An exploration of the relationship between recruitment communication and foraging in stingless bees

Social information is widely used in the animal kingdom and can be highly adaptive. In social insects, foragers can use social information to find food, avoid danger or choose a new nest site. Copying others allows individuals to obtain information without having to sample the environment. When foragers communicate information they will often only advertise high quality food sources, thereby filtering out less adaptive information. Stingless bees, a large pantropical group of highly eusocial bees, face intense inter- and intra-specific competition for limited resources, yet display disparate foraging strategies. Within the same environment there are species that communicate the location of food resources to nest-mates and species that do not. Our current understanding of why some species communicate foraging sites while others do not is limited. Studying freely foraging colonies of several co-existing stingless bee species in Brazil, we investigated if recruitment to specific food locations is linked to (1) the sugar content of forage, (2) the duration of foraging trips and (3) the variation in activity of a colony from one day to another and the variation in activity in a species over a day. We found that, contrary to our expectations, species with recruitment communication did not return with higher quality forage than species that do not recruit nestmates. Furthermore, foragers from recruiting species did not have shorter foraging trip durations than those from weakly-recruiting species. Given the intense inter- and intraspecific competition for resources in these environments, it may be that recruiting species favour food resources that can be monopolised by the colony rather than food sources that offer high-quality rewards.

Tandem communication improves ant foraging success in a highly competitive tropical habitat

Tropical ants experience intense intra- and interspecific competition for food sources, which influences their activity pattern and foraging strategies. Even though different ant species can coexist through spatial and temporal niche partitioning, direct competition for food cannot be avoided. Recruitment communication is assumed to help colonies to monopolize and exploit food sources successfully, but this has rarely been tested under field conditions. We studied if recruitment communication helps colonies of the Neotropical ant Pachycondyla harpax to be more successful in a highly competitive tropical environment. Additionally, we explored if temporal and spatial niche differentiation helps focal colonies to avoid competition. Pachycondyla harpax competed with dozens of ant species for food. Mass-recruiting competitors were often successful in displacing P. harpax from food baits. However, when foragers of P. harpax were able to recruit nestmates they had a 4-times higher probability to keep access to the food baits. Colonies were unlikely to be displaced during our observations after a few ants arrived at the food source. Competition was more intense after sunset, but a disproportionate increase in activity after sunset allowed focal colonies to exploit food sources more successfully after sunset. Our results support the hypothesis that recruitment communication helps colonies to monopolize food sources by helping them to establish a critical mass of nestmates at large resources. This indicates that even species with a small colony size and a slow recruitment method, such as tandem running, benefit from recruitment communication in a competitive environment.

Reconceptualizing Recruitment in Qualitative Research

Adequate participant recruitment is critical for any qualitative research project. Our research team experienced numerous difficulties when attempting to recruit young adults with type 1 diabetes to discuss their transition from pediatric to adult-focused care. Using our experience as a case study, we identify the activities involved in four phases of participant recruitment: (1) development of a recruitment plan, (2) implementation, (3) participant engagement post-data collection, and (4) post-recruitment assessment. We present a new definition of participant recruitment which better captures the range of activities involved. We discuss aspects impacting recruitment in our case: the influence of other stakeholders, the dynamic nature of recruitment, recruitment of specific populations, and the challenges of recruiting within a healthcare environment. Finally, we identify and consider four factors that impact participant recruitment: communication, participant interest/value, participant trust in the research project, and participant availability and consider potential strategies for overcoming barriers related to each factor. In the end, our case underscores the centrality and potential fluidity of participant recruitment within qualitative research.

Recruitment Communication and Psychological Contracts in Start-Ups

Recruitment communication presents a dilemma for organisations. When organisations hire, they often engage in branding themselves as employers (Backhaus & Tikoo, 2004) and rely on positive framing to present vacant positions in order to attract candidates. This leads to the ensuing challenge of living up to these promises for the candidates who are ultimately hired. Overpromising and underdelivering leads to a breach of the initial psychological contract. This balancing dilemma is especially pertinent for new and unknown companies, where concerns about the company’s legitimacy as an employer may cause potential candidates not to apply (Williamson, Cable, & Aldrich, 2002). On the one hand, start-ups need and want to attract the best, and on the other hand, they need to be wary of the impression they are creating of the job and the organisation as a place of work, as they would also like the candidates to stay once they are hired. I draw on interviews with managers and newcomers in Danish start-ups to give empirical examples of this challenge and its results, using the literature on psychological contracts (Rousseau, 1995) as an explanatory framework. I discuss what organisations might do to accomplish this balancing feat from theoretical and practical perspectives.

Employee Review Websites as Source of Recruitment Communication

Persuasive research shows that more credible sources of information are more influential in changing the attitude and gaining behavioral compliance. In this article, the authors examine whether perceptions regarding source credibility, realistic information and specific information in the web recruitment context differs on three different recruitment media. The three different recruitment media taken in this study are employee review website (www.glassdoor.com), professional networking website (www.linkedin.com) and the company's own webpages. The employee review website and professional networking website belong to the company independent website category since they are not controlled by a particular organization. The company's own webpages belong to a company dependent website category as every organization has its own website. This study compares and investigates company independent websites versus company dependent websites as a tool for providing recruitment communication on three different parameters, namely source credibility, realistic information, and specific information. The study is conducted in India and the results are based on responses obtained from 283 students actively looking for jobs. The results suggest that job seekers perceive company independent websites (employee review website and networking website) to be more credible. These websites provide more realistic and specific information than the company dependent website. The authors also examine the role of realistic information, source credibility and specific information as antecedents to organizational attractiveness. How social media can be instrumental in employee engagement is also discussed.

Understanding job and organizational attributes as signals from recruitment advertisement

Purpose The study aims to understand the signaling effects of two major recruitment advertisement (ad) contents – job attributes and organizational attributes (OA) – on the perceptions and application intentions (AIs) of potential job seekers. Design/methodology/approach A fictitious faculty job ad based on existing real ads was created as a stimulus and the responses to the ad were collected from 270 job seekers of the academic domain in India. The partial least square-structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothetical relationships. Findings Drawing from the concept of signaling theory and instrumental-symbolic framework, the results revealed that job attributes and OA exhibit strong signals that generate the following perceptual outcomes in a job seeker – organizational attractiveness, attitude and person-organization fit. These perceptual outcomes mediated effectively to induce an AI in a job seeker. Signals from information on job attributes had a more significant effect on the job seeker than signals from information on OA. Practical implications The outcome of the study provides preparatory guidelines to academicians, institutional recruiters and recruitment agencies in posting an effective job ad. Originality/value From an Indian context, this is the first paper to present distinctive job advertising strategies to be implemented in the academic institutional recruitment communication.

Social Media Recruitment 3.0

Purpose Drawing on a unique case of a Web 3.0 recruitment campaign, the purpose of this paper is to explore how a Web 3.0 social media recruitment communication strategy influence, add value to and challenge conventional recruitment communication management. Design/methodology/approach The study draws on a reflexive dialogical research approach, which means that it is methodologically designed as a critical dialogue between on the one hand an empirical case and on the other hand theories on social media and strategic communication. Findings The study points toward a fundamental new approach to recruitment communication. The application of a Web 3.0 strategy entails what we term an open source recruitment strategy and a redirection of employee focus from work life to private life. These insights point toward ontologically challenging the basic assumptions of employees, work life and the employing organization. Research limitations/implications The paper presents a single-case study, which prepares the ground for larger, longitudinal studies. Such studies may apply a more long-term focus on the implications of applying Web 3.0 recruitment strategies and how they may be integrated into – or how they challenge – overall corporate communication strategies. Practical implications A turn toward Web 3.0 in recruitment communication affects the degree of interactional complexity and the level of managerial control. Furthermore, the authors argue that the utilization of a Web 3.0 strategy in recruitment communication put forth precarious dilemmas and challenges of controllability, controversy, ownership and power relations, demanding organizations to cautiously entering the social media 3.0 employment market. Originality/value This study indicates how the value and potentials of social media as facilitating participatory processes and community conversations can be strategically used in and fundamentally alter recruitment communication, and hence offers new insights into a paradigmatically new way of understanding what strategic social media recruitment is, can and do.

Factors Affecting Employer-Employee Relationship in Police Sector of Pakistan: The Mediating Role of Working Condition

The study examines the factors i.e. (collective bargaining, recruitment, remuneration, communication) affecting employer- employee relationship with inclusion of mediator i.e. workplace condition. Primary data was collected from police departments working in four provinces of Pakistan namely, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Baluchistan. Questionnaires were administered among the three tiers of leadership i.e. top, middle and the bottom. For validation of data collection instrument the confirmatory factor analysis via structure equation model was conducted and all the models were found with significant loadings. Liseral and SPSS software were used for data analyses. For measuring direct and mediating effect study used hierarchal linear regression model. The findings of the study indicate that collective bargaining, recruitment, communication and remuneration have significant positive effect on employer-employee relationship whereas, workplace condition partially mediates the relationship amid factor affecting employee relation i.e. (collective bargaining, recruitment, communication and remuneration) and employer- employee relationship. Moreover, study reveals that inclusion of collective bargaining, recruitment, communication and remuneration inside organization will result in better performance of the police department and lead to build trust and better image of police department. Theoretical implications and future area suggestions are also incorporated in the study.

MANAGING MULTICULTURAL VIRTUAL ENGINEERING TEAMS

With the global trend towards internationalization, there is a need to understand the parameters that determine the success of the multicultural and multi-located teams. This research is intended to explore the performance of multicultural and multi-located teams operating in Egypt and the various managerial approaches required to enhance these teams’ work efficiency. The research employed a qualitative-quantitative experiment on multicultural and multi-located teams in one of the foreign firms operating in Egypt. The groups’ performance was analyzed using Porter’s Model and a framework was proposed. The proposed framework was verified through three phase experiment. The final framework developed included organizational culture, mechanism for staff recruitment, communication, leadership styles and decision making approaches. This framework is intended to assist in enhancing the operation of the multicultural and multi-located design engineering teams in Egypt.