The Practice of HRM

Practice

- HRM can be defined as the policies and practices required to perform the business of
human resources in an organization.
- Guided by business strategy and the characteristics of the organization.
- Concerned with the specific case: What will work here?

Is HRM a profession?

- The process of codifying an occupation by increasing training or raising required

qualifications (e.g., medicine, engineering)
- There is no agreed upon body of knowledge underlying the practice of HRM.

What informs practice?

- Individual expertise
- Benchmarking
- Trends
- Thought leaders

Example: General Electric

- Force rankings
- Benchmarking: Should we do this in our firm?
- Flaws:
o No causal relationship with firm performance.
o Employees hated the practice.
- Ignores important factors
o Team development
o Time on the job

The Science of HRM

Human Resources as a scholarly study

- HRM is the scientific approach to understanding human behavior at work

- HRM is guided by theoretical knowledge.

Basic versus Applied Research

- Basic: quest for knowledge

- Applied: address a practical problem
Examples: What science knows

1. Structed interviews predict performance better than unstructured interviews or

intuition.
2. Goal setting is a stronger motivator that participative decision-making.
3. Personality does not consistently predict job performance.

Science versus intuition/common sense

- Science: a systematic way of evaluating evidence

- Intuition: decision-making without conscious reasoning
- Common sense: judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts
- Pseudoscience: beliefs and activities that claim to be based in evidence but lack the
features of science
o Example: MBTI

Be skeptical

- Consider alternatives
- Seek evidence
- Look out for:
o Reputation of the source
o Overstated headline
o Indirect quotation
Activity

For each of the following intuitive beliefs about HRM, list three reasons it might be true and
three reasons that it might not be true:

1. Extroverts are better leaders

2. Feedback improves employee’s performance
3. Men are better negotiators than women
4. Groups are better at brainstorming ideas compared to individuals on their own.

The research practice gap

Differing priorities

- Scientific method
o Emphasizing theoretical problems and formal hypotheses
o Statistical controls and isolation of variables of interest
o Search for facts or the “truth”
- HRM practice
o Messy reality of organizational settings
o Emphasis on solving real problems

The practice

- Education, followed by a career built on application

- Reading management trade journals
- Concerned with the individuals within a particular organizational context
- Time sensitive issues

Scholars

- Mismatch between what is studied and what is important to practice

- Publish in academic journals
- Reward/incentive for peer-reviewed publications
- The quest for universal findings or ‘truths’

The scientist-practitioner

- Premise: trained professionals should be knowledgeable in both science and practice

- Founded in clinical psychology
- Goal: to increase the application of HRM into management practice
- Calls for education in theory, research methods, and the understanding of evidence
Evidence based management

- “the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making
decisions about the care of individual patients” David Sackett
- Evidence based:
o Set aside conventions and opinion
o Use critical thinking & the best available evidence to make decisions

How to?

- Asking: Translating a practical issue or problem into an answerable question.

- Acquiring: Systematically searching for and retrieving the evidence.
- Appraising: Critically judging the trustworthiness and relevance of the evidence.
- Aggregating: Weighting and pulling together the evidence.
- Applying: Incorporating the evidence into the decision-making process.