly results of the IT companies reflect the true picture. There is a slow down in hiring and the projects are difficult to come by.
Can HR develop a business case and evaluate cost reduction steps and optimize the resources ? Some of the areas we can focus are given below :
freeze wage hikes for next 3 years
new hires to be given 8-10% increases
Identify and sack non performers
No taking fresh engineering grads (training cost =0 )
Replace high cost resources with low ones
Make 6 day working a norm
Increase the number of working hours
Cut down on employee welfare - team outings / lunch costs
Training Budgets - Only for technical skills
Onsite Allowances - reduce / prune
Please list out the areas where HR can contribute significantly to the business. It is now or never for the community. Where are no sources of reduction of other costs (infrastructure or facilities) the one that can be moderated will be 'wages' or employee costs.
Raghav
HR Maverick
9880080321
These are indeed trying times for the entire Management of the IT / ITeS sector. The result quarterly results of the IT companies reflect the true picture. There is a slow down in hiring and the projects are difficult to come by.
Can HR develop a business case and evaluate cost reduction steps and optimize the resources ? Some of the areas we can focus are given below :
freeze wage hikes for next 3 years
new hires to be given 8-10% increases
Identify and sack non performers
No taking fresh engineering grads (training cost =0 )
Replace high cost resources with low ones
Make 6 day working a norm
Increase the number of working hours
Cut down on employee welfare - team outings / lunch costs
Training Budgets - Only for technical skills
Onsite Allowances - reduce / prune
Please list out the areas where HR can contribute significantly to the business. It is now or never for the community. Where are no sources of reduction of other costs (infrastructure or facilities) the one that can be moderated will be 'wages' or employee costs.
Raghav
HR Maverick
9880080321
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Who decides lay offs Management or Analysts ?
Dear Readers,
Another interesting development that is happening. Yahoo is to layoff staff at SFO - the suggestion comes from the Wall Street Analysts.
Read the full story to know as the things are going to unfold before us.
Raghav
Chief Editor
HRudaya
------------
SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo Inc is planning to announce cutbacks later this month that will likely lead to hundreds of job losses at the nearly 14,000 employee company, a source familiar with the plan said. Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Wong declined to comment on a report published on the Silicon Alley Insider blog, which said Yahoo has created a list of “1,500-2,500 jobs that may be eliminated in the next two weeks.”
The source said the report significantly exaggerated the scale of the potential layoffs, the exact number of which is still being settled, but which will be announced around the time the company reports year-end results on January 29.
“There will be some reductions in the workforce,” the source told Reuters. “It would likely be in the hundreds.” Yahoo's workforce stood at close to 14,000 at end-2007, up around 2,600, or 23 per cent, from the 11,600 employed a year earlier, according to company filings.
The company's headcount had grown 16 per cent in 2006 and 29 per cent in 2005. The source said Yahoo expects to end 2008 with the same number it had going into this year -- close to 14,000 -- which would suggest some selective hiring in focus areas offset by cutbacks in other businesses.
Writing on Silicon Valley Insider, former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget said Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang was still deciding whether to go ahead with the layoffs -- and could pull out of the plan if the stock price rebounded.
“We believe Yahoo should reduce headcount by at least a thousand people,” Blodget said, noting that for months, Sanford C Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay has called on Yahoo to make steep job cuts of 15-20 per cent to reinvigorate the stock.
The Internet media company has been seeking to refocus its business around three key themes in order to stoke its flagging growth in the face of competition from search rival Google Inc and fast-growing social networks such as Facebook.
Yahoo has been struggling to recover from two years of competitive setbacks that has led revenue growth slow to around 12 per cent or about one-third of its previous growth rate. Analysts expect revenue from the recent fourth quarter to grow around 15 per cent, according to data from Reuters Estimates.
As part a turnaround plan, the company elevated co-founder Yang to become CEO last June. Together with President Sue Decker, Yahoo has shed low-performing businesses while making several small-to medium-sized acquisitions.
But to date, it has resisted calls by Wall Street analysts and some investors to take several more drastic steps including large-scale layoffs, outsourcing of its Web search business to Google or a potential merger with Microsoft Corp.
Layoffs will focus on areas of the business that do not fit within the three main strategies the company has focused on under Yang. These are to make Yahoo.com the “starting point” for more Web users, to make its online ads a “must buy” for advertisers and to open up its sites to outside developers.
Source : Reuters
Another interesting development that is happening. Yahoo is to layoff staff at SFO - the suggestion comes from the Wall Street Analysts.
Read the full story to know as the things are going to unfold before us.
Raghav
Chief Editor
HRudaya
------------
SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo Inc is planning to announce cutbacks later this month that will likely lead to hundreds of job losses at the nearly 14,000 employee company, a source familiar with the plan said. Yahoo spokeswoman Diana Wong declined to comment on a report published on the Silicon Alley Insider blog, which said Yahoo has created a list of “1,500-2,500 jobs that may be eliminated in the next two weeks.”
The source said the report significantly exaggerated the scale of the potential layoffs, the exact number of which is still being settled, but which will be announced around the time the company reports year-end results on January 29.
“There will be some reductions in the workforce,” the source told Reuters. “It would likely be in the hundreds.” Yahoo's workforce stood at close to 14,000 at end-2007, up around 2,600, or 23 per cent, from the 11,600 employed a year earlier, according to company filings.
The company's headcount had grown 16 per cent in 2006 and 29 per cent in 2005. The source said Yahoo expects to end 2008 with the same number it had going into this year -- close to 14,000 -- which would suggest some selective hiring in focus areas offset by cutbacks in other businesses.
Writing on Silicon Valley Insider, former Wall Street analyst Henry Blodget said Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang was still deciding whether to go ahead with the layoffs -- and could pull out of the plan if the stock price rebounded.
“We believe Yahoo should reduce headcount by at least a thousand people,” Blodget said, noting that for months, Sanford C Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay has called on Yahoo to make steep job cuts of 15-20 per cent to reinvigorate the stock.
The Internet media company has been seeking to refocus its business around three key themes in order to stoke its flagging growth in the face of competition from search rival Google Inc and fast-growing social networks such as Facebook.
Yahoo has been struggling to recover from two years of competitive setbacks that has led revenue growth slow to around 12 per cent or about one-third of its previous growth rate. Analysts expect revenue from the recent fourth quarter to grow around 15 per cent, according to data from Reuters Estimates.
As part a turnaround plan, the company elevated co-founder Yang to become CEO last June. Together with President Sue Decker, Yahoo has shed low-performing businesses while making several small-to medium-sized acquisitions.
But to date, it has resisted calls by Wall Street analysts and some investors to take several more drastic steps including large-scale layoffs, outsourcing of its Web search business to Google or a potential merger with Microsoft Corp.
Layoffs will focus on areas of the business that do not fit within the three main strategies the company has focused on under Yang. These are to make Yahoo.com the “starting point” for more Web users, to make its online ads a “must buy” for advertisers and to open up its sites to outside developers.
Source : Reuters
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