Critical Human Resource Management

People Management Across the Global South and North

Dhammika Jayawardena

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367608965
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000397451
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Human resource management (HRM) is the predominant apparatus for people management across the world. Since its inception, HRM has nevertheless been subjected to critical scrutiny. This work has produced a corpus of literature now referred to as 'Critical HRM'.

This book on Critical HRM traces the development of the critical scholarly tradition in people management. It analyzes, organizes and synthesizes the various perspectives, ideas and arguments that constitute this critical tradition. The book identifies the current status and future trends of Critical HRM, and explores its ethico-political role in contemporary organizations, especially in the context of widespread public concern about making business more ethical. Incorporating under-researched and emerging issues of people management, such as the Global South and Critical HRM, with more established themes of Critical HRM, this book introduces Critical HRM's critique of mainstream HRM and its underpinning assumptions. It illustrates how interventions have the potential to transform organizational policies and practices of managing people at work.

The book will be of interest to professionals, researchers, and academics focusing on critical issues in people management across the Global South and North.

1
Introduction

Begin a Journey

Just assume you are a traveler going from one continent to another—from Europe to Asia to Africa to America. During your journey if you visit a Japanese multinational in London or a US-based software development company in the buzzling city of Hyderabad or an apparel-manufacturing company in Sri Lanka or in the Mombasa free-trade zone in Kenya for instance, one ‘common’ phenomenon you would find in these places is Human Resource Management (HRM)—HR departments, managers and so forth. Similarly, if you type the term ‘HRM’ in the search bar of Google Scholar or any other search engine, with the name of a core-capitalist country in the Global North, such as the United States, or instead a ‘peripheral country’ of the South like Socialist Cuba (e.g., Cunha & Cunha, 2004) for instance, you will end up with at least a few scholarly works on HRM in the selected country.

Since its (assumed) emergence in North America, arguably in the 1980s (Kaufman, 2014), HRM has led to supplement the decades-old tradition of personnel management in Western corporations (Guest, 1990, 1992; Legge, 1995/2005; Storey, 1991; Strauss, 1992). Subsequently, it crept into other parts of the world, mostly during the 1990s, as the method of management of people in organizations (Ghebregiorgis & Karsten, 2007; Hermans, 2018; Jayawardena, 2014; Perez Arrau, Eades, & Wilson, 2012; Sparrow & Budhwar, 1997). Since then, HRM remains the grand signification of people management across the Global South and North.

Even after almost 40 years of its emergence, the phenomenon of HRM is not immune to contradictions and controversies. Rather, the status and the role of HRM in both the theory and practice of people management remain plurivocal and ambiguous: HRM encompasses various approaches, traditions and meanings that lead to keep its identity ‘elusive’ and in process of becoming (Janssens & Steyaert, 2009; Keenoy, 1999, 2009; Legge, 1995/2005; Noon, 1992; Storey, 1995). And so, it seems that what remains ‘unchanged’, when HRM moves from one context to another, is only the three letters—‘HRM’, an empty signifier which is subject to fill as it appears in different contexts.

Against this backdrop, (textbook-based or) mainstream literature on HRM is keen to construct HRM as a self-reliant discipline with a ‘fixed’ identity (e.g., see Armstrong & Taylor, 2014; Sims, 2006). Alongside the ‘humane’ aspect of the phenomenon, the literature emphasizes the strategic, integrated and coherent approach of HRM with regard to managing people at work. Such literature thus highlights both the strategic or ‘hard’ and the humane or ‘soft’ aspects of people management simultaneously. In doing so, it articulates HRM ‘as a strategic, integrated and coherent approach to the employment, development and well-being of the people working in organizations’ (Armstrong & Taylor, 2014, p. 5).

The mainstream version(s) of HRM, as critics of the field argue, (deliberately) avoids the controversies and contradictions that are imbued with HRM, its identity and role in theory and practice of people management. Yet, by encompassing the soft and hard aspects, it is capable of portraying HRM as a ‘new’ and ‘robust’ phenomenon—a managerial package of solutions for the issues in managing people in organizations across the world. And so, the literature suggests:

HRM efforts are planned, systematic approaches to increasing organizational success. They involve HR programs aimed at developing HRM strategies for the total organization with an eye towards clarifying an organization’s current and potential problems and develop solutions to them. It is oriented toward action, the individual, the global market place, and the future. Today it would be difficult [for us] to envision any organization achieving success without efficient HRM programs and activities.

(Sims, 2006, p. 5)

In this context, critics of HRM argue that what is common in the mainstream version of HRM is that, on the one hand, it is inclined toward the managerialist as well as normative approach—what HRM should or ought to be—to people management. Consequently, it admits and recounts ‘issues’ pertaining to managing people in organizations. In doing so, it offers an integrated, coherent and strategic approach of people management to successfully address and mitigate the issues. On the other hand, such a version—how it approaches to and recognizes the issues of managing people and develops solutions to them—is based on realist ontology and positivist epistemology (Delbridge & Keenoy, 2010; Keenoy, 1999; Legge, 1995/2005). Therefore, in essence, the mainstream version of HRM tends to insist that HRM is not a ‘thing’ we (re)produce in our social–material life. Instead, it is ‘something’ that is ‘already there’. In turn, it suggests that what is already there is a ‘new’, ‘good’ and ‘robust’ phenomenon: a ‘universal panacea’ which is capable of fixing the current and potential problems of managing people in organizations across the world. However, this attempt to make HRM ‘good’ and ‘robust’ is still not able to fix the identity of HRM or to avoid the controversies surrounding it (Keenoy, 1999, 2009).

What Is HRM, Anyway?

In her highly regarded text, Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and Realities, Legge (1995/2005, pp. 102–108) cites many popular definitions of HRM. However, noticeably she resists developing her own definition. Why is Legge reluctant to develop her ‘own’ definition? Indeed, what is this ‘thing’ called HRM: can we understand ‘HRM’ beyond the mainstream definitional–ontological assumptions of it? If so, what is the role of critical HRM scholarship in understanding and (re)framing of HRM beyond such assumptions?

Despite the mainstream version of (fixed) HRM, the concept of HRM in both the theory and practice of people management is sloppy and blurry. It denotes multiple meanings for those who produce ‘HRM’ in different socio-economic contexts as well as by adhering to various theoretical and analytical assumptions (e.g., Azolukwam & Perkins, 2009; Barratt, 2002, 2003; Harley & Hardy, 2004; Janssens & Steyaert, 2009; Jayawardena, 2014; Keenoy, 1999; Legge, 1995/2005; Noon, 1992; Townley, 1998; Watson, 2004). This intrinsic ambiguity of the identity of HRM (see Chapter 3) not only problematizes realist and positivist definitional and onto-epistemological assumptions of HRM. It also tends to dislocate the popular semblance of HRM—as a universal panacea—in the market managerialism that proposes a ‘happy marriage’ between capital and Western humanism (Olaison, Pedersen, & Sørensen, 2009). Thus, going beyond ‘the facticity’ of HRM, ‘the projected, perceived, experienced, or allegedly “factual” character [of HRM]’ (Keenoy, 1997, p. 839), scholars in critical HRM scholarship problematize the HRM project in organizations, its basis, newness and popular semblance in the market managerialism (Delbridge & Keenoy, 2010; Legge, 1995/2005; Thompson, 2011; Watson, 2004). In doing so, they suggest that HRM needs to be understood ‘not as a concrete, coherent, entity but as a series of mutually implicated phenomena which is/are in the process of becoming’ (Keenoy, 1999, p. 16).

However, this illusive and elusive nature, the becoming of HRM, does not prevent the mainstream scholars’, or market managerialists’, desire of making HRM a robust phenomenon. Rather, since the phenomenon’s origin in Western corporations in the 1980s, the mainstream version of HRM, as seen earlier, has been involved in making HRM solid and good, a package of solutions for the issues of managing people in organizations across the world. In doing so, it tells us how to accomplish greater efficiency through a highly committed and flexible workforce.

Beyond the Normative Conceptions: Toward Critical HRM

The popular semblance of HRM—as a universal panacea—in the market managerialism does not mean that HRM has fully settled down as a self-reliant phenomenon, especially among some academic circles in the West. Rather, since the emergence of HRM, some scholars in the field, mostly from critical management studies (CMS), have been suspicious of the ‘shift’ in people management from personnel management to HRM. And so, they challenge the glorified role of HRM as articulated in the mainstream literature on the subject (e.g., Keenoy, 1990; Keenoy & Anthony, 1992; Legge, 1991, 1995/2005; Townley, 1993a, 1993b, 1995; Watson, 1995a, 1995b).

Understanding (People) Management Critically

Since its inception, going back to developments in research and scholarship in some of the UK and European business schools in the mid-1980s and early 1990s (Alvesson, Bridgman, & Willmott, 2009; Fournier & Grey, 2000), CMS has been the key influencer in critical HRM scholarship (Delbridge, 2011; Delbridge & Keenoy, 2010; Thompson, 2011).

CMS, which is regarded as a branch of scholarship informed by critical theory (Boje & Al-Arkoubi, 2009), challenges the orthodoxies in (mainstream) management and organization studies (MOS). It does so by problematizing the market managerialism and its ‘performative intent’, which means ‘the intent to develop and celebrate knowledge which contributes to the production of maximum output for minimum input’ (Fournier & Grey, 2000, p. 17). And so, in essence, CMS is about ‘de-naturalization’— ‘deconstructing the “reality” of organizational life or “truthfulness” of organizational knowledge by exposing its “un-naturalness” or irrationality’ (Fournier & Grey, 2000, p. 18)—‘non-performativity’ and ‘reflexivity’. Nonetheless, instead of being anti-performative, it highlights the importance of ‘critical performativity’. In doing so, inspired by various (critical) social theories CMS works on ‘alternatives’ to the orthodoxies in MOS (Alvesson et al., 2009; Boje & Al-Arkoubi, 2009; Delbridge & Keenoy, 2010; Fournier & Grey, 2000; Grey & Willmott, 2002).

These assumptions and critical praxis in CMS have had a profound impact on shaping critical HRM scholarship which can be now termed as ‘Critical HRM’ (Delbridge, 2011; Delbridge & Keenoy, 2010; Green-wood, 2013). Quite similar to what CMS does with (mainstream) MOS and market managerialism, Critical HRM questions and problematizes the concept of and the concepts in HRM. For this, it places both the concept and the concepts in the context of the prevailing socio-economic order of capitalism, thus challenging the managerialist assumptions and the naturalized language of HRM (Delbridge & Keenoy, 2010; Steyaert & Janssens, 1999).

Critical HRM scholars question what HRM offers as an ‘alternative’ to personnel management: whether it is ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing’ or ‘old wine in new bottles’—sheer shift in the language of people management (Guest, 1992; Keenoy, 1990; Legge, 1995/2005). Consequently, alongside the semblance of HRM as a universal panacea or a silver bullet, they problematize the normative conceptions of HRM in the mainstream literature on the subject. In doing so, they articulate an ‘alternative’ corpus of HRM literature which is ‘supplemental’ to as well as critical of the HRM project in the mainstream literature and organizations (Keenoy, 1990; Keenoy & Anthony, 1992; Legge, 1991, 1995, 1995/2005; Storey, 1995; Townley, 1993b). And so, since its inception, the critical HRM literature is influential in shaping how we understand and approach the HRM project. Indeed, currently the contribution of Critical HRM is regarded as an inescapable facet of the HRM literature.

However, it is doubtful whether Critical HRM has been given the recognition that it deserves or whether the contribution of Critical HRM has had an impact on the HRM project in contemporary organizations (Keegan & Boselie, 2006). In other words, it seems that Critical HRM still remains as an ‘inconsequential’ facet, particularly in the practice of HRM. Simultaneously, we can see that the presence of Critical HRM scholars in the ‘standard’ business schools and professional bodies is rare. In such domains they remain an ‘outcast’ group.

We argue that the reasons for these tendencies are mainly twofold: on the one hand, the way in which Critical HRM emerged—as a ‘Left-wing scholarly tradition’—in the mid-1980s and early 1990s troubled the corporatists who were eager to find out ‘solutions’ to the issues of managing people with which they were struggling in a volatile neoliberal market situation. On the other hand, the ‘academic rigor’ that underpins Critical HRM has been unable to attract a wider readership: such rigor tends to detract some academics as well as ‘ordinary’ readers and professionals, who are interested in people management, from critical HRM scholarship (Keegan & Boselie, 2006).

However, as history shows, the origin of both mainstream and critical HRM scholarship can be traced back to the mid-1980s and early 1990s, albeit their intentions as well as ‘birth places’ ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The Factory System, Personnel Management, HRM: A Genealogy
• 3 This Thing Called HRM: A Critical Introduction
• 4 The Language of HRM: Beyond the Rhetoric/Reality Dualism
• 5 Gender and HRM: Feminist Critics’ Account of HRM
• 6 Michel Foucault and Critical HRM: Toward a Foucauldian Analysis of People Management
• 7 The Global South and Critical HRM: The Ambivalence of HRM
• 8 Ethics and Critical HRM: A Rethinking of the (Im-)Possibility of Ethics in HRM
• 9 Mobility, Diversity and HRM: A Revisit
• 10 Conclusion
• Index