ADMS 3430: Human Resources Planning
This guide is designed for students in ADMS 3430: Human Resources Planning. It aims to improve students' awareness of the key resources needed for class assignments, and to help students perform more effective research. Note that this guide is not intended as a comprehensive list of sources, but rather as a general guide. If in doubt, students are encouraged to contact a librarian. Information about the Bronfman Business Library's reference services are available here -- we are accessible in-person, over the phone, via e-mail, and through IM chat. The sources listed below are available in print at the Bronfman Business Library, S237, Schulich School of Business, electronically via York University Libraries Web site, or are freely available on the Web.
The handout provided in class is available here.
The PowerPoint slides from the session are available here.
- General Library Information
- Finding Articles on a Human Resources Planning Topic
- Citing Your Sources
- HR Planning: Web Resources
General Library Information
Library Homepage Your gateway to the York's libraries system, including access to the library's catalogue, eResources links, and a link to the Bronfman Business Library homepage.
Undergraduate Library Guide If you need a refresher on what services and tools are available through the York University Libraries' system, the Undergraduate Library Guide provides basic information including libraries' hours, locations, how to borrow or renew materials, library eResources links and information, connecting to eResources from home and more
Connecting to eResources from Home How to access the eResources collection remotely, including access to articles databases, eJournals, eBooks, and more.
Finding Articles on a Human Resources Planning Topic
Different Types of Business Articles
The following section is a description of the different kinds of articles, and when to use them in your research.
Business articles in scholarly or peer-reviewed journals:
- Published in academic journals - may be peer-reviewed
- May appear in a scholarly journal generally dedicated to the area of business e.g. Administrative Science Quarterly, or to a sub-field within business e.g. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology
- Written by academics and researchers
- Typically focus on original research
- Publication lag time
- Use specialized language
- Extensive bibliographies
- Plain covers, few or no pictures or advertisements
When should we use a scholarly or peer-reviewed article?: Where an academic or scholarly perspective is required; where original research is sought; where interested in academic theory; where a review of the academic literature on a business topic is needed; where a professor has specifically stipulated that only scholarly articles may be used for a given research project.
Tip: Use Ulrichs International Periodical Directory to determine if a specific journal is refereed. You can search by journal name, and if it is refereed this symbol will appear beside the journal title:
Business articles in trade journals:
- Published in trade or professional journals or magazines e.g. HR Professional, Autoweek etc.
- Target members of a specific business, industry or organization.
- Written by practitioners or journalists who cover the field.
- Often published by an association or organization.
- Valued for currency.
- Typically focus on industry trends, new products or techniques, and organizational news.
- Editorial review quite common, may contain short bibliographies.
- Often printed on glossy paper with pictures, charts, and illustrations and some focused advertising
When should you use an article from a trade journal?: Where a practitioner perspective is needed; where industry, company, or market research being conducted with emphasis on currency; where seeking information on best practices, recent developments or other information relating to a particular profession or trade.
Business articles in popular business magazines:
- Target audience is general public and/or business professionals.
- Focus on general business information especially current trends and news, e.g., Canadian Business; Forbes
When should you use an article from a popular business magazine?:
Where general background information is required on a business topic and information source need not be academic, specialized, or in-depth in focus; where currency is important as many popular publications are published weekly and cover business news events and recent developments.
Business articles in newspapers or newswires:
- Short articles written by business columnists/journalists.
- Focus on current news in business, e.g. Wall Street Journal, BusinessWire.
When should you use a newspaper or newswire business article?: Typically the best (and often only) source for very recent business developments or events; useful source of political, social, economic and public commentary; useful in order to determine how an event was reported on at a particular point in time; where regional research being conducted local newspapers may be the only, or one of few, sources of information available.
Finding an Article When You Have a Citation or Reference
You will find citations in your course reading lists, or from bibliographies/reference lists. When you have a reference or citation to a specific HRM article, you can use the Title Quick Search Box to determine whether the journal/magazine is available online from the Libraries. This can be found on the libraries' home page at www.library.yorku.ca. Let's use the following citation as an example:
Maurin, E.and T. Xenogiani. (2007). "Demand for Education and Labor Market Outcomes." Journal of Human Resources, 42(4), p.795-819.
Type the publication's title into the title quick search box (be sure the eResources button is selected):
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Make sure to enter the title of the journal or magazine in which the article appears in the search box, and not the title of the article. Then check to see if the libraries have the volume and issue you need, which in this case they do - the Journal of Human Resources is available from March, 1966 to the most recent volume:
Choosing the Right Articles Database
Besides retrieving a specific citation from the articles databases, you can also use these databases for research. York's libraries system has access to an extensive collection of articles databases, each with their own subject focus, or specialization. The article database you choose depends on your topic. Many databases are discipline-specific (e.g. ABI/Inform Global focuses on business), while some are multi-disciplinary (e.g. Scholars Portal, which covers areas of the social sciences, hard sciences, business, and others). Some may relate to a specific discipline within business (e.g. Human Resources Abstracts). Others are specialized in certain types of articles (e.g. Factiva for newspaper articles).
Your topic might be interdisciplinary, or quite specific, and as a result may require searching in a variety of different databases. You can access a list of useful indexes and other resources by subject available from the Libraries' home page, as well as a Business Resources A-Z listing available via the Bronfman Business Library's home page. Note that there is also a list of electronic journal articles pertaining to human resources, which is available via the Bronfman home page.
The following articles databases are useful when undertaking research in the area of Human Resource Planning.
Sources for Journal and Magazine Articles on HRM Themes:
ABI/Inform Global: Contains citations and abstracts for over 3,000 business and management publications. More than 1,000 of these titles are available in full-text or full-image and many of these go back to 1986. This resource incorporates management, industry and company-specific information of both a practical and theoretical nature. Subjects covered include: finance, human resources management, public administration, marketing, management, economics, taxation, telecommunications, corporate strategies, competitive and product information.
ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry:This related database covers more than 700 trade publications. It is especially useful if you are researching a topic relevant to a particular industry, profession, or product as trade publications are so often targeted at practitioners in a specific industry e.g. Automotive News, HR Professional, or Communications Today.
Business Source Premier: Contains full text for over 7,500 business periodicals and other sources, including scholarly journals, trade and general business magazines, monographs, country economic and industry reports, industry yearbooks, and market research reports.
CBCA Complete: Provides interdisciplinary coverage of Canadian topics including the areas of business and current affairs. Offers references, and many full text articles, from Canadian journals, magazines, newspapers, and newswires. Dates of coverage vary by title but many full-text titles available from early or mid-1990s, while citations for many publications available from early 1980s onward. Consult CBCA Business , a sub-component of the CBCA Complete database, in order to limit the search specifically to Canadian business journals and magazines, but note that newspaper and newswire coverage are not offered by this product, and coverage of business topics in non-business publications is also not available.
Human Resources Abstracts: Includes citations and abstracts for journals, books and papers in the field of human resources studies including human resources management. Topics include but are not limited to: aging and retirement, career preparation, earnings and benefits, health and human resources, hiring and personnel practices, human resources practices and management, labour and industrial relations. Coverage is for 2003 onwards.
LexisNexis Academic : LexisNexis Academic provides searchable access to a comprehensive spectrum of full-text information from over 6,000 news, business, legal, medical, and reference publications. Included are current international newspapers, as well as comprehensive company and industry reports. Information available includes trade and marketing reports, patent details, merger and acquisition analysis, country reports and industry and legal publications.
Proquest European Business & Proquest Asian Business: Useful for tracking articles where the focus is a European or Asian human resources or organizational behaviour issue. European Business includes access to full-text articles for some 110 periodical titles, while Asian Business provides full-text articles from 75 periodical titles.
PsycInfo: Indexes journal articles, dissertations, reports, books, book chapters, and other scholarly documents including literature from over 45 countries in more than 30 languages. Coverage is from 1872 - present. Covering the literature in psychology and related behavioral sciences this database has many applications to work and research in the field of human resources including industrial psychology, organizational behaviour, and others.
Sources for Newspaper Articles on HRM Themes in Canada:
Canadian Newsstand - Major Dailies: A searchable full-text database of major Canadian daily newspapers. Major titles include:
- Calgary Herald (1988-)
- Edmonton Journal (1989-)
- Globe and Mail (1977-)
- Halifax Daily News (1990-)
- Montreal Gazette (1985-)
- National Post (1998-)
- Ottawa Citizen (1985-)
- Toronto Star (1985-)
- Vancouver Sun (1987-)
Select the Publications tab for a full listing. There may be a 2 - 7 day delay for the most recent issues.
Factiva: Includes nearly 9,000 sources from 118 countries in 22 languages, including full-text articles from international newspapers including The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and The Toronto Star, and continuously updated newswires and general business news publications like The Economist, Forbes, Fortune, Time, Newsweek, Finanz & Wirtschaft, Satellite News, and BusinessWeek.
Effective Search Strategies
Having determined what types of articles you are seeking, and where to find them, you are now ready to begin your articles search. This section provides a list of tips on how to effectively search the articles databases within York's eResources collection. You will find that, if you are able to develop sophisticated searches, you will yield better, more focused search results. The following are some tips on how to search effectively. Note that these features will vary, depending on which articles database you are using; however the principles and the function of these concepts are the same among most business article resources.
- Avoid natural language i.e. do not type a sentence as you would speak it. Think about the terms as keywords that may be used to describe your topic.
- So that you are not overwhelmed with results, use the advanced search instead of basic search in most databases.
- Keywords should reflect distinctive concepts, i.e. a person/company name, or terms such as personnel planning, or strategic staffing.
- If you get too many results use "and" to narrow your search, e.g. human resources and Canada; compensation and executives
- To expand your search use "or" to combine synonyms or like terms, e.g. employee or personnel or staff; human resources or HR
- Use truncation symbols (most often *) to find relevant variants of a word, e.g. strateg* will search strategy, strategic, strategies
- In most of the databases the convention is US spelling, therefore use labo* to find labor and labour
- To search from a phrase containing more than two words use quotes, e.g. "chief executive officer"
- Always check either above the results list or on the right or left sides of the results lists to find suggestions for improving your search.
- There are normally ways to limit your search by date, so that you can specify articles that were published in the last five years.
For example, if you are looking at the issue of compensation from a human resources perspective, a simple search might look like this:
But this can be improved. An effective search strategy might look like this:
Citing Your Sources
For guides on APA citation style:
- McGill University's Howard Ross Management Library has created a guide to citing business sources using APA style that includes many of the resources that are available to York University students, faculty and staff.
- York also has the latest version of the Publication manual of the American Psychological Association in print.
Ensure that all your references are included, and are properly cited. Proper citation goes beyond having the right formatting for your references; it is part of ensuring that you have not committed plagiarism in your work. For more information about citations and plagiarism, see the Academic Integrity Tutorial.
HR Planning: Web Resources
Apart from the libraries' collection, there are several key web resources that are of general interest to the study of Human Resources Planning.The following are web links, which are accessible for free online.
Managing for Business Success: Human Resources Industry Canada maintains the "Managing for Business Success" website, which is geared towards small- and medium-sized business owners who need source of practical information, tools and advice regarding managing their companies. The section on Human Resources includes links to other valuable resources for HR planning (as well as links for employment relations, hiring, terminations, etc.).
Created by Meghan Ecclestone YUL/BBL/ September 2009
Last modified by: Meghan Ecclestone on Wed Sep 30 13:01:26 EDT 2009
