Faculty Member's Book Positions Human Resources As Organizational Success Agent

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA (May 12, 2009) – A recent book coauthored by Maria Taylor, director for learning solutions for Penn State Executive Programs, identifies ways for human resources professionals to drive organizational change by capitalizing on HR’s unique position to discover opportunities for competitive advantage through the lens of people.

In Human Resource Transformation: Demonstrating Strategic Leadership in the Face of Future Trends, Taylor and her coauthors—William Rothwell, professor of workforce education and development at Penn State, and Robert Prescott, associate professor of human resource management at Rollins College—build on the trends they identified in their 1998 book The Strategic Human Resource Leader. 

Set against a backdrop of today’s complex global workforce and workplace, the authors detail how human resource leaders have viewed both past and present trends shaping their environments—why the trends are important, what opportunities and risks they present, and how to deal with them.

They argue that many of the recent trends in HR have combined to create even more powerful forces shaping the next decade and beyond. The requirement to deal with all of these trends simultaneously, along with the complexity of operating in a global environment, is driving the need to recharter HR’s role within today’s organizations.

Linking strategy and operational needs to human resource implications, the authors then delve deeper to examine the new role of HR leadership, especially when facing the challenges of outsourcing. They present an action plan for aligning and implementing a new agenda to connect the HR function to the success of the organization.

The book also includes:

• An overview of HR transformation, including important information about what trends and issues prompt HR transformation, what HR transformation can mean, what business case can be made for that change, how the direction of that change can be established and managed, and how its relative success can be measured
• Tips for mapping out a plan of action for aligning and implementing a new agenda for connecting the HR function to the success of the organization
• Insights into the many possible strategic decisions that HR leaders could make in context of the base organization’s fundamental business or operational challenges to the business transformation as well as what HR has done to adapt 
• In-depth case studies and “Transformation in Action”—from AT&T to IBM to the U.S. Navy—which illustrate how human resource professionals have dealt with the trends affecting their organizations.

Human Resource Transformation, published by Davies Black, is available on Amazon.

About Maria Taylor

Taylor is director for learning solutions at Penn State Executive Programs, the executive education division of the Smeal College of Business. She is responsible for creating innovative solutions to help clients to build leadership and organizational capability to meet their strategic objectives and create competitive advantage.

Prior to rejoining Penn State Executive Programs—she previously served as managing director of executive education—Taylor was director of learning solutions for Raytheon Professional Services, a global leader in learning services and outsourcing operating in more than 70 countries. At Raytheon, she worked with client organizations to translate their strategic business needs into innovative learning solutions and comprehensive learning outsourcing engagements.

Taylor has also served as vice president of Maryland National Bank. Her banking experience includes responsibility for client development, credit underwriting, and relationship management for a full range of credit, cash management, and investment services in the corporate, commercial, and retail sectors of the banking industry. 

Throughout her career, Taylor has combined her strategic and financial acumen with organizational and leadership development to build the processes, systems, and talent required for rapid and profitable growth. She has worked with clients in strategic and market planning, talent and learning systems solution design, and executive education.

Her clients include global organizations in a wide variety of industries, the military, and government sectors, including ARAMARK, Carpenter Technology, CUNA Mutual Group, Dell Computer, DTE Energy, Daimler-Chrysler, Ecolab, General Motors, Hawker Beechcraft, Pfizer, PPG, Raytheon, and the U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.

In addition to her two books, Taylor has published articles and papers in the Journal of Higher Education, Journal of Management Development, and The Institute for the Study of Organizational Effectiveness. 

She has served on the boards of the Louisiana Council for Manufacturing Sciences, the Planning Committee for the Human Resources Planning Society 2004 Annual Conference, and Harvard’s Learning Innovations Laboratories (LILA).

Taylor holds an M.B.A. from Smeal and a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Penn State. She is a qualified Raytheon Six Sigma specialist.