Recruiting and Retaining the Best Scientists: A Researcher’s Perspective

--Lisa Böhm and Robert A Phillips

This paper aims to gain a better understanding of the motives and criteria by which excellent researchers choose a host institution. Semi-structured interviews of recently appointed excellent young researchers based in the UK, USA and Germany were carried out and motivations for choosing an institution explored. The findings show that a variety of professional and personal factors are involved in the decision-making process. Excellence of research was clearly important, but also fit and potential for collaborations was cited. Personal issues included family issues regarding stability of children’s schooling, employment for partners and ease of adapting to the local language. Length of tenure was also stated as being important for personal reasons and also to allow time to build up a research group. This understanding of young researchers’ key motives for choosing an institution will inform institutions to allow them to attract and retain excellent researchers which will be of benefit not only to the institution itself, but also to the regional and national economy.

© 2015 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Intellectual Stimulation and Job Commitment: A Study of IT Professionals

--K T Anjali and D Anand

The Information Technology (IT) industry in India is driven by a large pool of talented technically competent employees. However, at times, these intellectual capitals are neglected by the organizations. This can affect the employee morale, job commitment levels and eventually cripple the business. The primary objective of this paper is to analyze the relationship between the perceived levels of job commitment and intellectually stimulating factors. A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample size of 150 IT professionals across six companies in Bangalore and Mysore regions, Karnataka. The perceived levels of job commitment in the presence and absence of intellectually stimulating factors were tested using parametric approach. The outcome of the study revealed that in the presence of intellectually stimulating factors, employees are more content with their jobs and their commitment to the job is stronger.

© 2015 IUP. All Rights Reserved.

Exploring the Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Work-Life Balance in the Service Industry

--Monoshree Mahanta

This study tries to understand the relationship between Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Work-Life Balance amongst executives belonging to private sector service companies. Emotional intelligence was measured through a standardized test for Indian managers. A 15-item scale has been used to measure work-life balance. Our analysis did not find any significant relationship between demographic variables (age and gender) and emotional intelligence. One-way ANOVA has been used to find out whether the dimensions of work-life balance vary with different levels of EI. The findings of the study indicate that there exists significant difference amongst employees with high, moderate and low emotional intelligence on two dimensions of work-life balance and on overall work-life balance. The t-tests conducted also gave similar results. The results imply that employees with high EI have got a higher overall work-life balance compared to employees with low EI.

© 2015 IUP. All Rights Reserved.