Visiting Fellow Profile
Jaap Paauwe, The Netherlands
Email is Okay, But Face to Face is Best
A Positive Impression of ILR Students
"Being here at Cornell University and participating in the international visiting fellows program of the ILR School is a wonderful experience. I started here in March 2005 and right from the start I was lucky to get involved in some teaching activities, next to my research activities. I gave a lecture in HR Metrics class (Patrick Wright) and participated in one of the activities of the PhD class (Scott Snell) and the course on the Agile enterprise (Lee Dyer). Apart from the fun of teaching I also got the opportunity in this way to get to know a variety of Cornell students in different programs and stages of their study here at the ILR School. The students at Cornell are highly motivated, serious in their preparation and good in conducting discussions and posing questions. Moreover they seemed to be highly interested in a more European, stakeholders based approach to Human Resource Management. I think these students are lucky to attend programs here at the ILR school and the Department of HR studies. Both the academic staff and the course documentation are of a high level and through the Centre for Advance Human Resource Studies (CAHRS) they benefit from an extensive network with the business community.
CAHRS as a Platform of International Exchange
CAHRS is another reason for appreciating my sabbatical leave here a lot. Through the conferences they organize (amongst others on 'HR functional excellence' and on 'Doing business in Eastern Europe') one gets acquainted with a number of USA based companies, their approach to HRM and Labor Relations and the way in which they operate abroad. CAHRS is a very good platform for the exchange between academic researchers and HR-practitioners; and especially in an applied field like HRM one can't do without the other. Based on my on-going interest in the trade union movement, for which I was working in the Netherlands before joining the university, the ILR school offers a number of interesting seminars and lectures open to a wider audience. We had seminars on the development of the South African trade union movement and a forum discussion on the position of Chinese workers etc.
Global Research Iniatives
An important ingredient of my stay here at Cornell is of course my research, collaborating with the faculty of the HR department and the writing of papers. Jointly we carry out a large scale international project (both case-study and survey based) on the possibilities for HR excellence in multinational companies. And although communicating through email is helpful, working here on a face to face basis with the Cornell staff involved in this project is not only more effective, but also fun.
Enjoying Ithaca on the Weekends
Fun is also the very thing we experience during the weekend, when my wife and I join the local Ithaca community (folk club, hiking club, festivals, wineries). Almost every weekend turns out to be a mini holiday due to the splendid environment with all the nearby state parks and the occasional visit to one of the wineries. So it is highly recommendable and being here is very rewarding in many respects".
—Jaap Paauwe (1953) is professor of Business and Organisation at the Rotterdam School of Economics, Erasmus University, the Netherlands. He has written and co-authored books on Human Resource Management and published numerous papers on HRM, Institutional Theory, Industrial Relations and Organizational Change. Twice (1997 and 2001) he was in charge of the editing of a special issue on HRM and Performance for the International Journal of Human Resource Management. Recently he was involved in editing a special issue of Human Resource Management Journal, which is published as the first issue in 2004. He is a member of the international advisory board of HRMJ and of the Journal of Management Studies. His latest book "HRM and Performance: Achieving Long Term Viability" was published in 2004 by Oxford University Press. Before joining the university he worked for the Trade Union Movement in the Netherlands (CNV) and a Dutch based multinational company (SHV). Next to teaching in the business economics programs and the international business administration program, he gives lectures for diverse professional education institutions.
- Faculty Sponsor at ILR: Professor Patrick Wright
- Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
- Email: paauwe@few.eur.nl
- Office: 322B Catherwood
- Visiting Dates: March 20-August 31, 2005
- Jaap Paauwe
