Human Resource Development QuarterlyVolume 11, Issue 3 p. 209-211 Editorial Ten roles to support research-to-practice in organizations Darren C. Short, Darren C. Short Perspectives, Inc.Search for more papers by this authorMichael Cassidy, Michael Cassidy Marymount UniversitySearch for more papers by this authorJennifer D. Dewey, Jennifer D. Dewey North Central Regional Education LaboratorySearch for more papers by this authorMark E. Van Buren, Mark E. Van Buren ASTDSearch for more papers by this author Darren C. Short, Darren C. Short Perspectives, Inc.Search for more papers by this authorMichael Cassidy, Michael Cassidy Marymount UniversitySearch for more papers by this authorJennifer D. Dewey, Jennifer D. Dewey North Central Regional Education LaboratorySearch for more papers by this authorMark E. Van Buren, Mark E. Van Buren ASTDSearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 January 2001 https://doi.org/10.1002/1532-1096(200023)11:3<209::AID-HRDQ1>3.0.CO;2-%23Citations: 4AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article.Citing Literature Volume11, Issue3Autumn (Fall) 2000Pages 209-211 RelatedInformation

There are no universally accepted, across-the-board standards for measuring and managing knowledge-at least, not quite yet. The American Society for Training & Development, in partnership with seven pioneer companies of the knowledge era, has been working on creating sound methods for measuring the value of organizations' investments in their intellectual capital. The partnership is called the ASTD Effective Knowledge Management Working Group. The companies are Charles Schwab, Chevron, Dow Chemical, EDS, Motorola, Polaroid, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. In particular, the group has focused on these areas of measurement: the stocks of intellectual capital, the knowledge management process itself, and the economic value generated by intellectual capital. The article contends that most organizations don't have a full understanding of how much they invest in intellectual capital nor do they know the true return on such investments. A few companies have ventured into measuring and leveraging their knowledge assets and have made their measurement systems available publicly. But to date, none of those systems is widely accepted. The article proposes that there won't be an acknowledged set of standards without collective action. The group identified these categories of intellectual capital: human capital, innovation capital, process capital, and customer capital. Then to winnow the measures in each category to a manageable set, the group ranked the items on the basis of their relevance to a firm's knowledge management objectives strategic importance to top executives the availability of data applicability to a wide variety of organizations. There's a matrix that describes types of knowledge management processes and "enablers," and information on how companies can benchmark their intellectual capital.

This second annual State of the Industry report, produced by the research department of the American Society for Training & Development, tells what leading-edge companies are doing to be at the top of the training field. The data is from the more than 750 U.S. organizations that participated in ASTD's 1998 Benchmarking Service. The evidence shows that employer-provided training is on the rise in terms of the amount of money invested and the percentage of employees being trained. Yet, there is still a gap between leading-edge companies and the average organization. The training leaders are different in the amount of training they provide, the resources they invest in employee development, the practices they use, and the means of training delivery. Generally, to be leading edge, a company has to spend more money on training employees, especially in human performance work practices such as self-directed teams, and on innovative training practices such as mentoring. Specifically, to stand out from the crowd, an organization has to use at least 13 of the 17 practices identified by the study as leading edge. The average organization uses only 11 of those practices. The average company spent about $2 million on training in 1997, up from $1.4 million in 1996. The total training expenditure of the typical leading-edge firm rose from $3.4 million in 1996 to $4.1 million in 1997. The authors note, however, that total training expenditure depends greatly on an organization's size. Not only must organizations provide more training, they must also provide training to more employees-at least 86 percent to be leading edge. The average organization trains about 74 percent of its employees. The article includes a breakdown of findings by industry.

In all nine of the advanced industrialized democracies we study, the proportion of employed women in jobs where they supervise others is less than that for men. The extent of the gender difference varies, however, with the smallest difference in Australia and the largest in Japan. We use multilevel models to investigate which country-level factors help explain this variation and find that higher industrial sex segregation, greater income equality, longer guaranteed maternity leave, and less favorable economic conditions predict lower male advantage. At least some of these results reflect extreme values for Australia and/or Japan. We argue for more attention to different paths to similar gender equality outcomes. (C) 1998 Academic Press.

Common to all accounts of firm internal labor markets (FILMs) is the primary role they assign to organizational size. Despite the importance attached to size, the size-FILM relationship has remained rather ambiguous. More importantly, the relationship has been examined only for static measures of size. In addition to the time at which size is measured, other unresolved issues include the conceptualization of the size-FILM relationship and the level at which size is measured. The results of an analysis of FILM use in high growth establishments confirm the importance of size in predicting the use of FILMs, but only as it interacts with the prior level of growth. In particular, the evidence highlights the significance of the dynamic aspects of organizational structure for the use of FILMs.