Data on sickness absence is frequently used as a health indicator of employees. Based on a cross-sectional analysis with a random sample of employees covered by the Upper Austrian Sickness Fund (n = 930), it is shown that presenteeism (attending work despite illness) is a better indicator of health states than sickness absence. Compared to sickness absence, presenteeism is more strongly associated with gastro-intestinal complaints, musculoskeletal complaints, migraine, and mental ill-health, which are likewise strong determinants of subjective health. People with health complaints in general and with migrane and mental ill-health in particular have a higher propensity to favour presenteeism over sickness absence. Especially when rates of sickness absence are low, it is recommended to complement sickness absence data with estimates of presenteeism. It is assumed that presenteeism is a better estimator of mental health in particular.
Demographic shifts are altering job markets in developed countries. A steady increase in the average age of employees and a decline in the number of young, qualified workers have intensified the war for talent, resulting in highly competitive and dynamic job markets. Using resource dependence theory, this study investigates how organisations respond to such challenges. An investigation of a sample of 153 German companies provides support for the hypotheses that HR managers implement age diversity management in both appraisal and compensation practices as a response to competitive job markets which, in turn, contributes to organisational performance.
In line with the current discussion on Human Resource Management (HRM) professionals, we claim that HRM professionals are confronted with a critical challenge: they have to master the tensions between HRM as a profession on the one hand and the needs of maintaining power within their organization on the other. In this paper we explore whether HRM professionals perceive tensions stemming from changes in their professional role, their organizational roles and their position, where these tensions come from, and which strategies are used to cope with them in their daily practice. We build our theoretical frame on Bourdieu's Theory of Practice and conceptualize HRM professionals as actively contesting both their own as well as their groups' interests without losing sight of structural influences. Moreover, this theoretical framing allows us to assume that professional positions in organizations are inherently based on contradictions and tensions and so highlights these facets of HRM professional practice as well as focusing attention on coping strategies. Our empirical study is based on 21 interviews with German HRM professionals from large enterprises. The results show three main sources of tensions HRM professionals perceive within their organizations. These tensions stem from what we refer to as their various "sandwich" positions, from scarce resources, and from conflicts with line management. Our results show that these tensions are handled by HRM professionals as they dispose of suitable habitus aspects and professional capital. We identify four strategies that HRM professionals deploy when dealing with the tensions: the strategic consultant strategy, the active HRM service provider strategy, the HRM controller strategy and the qualification strategy. All of these strategies enable HRM professionals to maintain or even broaden the power position of HRM within their organization.
The purpose of this article is on the one hand to investigate paradoxes caused by the collision between rationalities of top management HRM strategies and local ones at the level of line managers, and on the other, the responses to them. A grounded-theory approach is used on empirical material from a university hospital and a dozen of high quality hotels. The study has shown that hospital HR staff and hotel directors respond to paradoxes by translating. A conclusion is that when repeatedly having to cope with these paradoxes, a special skill is developed, the skill of translating top-down strategic decisions into alternatives that fit different local conditions. The paradoxes, which the line managers responsible at the local level could otherwise not handle, are thus manageable thanks to consciously developed translating skills by hospital HR staff and hotel directors. These translations work as stimuli to strategy implementation when there is trust between translators and those who must execute the strategies, i.e. the line managers.
Integrating professional expertise in professional service firms (PSFs) is a key strategic challenge in the contemporary economy and individual firms. Previous research has pointed out that the governance of key aspects of PSFs, including knowledge integration, is shifting from a professional to a managerial logic, a shift that is often pictured as conflict laden based on the incompatibility of the two logics. Based on a study of knowledge integration in an engineering consulting firm, the current paper shows how managerial and professional logics interplay in shaping knowledge integration practices. We identify both aspects in which the logics reinforce each other in enabling knowledge integration and tensions that threaten knowledge integration. We conclude that the professional logic is a key driver of knowledge integration, but that the managerial logic, including its formal HR practices, may support knowledge integration through secondary effects if applied in a thoughtful way.
Why is it that HR specialists appear to have difficulty applying their knowledge, systems and techniques in a systematic way when it comes to professional services firms (PSFs) – particularly when the drivers for developing powerful HRM practices within such businesses seem more pressing than ever? This paper analyzes the ways HR specialists and PSF managers/partners differ in their understanding of organizations and their management. The analysis supports the argument that, while HR specialists and the discipline of HRM are governed by bureaucratic logic in their approach to management, PSF managers by contrast are driven by professional logic. This creates a number of subtle as well as explicit tensions and disconnects that will have to be tackled if the practices of HRM are to prevail in PSFs. This paper contributes to HRM literature as well as institutional theory, by applying an analysis of institutional logics to HRM practice in PSFs. The paper builds on interviews with five HR managers who have held positions in PSFs, as well as a longitudinal case study of PSF managers in one of the ‘Big Four’ accounting firms. The paper offers a number of tentative proposals around how HRM and PSFs might transcend the described gulf between the two approaches to management.
Success in human resource management (HRM) depends on the question of whether applied practices of HRM meet specific contingency factors and are appropriately configured. Using this argument, the present article examines HRM in professional service firms (PSFs) in pursuit of three objectives. First, we introduce a conceptual framework that illustrates how the constitutive characteristics of PSFs, as contingency factors, influence HRM practices and research. Second, based on this framework, we summarize key findings of research on HRM in PSFs and open up potential avenues for further research. Third, we reflect on the argument that HRM in PSFs can contribute to an understanding of HRM practices in other organizational settings, leading to the question of the mutual transferability of HRM practices. Aside from these three primary objectives, we also introduce the contents of the special issue.
Professionals, like business consultants, have been described as crucial for modern knowledge-intensive organizations, but they are not always thought to be easy to manage or to attract. This might be due to a need for autonomy and commitment that is aimed more at the profession than at their employer. For their recruitment it is thus important for modern organizations like professional service firms (PSFs) to know what expectations applicants who are future professionals have regarding human resource (HR) principles and programmes. We refer to the institutional logics perspective to gain insights whether, in the context of PSFs, applicants' expectations are associated with the logic of the profession, the corporation or the family. This article describes a discrete choice experiment conducted to analyse the influence of HR attributes in job advertisements used by PSFs to attract business management students. We use a hierarchical Bayesian analysis to carry out the conjoint analysis, as it enabled us to measure the relative importance of attributes on an individual level. The results show that first required job-related attitudes and then company and job description are the most important features of a job advertisement. Our study also indicates that future professionals simultaneously draw on different institutional logics when deciding which employer is attractive.
A large number of organizations restructured their Human Resource Management (HRM) departments according to their interpretation of Ulrich's (1997) business partner model into strategic business partners, centers of expertise and shared service centers. I argue that this approach could gain widespread acceptance in organizational practice because of its functionality in addressing tensions inherent in HRM. I relate to paradox research and categorize contradictory HRM demands into tensions of (1) identity, (2) learning, (3) performing and (4) organizing. The implementation of the business partner model resolves these tensions in the short-term by addressing the opposing forces separately. Yet, these resolution strategies are not sustainable and threaten the long-term impact of HRM. I discuss the shortcomings of the business partner model and explore how organizational actors can reframe HRM work to embrace the multifaceted nature of HRM.
In this paper, we investigate how conventions enable organisational actors to cope with paradoxical tensions in performance appraisal systems. Building on a case study of a performance appraisal system reform in a public sector organisation, we analyse how this organisation enabled superiors to take into account both accountability and professional logic. When new appraisal rules required superiors to rank their employees according to their qualifications but also to show collegiate solidarity, superiors negotiated an organisation-wide understanding of the rules that enabled them to address both logics simultaneously. The study underlines the importance of collective understandings for individual responses to paradoxical tensions and reveals how performance appraisal systems can be operated according to different logics.
Managing HRM related tensions is a matter of practical and theoretical significance. Despite increasing interest among HRM scholars in understanding the nature of tensions in managing the employment relationship, attempts to explore these tensions that go beyond the mapping of dualities or naming of the negative aspects of tensions are somewhat rare. Furthermore, discussions on managing HRM tensions tend to be of limited value for practitioners due to their overly abstract nature contributing to what several commentators lament is a growing theory-practice gap in HRM research. This Special Issue aims to advance the discussion on tensions in HRM by drawing on a recent paradox perspective from organization theory. Along with the contributors to the Special Issue, we explore how a paradox perspective can support HRM researchers in a more systematic analysis of types of HRM paradoxes and tensions and in deepening awareness of practical strategies for coping actively and constructively with tensions. In this introduction to the Special Issue, we first provide a synthesis of the features of a paradox perspective and contrast it with previous research on tensions in organization theory and HRM. Next, we illustrate how a paradox perspective can be applied to analyzing HRM tensions presenting key examples of such analysis. We then introduce the contributions to this Special Issue all of which draw, albeit in different ways, on a paradox perspective on HRM. Finally, we explore opportunities for future research. In particular, we focus on the need to move from a duality perspective to a paradox perspective on HRM, on opportunities to explore the links between HRM, paradox and organizational sustainability and on the skills and capabilities needed for coping with HRM paradoxes both at individual and organizational/HRM levels.
This study uses a ‘paradox lens’ to contribute to employability debates in HRM by examining the effectiveness of employability enhancing policies and practices (hereafter EP&Ps) in three case organizations. We identify three organizing paradoxes reflecting the complexities of the Dutch economic, political and socio-cultural contexts. In line with the EP&Ps' competing goals, we label these: the ‘(inverted) flexibility/commitment paradox’; ‘self-management/(human-resource) management paradox’; and the ‘sustainability/effectiveness and efficiency paradox’. We further analyse how their underlying paradoxical tensions spill over and create role-performance, belonging and learning paradoxical tensions at the micro-level and how these cumulatively impact managers' and employees' responses to EP&Ps. We then explore how HRM tries to actively go beyond ‘reinforcing paradox cycles’ by creating awareness and stimulating contextual change to foster the wider adoption of EP&Ps. In conclusion, we argue that the paradox lens can inform HRM scholars and labour market stakeholders to search for innovative ways to study and govern contemporary employability issues.
Ambiguities and tensions are at the core of HR work. The successful management of tensions seems to be one of the key challenges in HRM, one that has moved even more to the forefront through ongoing processes of devolution where HR responsibilities are shifted to and beyond the line. Our qualitative case study in a retailing company aims at identifying tensions that emerge from delegated HR activities and decentralized responsibilities that are assigned to line managers. Our results reveal that line managers are confronted with tensions that emerge from a struggle between strict rules and regulations on the one hand and self-directed learning and performing of HR work on the other hand. Based on these results we examine the consequences of avoiding, ignoring, and suppressing possible conflict and tensions. These defensive responses reinforce tensions line managers have to deal with and lead to a deprofessionalization of HR work. By building on a paradox perspective the discussion of our results contributes to enhancing the understanding of the multifaceted issues with regard to line managers and the HR work they have to learn and to perform. Practical implications call for emphasizing training and development of HR expertise for line managers and for taking a more proactive approach towards tensions and paradox.
Based on an interpretive, relational concept of branding, this paper explores how external stakeholders make sense of an employer brand. In 16 semi-structured interviews, potential job applicants and employer branding experts interpreted Daimler's employer branding material. On the basis of these interviews, we discuss the following main reconstructions: employer branding as an effective HR management tool, as a process of pre-selection employed by potential applicants, as a residual category of corporate and product branding, and, finally, as a legitimizing HR and marketing tool. These reconstructions are the result of a complex interplay of employer brand materials, individual characteristics, societal and organizational discourses, as well as different information channels. All things considered, rather than understanding employer branding as a functional means to portraying employers and determining how they are perceived, it should be thought of as an interactive, ambiguous, and ambivalent process of reconstructing an employer image.
Over the last decade the field of human resource management has reportedly acquired an increasing strategic influence in organisations. Yet human resource management as a profession has tended to be neglected in empirical research. From the perspective of human capital theory, studies of professions which analyse individual and firm-specific influences on remuneration are particularly useful. In this article we analyse a dataset that is suitable for this purpose and that was collected in an online survey of German personnel managers. At a theoretical level, given the increasing strategic influence of human resource managers, we argue that - in addition to individual and firm-specific influences on remuneration - the character of the activity (strategic versus operative) must be considered. A decomposition of the wage equation for strategic and operational roles allows us to attribute these differences in part to differences in individual human capital, but mostly to firm-specific factors. We discuss these results in the light of human capital theory and previous empirical studies and derive implications for practitioners.
The management of Enron incorporated bad practices that were partly responsible for the spectacular rise and fall of the company. How and why could these practices become established? To answer this question we examine four behavioral mechanisms and demonstrate their effects using Enron as an example. However, their presence is more widespread and the insights gained from analyzing this particular case are useful for understanding bad practices in other organizations. We focus on mechanisms, a methodological approach that has been used sparingly despite its high explanatory power. The article is concerned explicitly with managers as a social group with discretionary power. This group deserves scholarly attention when analyzing how practices become established in an organization.
In this paper, individual perceptions of careers and career-related action are analyzed and clustered into different types. With respect to both organizations and individuals, there is an intense debate on whether "standard models" of the career have lost, or indeed ever enjoyed, comprehensive validity. The recent academic debate on traditional and modern careers shows that an objective and structural view of careers needs to be supplemented by a subjective perspective. It seems necessary to understand the course of careers both as a result of individuals' perceptions and actions as well as embedded in and influenced by social contexts. In our qualitative study, we analyze data based on 83 narrative interviews of how individuals conceive and follow through with their individual "career project". We condense the results into five ideal types of career thinking and action, characterize these types, and distinguish between them along the modes orientation, decision-making, self-assessment and control.
