International mergers and acquisitions in the UK 1985-94: a comparison of national HRM practices

The paper investigates HRM practices adopted by companies from the USA, Japan, Germany and France in UK companies that they have acquired. UK/UK acquisitions are used as a control. The research is based on a survey instrument applied to 201 companies and interviews with forty. It notes that there is some convergence of HRM practices, in that, for example, all countries researched employ performance-related pay and increase the amount of training in their new subsidiaries. It finds, however, that there is a distinct difference in the HRM practices employed by companies from each of the countries, influenced by the characteristic HR practices common to companies in the country of origin of the parent.     

Coping with an emerging market competition through strategy-human resource alignment: case study evidence from five leading Japanese manufacturers in the People's Republic of China

This paper documents how PRC-based Japanese affiliates can align their human resource management (HRM) policies and practices with their business strategies based on in-depth interview surveys of the five leading Japanese manufacturers in China. In particular, using a multiple-informant research design to interview both top and human resource managers in each site, the study has attempted to clarify the strategic fit between the business strategies pursued and HRM practices adopted in China. Our interviews with top management for each affiliate revealed three types of business strategies that the PRC-based affiliates adopt to gain competitiveness in the Chinese market. Separate interviews with HR managers further clarified that affiliates' HRM efforts are aligned with the strategy each affiliate is pursuing. The findings are used to suggest several hypothesized relationships between the particular strategies pursued and the HRM practices adopted in China. Furthermore, this study has provided some important insights as to how the choice of affiliate-level business strategies in China affects the ‘hybridization’ processes of the HRM policies and practices used in the cross-national business environment.     

On the job and co-worker commitment of Dutch agency workers and permanent employees

This article explores the relationship between employment status (agency workers vs. permanent employees) and affective and normative job and co-worker commitment. Our study was conducted on employees from four metal companies in the Netherlands. As HRM practices seem to influence employee commitment, we performed 89 interviews across all four companies and included blue-collar workers, their managers (direct supervisors, HR managers and production managers), as well as works council members. To test our hypotheses on commitment differences, we conducted quantitative research within the companies (permanent employees N = 167; agency workers N = 54), all blue-collar workers. Results show that permanent employees and agency workers express similar degrees of commitment to their job and to their co-workers, apart from affective commitment to co-workers, which is lower for agency workers than for permanent workers. We argue that national legislation, as well as managers' attempts to offer HR practices equal to those of permanent staff, play a prominent role in stimulating agency workers' commitment.     

An exploration of the HRM values of Chinese managers working in Western multinational enterprises in China: implications for HR practice

This paper qualitatively explores the nature of human resource management (HRM) values of local Chinese managers working in Western-based multinational enterprises in China and also considers how these values are associated with preferences for HR practices. The study involves the use of repertory grid interviews with 36 local Chinese managers. The study shows that interviewees reflected a high level of assimilation and internalization of many Western HRM values. Interviewees also retained many traditional Chinese values, thus highlighting the role of institutional and cultural forces on HRM. However, among these local managers, there was clear decline in some traditional Chinese values, such as ‘harmony’ and ‘virtue’. A further interesting finding was the co-existence of paradoxical values of collectivism and individualism among the managers. Analyses of repertory grid data and interview comments also highlight that preferences for HR practices is associated with these underlying HRM values.     

Union partnership as a facilitator to HRM: improving implementation through oppositional engagement

Abstract

This paper provides a nuanced insight into the workplace level interactions between a union and HRM systems within a union-management partnership arrangement. Soft outcomes of HRM systems typically suffer from compromised implementation by managers struggling to balance competing operational priorities, but we show how a union limits this poor implementation. Qualitative and documentary data were retrieved from a major UK retailer and a trade union to examine how union activity interacts with HRM delivery. Firstly, union communication systems enhanced or replaced company systems of employee voice. Secondly, union activity policed management implementation of HRM practices to limit their subjugation to short-term productivity increases, improving outcomes for employees and the HRM system for the company. These outcomes were achieved through oppositional engagement within the context of partnership, which points towards a persisting and productive pluralism within the cooperative rhetoric.     

Using theory on authentic leadership to build a strong human resource management system

Prior work has questioned whether human resource management (HRM) lives up to the organizational benefits it espouses. The intentions underlying human resource (HR) practices often differ from how they are implemented by line managers or how they are ultimately perceived by followers, thus undermining the strength of the HR system in influencing organizational outcomes and with them the overall reputation of HRM. We argue that line managers, specifically those who display authentic leadership behaviors, can strengthen an HR system (i.e., aligning intended, actual, and perceived HR policies and practices) by implementing HR practices in a way that they are perceived as distinct, consistent, and reflecting consensus. Authentic leadership theory departs from more traditional, top-down fit perspectives in strategic HRM to consider the dynamic way in which individuals within an organizational context co-create felt and perceived authenticity in interaction with others. In other words, by providing a more dynamic approach to creating alignment in HRM, authentic leadership helps HRM attain more authenticity and credibility in the organization.     

HRM practices used to promote pro-environmental behavior: a UK survey

To date, the extent to which UK organizations use human resource management (HRM) practices to promote pro-environmental behavior through workplace HRM policies and initiatives is under-researched within the literature. Therefore, this paper presents results of a survey investigating current HRM practices used to promote pro-environmental behavior in a sample of 214 UK organizations representing different sizes and industry sectors. Overall, findings indicated that HRM practices are not used to a great extent to encourage employees to become more pro-environmental. The most prevalent practices used within organizations incorporated elements of management involvement supporting the idea that managers are the gatekeepers to environmental performance. Although organizations indicated that some HRM practices were more effective than others at encouraging pro-environmental behavior in their staff, only a very small percentage of organizations actually conducted any form of evaluation; organizations consequently lack clear evidence as to whether their HRM practices actually result in employee behavior change. Practical implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Managing the well-being of temporary skilled migrants

The war for talent, whereby skilled workers move between countries, continues to remain a global issue. This paper is informed by the human resource management (HRM) literature on global careers of skilled migrants and their cross-cultural adjustment and well-being. These literatures draw on human capital theory to understand skilled migration. In this paper, a case study of Western Australia's answer to addressing skills shortages by employing skilled migrant workers through temporary skilled migration schemes (employer-sponsored) situates the discussion within the role of HRM. Temporary skilled migrants are vulnerable in that they can experience a number of stressors, including long periods of separation from their loved ones, commencing a new job in an alien environment and resettlement tasks. The paper makes a contribution in utilising Al Ariss and Syed's (2011) model of human capital drawing on social, cultural, economic and symbolic forms of currency for temporary skilled migrants. This group is not homogenous in that they all draw on these aspects of human capital in varying ways. By addressing the gaps, HRM can add value in providing assimilation strategies for temporary migrant workers that supports retention and ensures improved worker well-being.     

Accounting for Management and Managing Accounting: Reflections on Recent Changes in the UK

This paper uses data derived from interviews carried out in a number of UK companies to explore the extent to which management concerns are driven by accounting practices, and also how accounting practices are mediated by the views that managers have of the role of accounting. The paper also analyses accounts given by UK managers of the ways in which changes in accounting are being managed. Two specific issues relating to accounting change are examined: (1) the impact of new information technology on accounting change, and (2) the competition between accounting and alternative bodies of expertise as mechanisms for change. In studying accounting in the context of wider organizational change, the paper focuses on a number of distinct, yet related, themes: (1) management accounting’s power to reinvent itself; (2) the interface between management accounting practices and employee empowerment (as one example of ‘new’ management practices); and, (3) contradictions in using management accounting calculi to facilitate the ‘new’ organization.     

Satisfaction with HR practices and commitment to the organisation: why one size does not fit all

This article examines the links between employees' satisfaction with HR practices and their commitment to the organisation. It draws on recently collected data to examine these links for three groups of employees: professionals, line managers and workers. Satisfaction with some HR practices appears to be linked to the commitment of all employees, while the link for others varies befuwn the three employee groups. These findings pose a challenge to the universalistic model of HRM and have implications for those seeking to design practices that will improve organisational commitment.     

'Best practice' human resource management: perfect opportunity or dangerous illusion?

In recent years there has been a considerable degree of interest in the notion of 'best practice' HRM, inspired at least in part by the work of Jeffrey Pfeffer. Along with other contributions from the UK and the USA, this has resulted in assertions that a particular bundle of HR practices can increase profits irrespective of organizational, industrial, or national context. In this paper, we focus on the way in which HRM is characterized in these writings, querying whether the practices which are typically assumed and put forward as 'good' may not appear quite so beneficial to workers when analysed more systematically. It is suggested that there are a number of problems with the notion of 'best practice', both in relation to the meaning of specific practices, and their consistency with each other, and the claims that this version of HRM is universally applicable. The unitarist underpinnings of this literature are also exposed. This is not to argue that HR policies and practices do not influence organizational performance but, rather, that we cannot determine this from the current literature. The 'best practice' conclusions may be attractive but the jury is still out.     

Cross-national learning from best practice and the convergence-divergence debate in HRM

The chief objective of this paper is to develop suggestions as to how to learn from best practices in HRM across national borders. The analysis is based on survey data gathered from 232 HRM managers from American, Japanese and German top 500 companies. The managers provide information on how the HRM model of their respective country is characterized and from which of the other two country models they seek inspiration. The concrete attributes of the models considered worth adopting are described in detail and future developments with regards to convergence of the HRM models explored. The empirical data suggest that HR managers from all three countries expect a partial convergence towards a hybrid model. Curiously, the model that comes closest to this hybrid – the German one – is also the one that rates lowest as a source of inspiration. An argument is made that in order to better understand learning from best practice and resulting convergence tendencies, research should seek more insights regarding the knowledge of managers about foreign management models, their perceptions of these models, and how these perceptions are generated.     

Human resource and industrial relations practices of UK and US multinationals in Germany

Most of the research about HRM and IR practices of MNCs in their host country has been conducted in deregulated countries such as the UK and the US. Host countries with relatively weak institutional arrangements facilitate the transfer of home-country practices. In contrast, those with institutionally strong systems, such as Germany, impose stronger pressures for adaptation. This paper reports research about nine US and four UK subsidiaries operating in Germany. It examines how their HRM and IR practices are shaped by German labour and IR institutions, how they differ from a control group of indigenous firms and what room for manoeuvre is left for the introduction of home-country practices. The main conclusions are that small and medium-sized subsidiaries in particular can to some extent avoid the pressures exerted by German labour and IR institutions. This facilitates the transfer of home-country practices. However, even larger affiliates that comply with the German institutions can transfer practices from their parent company. The highly regulated German system leaves some room for flexibility. Nevertheless, the institutional environment prevents large companies from following a unitarist HRM and IR approach.     

HRM and front line managers: the influence of role stress

With front line managers (FLMs) being critical in the delivery of human resource management (HRM) we would benefit from a better understanding of how and why these managers execute their human resources (HR) responsibilities in the way that they do. Without such knowledge we cannot fully identify the factors that contribute to the known gap between intended and implemented HRM and mediate the relationship between HRM and organizational performance. Yet FLMs have been largely overlooked in many studies of line management-HRM with very few employing a role-theoretic framework. To address this, interviews were conducted with FLMs in the retail industry to examine the relationship between their work role stressors and their implementation of HRM. FLMs were found to experience role overload, role conflict and role ambiguity, and in accordance with process role theory, engaged in role-making as a response. This resulted in FLMs deviating from intended HRM whereby role overload and conflict often brought about a renegotiation of the more intangible or costly HR policies, whereas role ambiguity undermined their ability to consistently and confidently implement HRM. The paper concludes by arguing that FLMs and their experiences of role stress are critical to our understanding of the gap between intended and implemented HRM.     

HRM implementation by multiple HRM actors: a social exchange perspective

Abstract

In this study, we understand HRM implementation as a social process that depends on the social exchange relationships between line managers and both HRM professionals and employees. As such, we offer a fresh approach to understanding HRM implementation by concentrating on the social exchange among HRM actors. We do so by investigating to what extent these exchange relationships influence HRM implementation, as reflected in employees’ perceptions of the presence of HRM practices and their affective commitment. We collected multilevel data from two sources (line managers and employees) and in two phases in a Dutch engineering firm, and obtained fully matched manager – employee information from 75 employees and 20 line managers. Our results show that employees perceive a larger number of HRM practices when they have a good relationship with their line managers and when their line managers are motivated to implement HRM practices. Line managers, in turn, reciprocate perceived support from the HRM department with greater motivation to implement these practices. We conclude that because HRM actors engage in social interactions, HRM practices will be implemented at the organizational level because employees perceive the presence of HRM practices and then reciprocate this with affective commitment.     

Line managers and HRM: A managerial discretion perspective

Line managers play a central role in HRM practices, but research and theory on how their role is enacted remains underdeveloped. This paper presents a case study of a large U.K.‐based fashion retailer and uses managerial discretion theory to develop a novel understanding of line managers' contribution to the implementation of HRM practices. We describe three distinct ways in which line managers engage with HRM policies and procedures, and propose that line managers make an important contribution to the effective implementation of HRM systems through exerting their cognitive and political abilities to bring about decisions that are well suited to their local situations. Moreover, we find that HR specialists design and manage HRM policies and procedures to afford different levels of managerial discretion in different areas of HRM.     

Variability in HRM implementation among line managers and its effect on performance: a 2-1-2 mediational multilevel approach

Over the last few decades, a substantial body of research has examined the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and performance. However, little attention has been given to the implementation of HRM, although an HR policy can be implemented in various ways within an organization. In addressing recent calls in the literature to examine this issue more closely, we study the role of line managers in implementing HRM and the influence of employees' perceptions of HRM. In a multilevel study of 315 employees and 41 line managers drawn from various work-units of a Dutch municipality, we tested whether HR practices, as implemented by line managers, affect employees' perceptions of HRM and whether these perceptions in turn relate to perceived unit performance. The analysis shows that implemented HR practices differed between work-units. More specifically, our study shows that these differences can be explained by a line manager's leadership style. Moreover, our findings indicate that employees' perceptions of the HR practices implemented mediate the relationship between the HR practices implemented by line managers and perceived unit performance. These findings contribute to our understanding of how HRM affects performance.     

‘Intended’ and ‘implemented’ HRM: the missing linchpin in strategic human resource management research

We argue that inconclusive findings in the SHRM literature regarding the relationship between HRM systems and organizational performance may result primarily from methodological weaknesses and a failure of researchers to distinguish between HR practices intended by the organizations and those actually implemented. Rather than relying upon a single respondent per organization as is the norm, we contrast reports of both managers and non-managers from inside and outside HR departments to highlight differences between intended and implemented HRM. The findings, arrived at with the help of 195 interviews, 508 questionnaire responses and several company documents, support our expectation: implemented HRM may be substantially different from intended HRM; consistent implementation increases employee satisfaction with HRM, which is positively related to organizational performance. The current study thus highlights new factors that require attention in developing HR–performance analyses and also suggests that a mere imitation of HRM in the hopes of improving organizational performance creates no value. It is crucial that HR departments and managers remain committed and supportive to the development of effective HRM systems by focusing upon actual ‘implementation’ within their organizations.     

Beyond the line: exploring the HRM responsibilities of line managers,project managers and the HRM department in four project-oriented companies in the Netherlands,Austria, the UK and the USA

The topic of what human resource management (HRM) responsibilities are devolved from the HRM department to line managers has attracted much interest in recent years. We report findings from a study on the devolution of HRM practices in four project-oriented companies (POCs) and argue that although HRM practices are carried out beyond the HRM department, they are also carried out beyond the line. While the literature on devolving HRM responsibilities to line management is burgeoning, the HRM responsibilities of managers beyond the line organization are neglected. We make two contributions to the literature. Firstly, our study reveals that some HRM practices are the domain of the project manager rather than either the line manager or the HRM department. The complex interplay of the roles of the HRM department, line management and project management creates challenges and pitfalls where people are managed across the boundaries of the permanent and temporary organization. We identify a potentially powerful role for the HRM department in both monitoring and guiding the different players from the line and the project organizations, and in protecting the well-being of employees whose work traverses these organizational boundaries. Our second contribution is that we map the diversity of practices in different POCs for managing the interplay between the three main parties delivering HRM practices and offer project orientation as a contextual indicator that contributes to diversity in HRM practices.     

Liability of smallness in SMEs – Using co-creation as a method for the ‘fuzzy front end’ of HRM practices in the forest industry

This study explores the co-creation part in the early stage of need analysis and the formation of work towards formal HRM practices in the forest industry. While SMEs are shown to be of great importance for the development in society they often suffer from Liability of Smallness (LoS) especially in the area of HRM. In smaller firms, HRM practices are characterized by ad hoc and idiosyncratic solutions and less formality. In this paper, we show how co-creation can be used to develop HR practices in an SME. The overall methodological approach in this study is action-oriented research. The empirical data is collected with a mixed-method approach including documents, interviews, focus groups, observations, pulse meetings and feedback on the process and results. The co-creation process benefits from using co-creation activities to drive the process forward as well as consolidate the results during the process. Dialog, access, risk, transparency, and openness have been valuable in this process.