Tag: Dylan

Unit 3 Reflection

I have always liked doing research, whether searching for scholarly sources in the library databases for a school project or doing research online for personal reasons. But for any kind of big project, I always enjoyed the hunt for information much more than organizing it. I had never annotated or summarized documents before or thought logically about why I was including one source or another. As we went through the summer, I learned how to categorize and prioritize my sources. I think the “Rounding Out the Conversation” worksheet was helpful because it did reveal some holes in my research as well as some areas where I had too much. Each of the units gave me more tools to try out and habits I will try to continue in the future.

They Say, I Say also changed my way of thinking about writing. I had never thought of writing as a conversation that I was joining. That was eye-opening. I have used sentence starters before, so I loved having a lot more examples of them at my disposal. I will keep that book as a reference for a long time.

One of the things I struggled with in units 1 and 2 was the huge scope of topics like organizational culture or diversity and inclusion. These are important topics, but they also felt overwhelming to me. In the assigned readings, every writer seemed to be making the same argument, only on behalf a different group of people. The only way I could see getting involved in the conversation was through one of my identity categories, which I didn’t feel comfortable doing.

When I read Sherri’s article summary on the ways that online personality tests can be biased, I saw a way into the conversation. Coincidentally I had recently taken one of those types of tests for an online job application, so I could really relate. Like most people, I am simultaneously excited about new technology and scared of it. Artificial intelligence sounds like the perfect solution to so many problems, but will it really turn out that way? I just had to learn more about how it was being used in recruiting and selecting employees, which then led me to see that it is becoming more widely adopted for all kinds of HR functions. I didn’t come into the summer with this interest, but now I’m hooked on it. I saw the AI in HR Resource Center blog not only as a project for this course, but something that I could potentially continue to work on, or at least use in a portfolio someday.

This summer, I feel I took some big steps towards becoming a better researcher and writer, and I got an interesting side project as well. I was impressed by my classmates, their choices, and the passion they brought to their work. I learned from the ideas in their work and the feedback they gave me on mine. We formed our own supportive community, and I was glad to be a part of it.

Thank you, everyone! Have a great fall!

Final Project

aiinhr.wordpress.com

I created the AI in HR Resource Center to start a community for people interested in learning more about the technology issues that are disrupting HR and to inspire more transparency and accountability from the organizations that are building or using the technology. Since I couldn’t find a resource site like this, I thought why not create one?

My target audience includes people concerned with protecting worker and civil rights, including the workers themselves, but more specifically individuals who have some authority to make change, such as disability rights activists, social justice activists, legislators, scholars, journalists, and people working in employment law. My audience also includes business and human resource leaders, developers of AI for HR technologies, and others interested in improving their products and practices.

A blog seemed like a perfect genre for the audiences I am trying to reach because I can use it to stimulate a discussion about the ways that many current AI technologies perpetuate bias and the things we can do to prevent that from happening in the future. My thinking was that the best technology solutions for HR will arise if different points of view get a chance to make their case. I was striving for a writing tone that was readable and not academic, and I am happy with how it turned out.

Research Project Draft

AI in HR Resource Center Blog

Here’s a link to the blog I created. The content to review is on the Home/Welcome page, Blog page, and Essential Reading page, which includes all of my references. I look forward to getting everyone’s feedback.

As I researched AI in HR this summer, I realized that there isn’t an online resource center dedicated to collecting and sharing information about this issue. I saw an opportunity to create a blog that could eventually grow to become the trusted resource for the community interested in this topic. My target audience includes people concerned with protecting worker and civil rights, including the workers themselves, but more specifically individuals who have some authority to make change, such as disability rights activists, social justice activists, legislators, scholars, journalists, and people working in employment law. My audience also includes business and human resource leaders, developers of AI for HR technologies, and others interested in improving their products and practices.

I realize that the long-term scope of this project is huge, so my goal was to set up a flexible framework for the blog and write a couple of posts to welcome readers and introduce some of the more pressing issues, especially those related to bias and discrimination. Depending on how much revising I need to do by next week, I may also add a sample advocacy letter in that section of the site.

I know it will require lots of effort to draw traffic to a new blog, but I can imagine ways to do that by writing posts on other sites and referencing my blog, using social media, and inviting contributing writers who have many followers. Because different stakeholders have different goals, I will strive to invite contributions from different points of view. Ideally, the blog would grow to become a vibrant forum for the exchange of information and discussion of issues leading to more transparency, more accountability, and real change.

Discussion Questions Week of 8/16

The Employment and Discrimination Law Blog on Thompson Reuters is a good model for the genre I will be writing in for my AI in HR advocacy blog. The most recent blog post, “Managing cases of Long COVID: The Next Unknown,” is written in a peer-to-peer style that is conversational, easy to read, and similar to the tone I will aim for when I produce my text. I will try to put a little bit more energy into my writing because my goal is not only to share information about AI in HR but also to inspire people to join me in spreading awareness. The co-authors embed links to supporting material, which is how I plan to incorporate some of my research. I especially like that they end with a section of practical things readers can do to get involved, and I like how they use bullets and bold text to draw attention to the action items.

Some things that might have made this post more engaging for me would be a call out of an important quote or statistic, or possibly a relevant graphic such as an image of the cover of one of the reports they reference. Another thing this blog is missing is a way to build a community of advocates, which will be an important part of my blog. However, the sample blog does involve contributing writers, which is one of the ways I would grow content over time. And finally, this example doesn’t have any site navigation, so I will do some work on the structure of my site, creating a navigation and tags so readers with different interests (employees, employers, etc.) will be able to find content that is relevant.

Project Proposal – Dylan

My proposed project is to create a blog focused on the ways artificial intelligence is being used in human resources with the mission of advocating for more transparency around how it is used and more accountability from the organizations that are using it. My goal is to create a “home” or resource center for this topic where interested parties can gather to get and share information and potentially mobilize to change public policy. My target audience would be anyone concerned with protecting worker and civil rights, including the workers themselves, but more specifically individuals who have some authority to make change, such as disability rights activists, social justice activists, journalists, people working in employment law, and elected officials.

Given the amount of time left in the summer session, I envision launching a basic framework for the blog that will include a welcome message to explain the major issues and stakes related to AI in HR and to inspire others to participate in creating a community with me. My message will include embedded links to relevant supporting sources. In the blog framework, I will also create a subsection for Recommended Reading, where links to important research and articles can be found, and a subsection for an Advocacy Toolkit. I’m still trying to decide exactly what would go into these sections, but I know I want to at least provide readers with a few recommendations for practical things they can do to help the cause. I would love to spark a movement that would lead to real change.

Discussion Questions Week of 8/9

Response to #1

When I read Mollie West’s “How to Create a Culture Manifesto for Your Organization” the first time through, I thought the ideas and strategies were inspiring and practical. I tend to like action-oriented articles over thought pieces, and this one had many great suggestions and strategies. Examples always work for me, so it helped that West used real case studies to provide evidence and support for her thesis. Just using the phrase “culture manifesto” instead of “mission statement” gives her message much more emotional strength. The links she provided also offered opportunities to explore her ideas further and showed the case studies in action. And finally, she makes her content interactive by providing a “how-to” section so readers can get started creating a manifesto in their own organizations.

All of this was great on my first reading through. But on my second reading through, I started to see how the “culture manifesto” process connected to my research project on artificial intelligence in human resources. A culture manifesto is a kind of algorithm, created by a group of people at a certain point in time and these people bring their backgrounds and biases into the process. After the manifesto is blessed and hung on the wall, it actually can perpetuate beliefs that may not be flexible enough to account for changes in the organization over time. Was a neurodivergent person on the team that created the manifesto when the company had 100 employees, but now the company has 5,000 employees? What was the ratio of women and men when it was written? Did bias exist at the time the manifesto was created that limited the voices of minorities or the marginalized? What if the company grows to become an international company, do the same values and beliefs work for employees everywhere?

West is effective at stimulating the conversation around organizational culture, and she does show ways that teams can work together on better understanding their culture. But since West doesn’t address the possibility of preexisting bias or the introduction of future biases, I think she falls short of providing a transformational tool for employees and business leaders.

Response to #2

My research has been focused on how artificial intelligence is being used in the human resources field to shape organizational performance and organizational culture. Similar to the launch of other new technologies, there is a lot of optimism and hype as organizations of all types look to artificial intelligence as the perfect solution to their problems. But unfortunately, the utopian ideal that artificial intelligence promises is a long way off because the algorithms used today have been shown to perpetuate biases and foster discrimination. Every aspect of the human resources life cycle is affected, from recruitment to onboarding to performance evaluation to retention and termination. But because most of this happens “in the dark,” most applicants or employees never know they are being affected.

With my project, I would like to make more people aware of these issues and provide them with knowledge and tools so they can mobilize to reach employees, organizational leaders, and lawmakers everywhere. Right now, I am imagining creating a blog that would be like a resource center for people who want to learn more and potentially get involved to change public policy. My target audience would be people concerned with protecting worker and civil rights, including the workers themselves, but more specifically individuals who have some authority to make change, such as disability rights activists, social justice activists, journalists, and people working in employment law. My goal is not to try and stop AI in HR in its tracks, which would be impossible at this point, but to stimulate more transparency around how AI is used and more accountability from the organizations that are using it. I think I could write a welcome message of about 300-400 words that will include a rationale for the blog and embedded links for citations, a vital statistics page that would reference a variety of scholarly and popular sources, and maybe a template letter of about 300 words that people could use to inform their representatives of the issues. The writing tone would not be scholarly or academic, but more along the lines of popular journalism. I’d also like to create an action center that would include ideas and recommendations of ways people can get involved in the change effort, including places for people to post their ideas and responses to posts. For example, I was thinking of creating a few graphics with statistics that people could repost on social media, but I don’t really have great graphic skills. It would be the kind of blog that I would invite guest speakers to post on over time. Anyway, the ideas are still forming. It would be great to start a grassroots movement that could grow into something bigger eventually.

Discussion Questions Week of 8/2

Response to #1

In “Research: Vague Feedback is Holding Women Back,” Shelley J. Correll and Caroline Simard identify a major problem in the employee performance evaluation process that is making it harder for women to advance into upper-level management roles. The authors are associated with the VMWare Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab at Stanford University, where they conducted a study of performance evaluations at several high-tech companies. They found a noticeable difference between the way men and women received feedback on their performance. It turns out, men receive much more specific and detailed information about their performance than women, who tend to receive feedback in more general and vague ways. The authors hypothesize that because men receive critical and concrete feedback, they can make specific and measurable adjustments that demonstrate improvement. In contrast, because women tend to receive vague feedback along the lines of “people like working with you” or “you had a great year,” they do not have a chance to make adjustments that will demonstrate improvements in performance. Additionally, when women did receive specific feedback, it tended to relate to their communications style rather than ways to develop technical expertise that would help them advance. I found it interesting that nowhere in the article did it state that male reviewers were more likely to give these types of biased performance reviews, which I took to mean that female managers are also perpetuating the problem.

As a result of these findings, Correll and Simard make several recommendations to help managers give better feedback to women and level the playing field, such as setting a goal to discuss three specific business outcomes with each employee, avoiding vague language and praise, and striving to write reviews of the same length for all employees. In sum, providing actionable feedback is the key.

The Correll and Simard article supports Alison Wynn’s article in a couple of ways. Because Wynn’s article provides only a high-level overview of areas in the employee life cycle where organizations can improve gender equality, she does not go into depth in any specific area. The Correll and Simard article provides a rationale for making improvements to the performance evaluation process as well as recommendations for how to go about doing it. Correll and Simard can also devote more space to defining a “vague” evaluation and the ramifications. I found the link to the supporting article to be an effective way for Wynn to offer more details to readers who wanted them, without detracting from her overall goals.

Response to #2

In “Individual Change Won’t Create Gender Equality in Organizations,” Alison Wynn explores an issue that I have questioned for some time. Can we expect organizations to bear the burden of changing the people who work there? Or should an organization focus on the changing things it can control, like policies and processes? Based on her research studies, she argues that organizations are more likely to create change by focusing on the organization itself. After reading her article, I would say I definitely agree.

Wynn is targeting executives and leaders of organizations with this message. When she writes: “The executives in my sample trended toward two primary explanations for inequality: placing responsibility on individual men and/or women, and blaming the larger society,” she not only reveals her intended audience but also raises an important point. When people get asked about a complex problem, they often talk in a way to justify or rationalize why the problem exists instead of talking about ways to fix it. In a way, this type of reaction is a defense of the status quo and deflects the issue away from the responsible parties. If there’s any group that has the power to change the status quo in an organization, it’s the organization’s leaders. So I’m glad to see her directly address them in this way. Additionally, the framework for change that she recommends offers very practical advice that is not too difficult or disruptive for executives to implement. In a way, she is saying that a lot of small changes can result in a big improvement in gender equality overall.

Dylan Lopez Research Portfolio

At the beginning of the summer, as we read about the challenges of organizational culture and diversity and inclusion, the question that kept recurring to me was: “Why aren’t CEOs and other leaders held accountable for creating measurable progress in these areas?” After all, they are held accountable for performance in so many other areas of their businesses. I was curious to find out if any research had been done on the roles leaders play in creating change.

A few things happened as we transitioned into Unit 2 that redirected my focus. First, as I read the Expanding the Canon blog posts of my classmates, I began to see that issues of bias and discrimination extend beyond the boundaries of organizations into society where they are pervasive and systemic. The idea of focusing on the role of CEOs, while important, seemed too narrow to me. Second, our classmate Sherri Holmes’s post on “Algorithm-Driven Hiring Tools: Innovative Recruitment or Expedited Disability Discrimination?” by Lydia X. Z. Brown, Ridhi Shetty, and Michelle Richardson affected me on a personal level because I had recently taken an online personality test during a routine job application. And lastly, I watched the documentary Persona, which explored the dark side of personality testing and artificial intelligence (AI), including the risks for discrimination against many protected groups. I suddenly realized that AI technologies for human resources could be systematizing bias on a massive scale, so I decided to turn my research focus to this topic.

Research Plan

In Unit 2, I immersed myself in the topic of AI in HR by searching for and reading material from a wide variety of sources. Using my Research Plan as a guide, I found an active conversation taking place in scholarly journals, trade publications, popular websites, and in various other outlets such as YouTube, TED Talks, podcasts, blogs, and corporate websites. I enjoy hunting for great information, so my research process is usually to read everything I can find and to look for ideas and patterns that resonate with me. In the past, I have done this in a haphazard way, but all the tools we used in this unit, such as the three listed below, helped me stay organized and kept me from chasing some ideas that were off on a tangent.

WRT 205 Focusing Flowchart Dylan LopezDownload
WRT 205 Complicating Your Research Exercise Dylan LopezDownload
WRT 205 Rounding Out the Conversation Dylan LopezDownload

As a result of this more focused process, I found many great sources, including the following which I have annotated here:

1-Applying artificial intelligence, implications for recruitmentDownload
2-Artificial intelligence in human resources managementDownload
3-The black box at workDownload
4-Statement of Lydia XZ BrownDownload
5-The seductive diversion of solving biasDownload
6-AI Revolution in HRMDownload

The more reading I did, the more I realized that it was not so easy to sort all of my sources into clearly defined “Pro-AI” and “Anti-AI” categories. Instead, many sources fell into a kind of gray area where both advantages and disadvantages of AI were discussed and explored. At first, I thought this meant I wasn’t doing my research properly, but I now see that the conversation taking place right now is actually in a kind of gray area. As a society, we don’t know yet what to make of AI in HR. Many of the major problem areas have been identified, but we are still feeling our way through the issues that are more subtle. Even the harshest critics of the use of AI have a tiny bit of hope that it may turn out to be just fine. But one thing I noted is that the conversation hasn’t really heated up to the point where our government is paying enough attention and getting involved. Part of me worries that our representatives are going to get involved when it’s too late. Ultimately, my work in this unit has inspired me to add my own thoughts and ideas to the conversation. If I can reach even a small audience, I think I will have done my part to move the discussion forward.

Discussion Questions Week of 7/26

Response to #1

In “Applying artificial intelligence: implications for recruitment,” Ashwani Kumar Upadhyay and Komal Khandelwal provide an overview of the ways artificial intelligence (AI) is being used in the hiring process and discuss the advantages for firms as well as job candidates. The authors are associate professors in strategic management at universities in India and have recently co-authored a book, AI Revolution in HRM: The New Scorecard, which provides an in-depth look at this rapidly evolving field. In their article, they highlight the many advantages of AI for HR, including helping recruiters process enormous volumes of data, screening social media to make sure a candidate’s values align with the organization, and matching personality types to certain positions. AI saves time on routine processes and allows HR staff to focus on high value work. The authors are clear that AI is good at identifying talent but many activities such as rapport-building and salary negotiation still need to be done by humans. The authors also highlight benefits for candidates, such as quicker rejections so job hunters can move on and functions that can direct candidates to other positions that might be a better fit. The authors also point out that AI can be intelligently programmed to avoid unconscious bias, and that AI technology, like other technologies, will get better over time.

This article will be useful to my project because it concisely describes the allure of AI for HR in practical terms. I am building a case to support the idea of slowing down AI implementation in HR and imposing legal restrictions because diversity and inclusion efforts will be harmed, so I need a source or two that advocate for the implementation of AI and that discuss the benefits. Human resource departments are overwhelmed with data to review, candidates to screen, and endless routine interactions and tasks. In some ways, firms are racing against each other to find the right employees, so the firms with the better technology and faster processes may win. This does not mean that AI is or will be perfect in the near term, especially when it comes to issues like diversity and inclusion. However, the authors make a solid argument for implementing these systems and express optimism about the future. In this way, they provide a good counterpoint to my argument.

Upadhyay, A. K., & Khandelwal, K. (2018). Applying artificial intelligence: implications for recruitment. Strategic HR Review, Vol. 17, No. 5: 255-258. DOI:10.1108/SHR-07-2018-0051. https://www-proquest-com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/docview/2133758924?pq-origsite=summon&accountid=14214.

Response to #3

The readers who responded to Katharine Schwab’s article on open offices understandably have a right to feel offended when a coworker harasses them, even in a subtle way. Many of the situations the women described sounded not only uncomfortable but creepy, and I can see why many of them wanted to leave their jobs. But when looking for the real causes of the problem, I think it’s important to separate the environment (which doesn’t have a mind of its own and doesn’t act) from the people in the environment (who do). In other words, I don’t think the environment creates the organizational culture, the people do and if you want to change the culture you have to work on the people.

It saddened me to read that many of the women made changes to their appearance and behavior. In a world that is increasingly aware of sexism and sexual harassment because of movements like “Me Too,” I think an open office might be the perfect environment to bring a subject like sexism in the workplace out in the open. With everything literally out in the open, what is holding companies back from educating all employees about the negative impact of sexism? Policies can be set and explained to curb behavior that makes people uncomfortable and to encourage more people to report sexist behavior when they see it happening. Extending this idea further, I would say that women do not have to fight this battle alone. There are many men who are willing to fight it with them, and men who aren’t doing enough can be encouraged to do more. “How Men Can Confront Other Men About Sexist Behavior” by W. Brad Johnson and David G. Smith shows them how they can get started.

Research Plan

When I began exploring ways I could contribute to the conversation about organizational culture and diversity and inclusion, my first instincts were telling me to focus my research on the most obvious problems like race, ethnicity, and gender. I wanted to see if I could identify new lines of inquiry, new solutions, or connect the dots in ways that others haven’t connected them before. Without even going too deep into the existing literature, what I found was decades of research and thousands of great ideas and potential solutions, but hardly any real progress where it matters most. After reading Ian Bogost’s article “The Problem with Diversity in Computing” and the contributions of my classmates, especially Sherri’s post on Algorithm-Driven Hiring Tools, I was inspired to turn my focus in a new direction to investigate the hidden biases that we might be building into today’s HR technologies. Coincidentally, I had recently taken an online personality test as part of an application for a job at my local golf course, which struck me as an odd requirement. Although the problems of the past are still with us, I fear that we might be creating new problems as organizations adopt new technologies without understanding how they work or what the risks are. After watching the documentary Persona and getting a good look at the personality testing industry, my decision to investigate this further was solidified. So the question I am trying to understand is: Are artificial intelligence technologies in human resources going to make organizations more diverse and inclusive, or will they make things worse?

There are several reasons why this question interests me. On a personal level, I have always thought of myself as a square peg, because of a birth injury, my ethnicity, my struggles with learning, and other aspects of who I am. Like most young adults, I want to fit in but I also want to be myself. I worry that artificial intelligence algorithms are being built that will limit opportunities for people like me before we even have a chance to prove ourselves in the work force. As a business major, I also want to understand how “people technologies” work and how they can be ethically used, the same way I need to understand how finance, accounting, marketing, investing, and other business technologies work. As the world gets more data driven, I want to understand the ramifications of artificial intelligence so I can be a better decision maker in my future career.

This inquiry connects directly with material from a Fundamentals of Management course I took last semester. In that course, we did three separate units on organizational culture (which focused on vision and values), diversity and inclusion (which focused on hiring practices and company policies), and personality (which focused on the advantages and limitations of personality tests). At the time, I did not see the linkages between these topics, which were spread out over 14 weeks. Now I clearly do. Last semester, the focus was mainly on improving performance, and technology was not discussed in depth regarding the three units above. But from the research I have done so far, I can see technology is going to change everything about human resources, and that means it’s going impact everything about an organization’s culture. With two years left at Whitman, I believe what I learn because of this research project will help me be a better student in my future business classes, and ultimately a better employee after I graduate.

My research takes place at the intersection of human resources management, organizational culture, diversity and inclusion, artificial intelligence, data analytics, personality assessment, and employment law. To begin my search for sources, I used SU library’s Summon Search to locate scholarly as well as professional and trade journal sources. Using Google, I was able to locate additional sources, including articles in newspapers and on trusted industry websites for the American Bar Association and Society for Human Resources Management, for example. By using LinkedIn, I found some articles, blog posts, and TED talks by faculty or industry professionals that didn’t appear in any other search results. While watching Persona, I took notes to capture potential quotes I could use, as well as noted the names of people to do further research on. I have also searched on YouTube to find relevant videos, which I plan to watch to gather more subject matter expert quotes. And finally, my searches have also led me to firms selling the artificial intelligence technology products for human resources. I have found it interesting to see the language they use when they market their products and may be able to use some of it. Overall, I have found lots of great material. The next steps of my research plan are to carefully review my sources, take notes and annotate them, and then organize them for easy access.