2.5 NECESSARY AND SUFFICIENT REPRESENTATIONS—A HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT EXAMPLE
Consider a modelling effort setting out to inform our understanding of mechanisms underlying the counter-intuitive behaviour of a human resources management problem. The chosen example is one in which individuals progress through a series of ranks in their career, such as can be found in the public service, the military and many large corporations.
A necessary model will identify elements of structure and how they are combined, including:
- stocks of personnel at each rank or level;
- flows, governed by specific (albeit a minimal) set of business rules such as:
- promotion cannot occur before two years experience has been gained; and
- promotion is subject to a vacancy becoming available;
- mechanisms through which individuals are lost, such as:
- retirement; and
- departing to find alternate employment.
This model will be sufficient if it represents the most important (most influential) governing business rules, that is, those rules to which the model is most sensitive whilst omitting, or deliberately ignoring, those to which the model is relatively insensitive.
A model will represent, for example:
- promotion pull—where individuals are promoted when vacancies exist, or
- time-in-rank push—where capable individuals are promoted once they have completed a specified length of time in a given rank.
Neither of these two strategies is likely, by itself, to be sufficient. Some mixing of these strategies is needed through creation of additional rules such as capable individuals having completed at least x years total service and y years time in current rank; and there being a vacancy, will be eligible for promotion.
In a model where there are several rank levels, a rule covering the eventuality that action is to be taken to recruit new staff members of the base level every time a senior executive resigns, will be inappropriate, redundant, and impractical to implement. To retain redundant rules in such a model results in unnecessary complications, and, indeed, will prove erroneous. In reality, a replacement for a resigning senior executive normally would be found from middle-ranking managers unless there is lateral recruiting from outside the organisation. In turn, the vacancy created at the middle-management level will be filled from the lower levels, and so on.
There will be a series of delays before vacant positions are subsequently filled. This is representative of reality. A business rule, artificially built into our model, having the effect of instantaneously recruiting at the lowest level to fill all vacancies in the organisation as they occur would make the model unrealistic.
Whilst a human resource management (HRM) database might be updated as quickly as individuals resign, retire or are promoted to fill vacancies, recruiting may take weeks or months. In some large organisations the vacancy may be carried by the organisation and filling of vacancies limited to once or twice per year.
Further, this type of model becomes very sensitive to delays in filling vacancies at each level because of the processes necessary to facilitate promotion. Real improvements might be made by minimising these recruiting delays and delays in permanent filling of vacancies.
A necessary and sufficient model would depict promotion mechanisms and associated delays but would not depict rules that set out to fill continuously and immediately every vacancy through some global strategy.