Manchester Industrial Relations Society
18 September 2012
Paul Thompson
Department of Human Resource Management, University of Strathclyde

‘For the past decade, research in HRM has focused on the take-up
and impact of commitment-seeking “high performance” HR practices
that are argued to lead to improved employee and organisational
performance’ (Francis and Keegan 2006: 231)

‘The human resource management profession faces a crisis of trust
and a loss of legitimacy in the eyes of its major stakeholders. The
two-decade effort to develop a new “strategic human resource
management” (HR) role in organizations has failed to realize its
promised potential of greater status, influence, and achievement’.
(Kochan 2006) - confirmed in Guest (2011) paper.

The romance of human capital, self-interest of the profession
 SHRM is fraught with mis-specification…. Is a management-centric
theory oriented towards a commitment/ILM type of employment model
that gives over-emphasis to psychological factors’ (Kaufman 2010: 16)
Revisiting the HRM defining mission and differentiation
‘Soft HRM’ and mutuality models, where commitment and
investment in human capital is seen as central to competitive
advantage (Appelbaum et al, 2001; Pfeffer 1994, 1998)
 Universalistic, best practice, commitment model the defining
feature of HRM (Guest and others) 239. It replaces the control or
compliance model: ‘’create the conditions for employees to display
internally self-driven initiative and take more responsibility for
monitoring their own behaviour’ (Wood 1995: 216). Link to
discretionary effort.
 Misdirected critique? CMS and the focus on culture, commitment
and (soft) HRM as a meaning making machine: ‘founded on the
internalization of self-regulation, calculation and control in which
externally imposed authority and discipline becomes much less
significant’ (Grant et al, 1998: 202). New focus on identity regulation
and branding (Alvesson and Willmott (2002)



The underpinning human capital narrative: labour as asset
not cost, at least to the core rather than contingent
workforce (hard HRM)
 RBV – ‘human capital represents one of the last and best sources
of competitive advantage’ (Kaufman 2010)
 HR tools manage human capital pool. Commitment aligns
interests and mobilises discretionary effort

A difference between commitment-seeking and
commitment generating practices that ‘energise employee
commitment’ (Kaufman 2010)
 ‘There is a danger in treating the normative as a separate
category. All control practices have normative dimensions. Even
if not explicitly designed to engage with ‘hearts and minds’, their
operation and effects will do so’. (Thompson and van den Broek
2010: 6)

A difference between high involvment work practices and
high commitment employment practices?






Pursuit of normative/commitment always over-sold and underresearched.
Assumes that the functioning of HRM can be found in its discourse,
and those discourses and technologies are largely disconnected
from context – lack of interest in the actual effectiveness of the
‘tools’ of HRM
Mainstream HRM – going round in circles? ‘In summary, the
research is riddle with error both with respect to data on HRM and
on outcomes’… ‘requires a complex research methodology and
sophisticated statistical analysis ( Guest 2011)
The unproven link between high commitment (and other HRM
effects) and high performance
The empirical critique: minority of firms, minority of practices:
emphasis on form not content; but doesn’t tell us much, if
anything about commitment
Universal models do have a conception of the environment as
driver, but it is a weak and impoverished one

Economically rational low road choices
 ‘…it might be argued that, in capital-intensive manufacturing, a HPWS
model is preferable as labour costs are a small proportion of total costs and
high quality, committed labour can facilitate the optimum exploitation of
high-cost plant and materials’ (Legge, 2005b: 229).
 Cost minimisation /leadership strategies





Acceptance of a ‘differentiated workforce’: talent management,
targeted investment in human capital, ‘employee of choice’ rather
than ‘employer of choice’ (Becker, Huselid and Beatty 2009)
Better, but not adequate: external fit based on product market
variation; naivety about cost minimisation; ‘competitive pressures’
neglect of capital markets in constructing market discipline
High performance does not necessarily protect any firm or group of
workers
A political economy approach, but which one?
Divergent interests and mutual gains in the employment relationship
The shift from managerial to financial capitalism, from extraction and
realization of value in capital rather than (the management of labour
in) product markets
 The promises of private equity

 Cost cutting and work intensification
Financial intermediaries, owners and local managers: levers and
agents, who is making ‘economically rational’ decisions?
 Disconnected capitalism: impact on local bargains. Divergence of
work and employment systems
 Applebaum and Batt: the turnaround

 ‘Under the shareholder model of financial capitalism, then, the focus of
investment activities shifted – from that of investing in productive
enterprises to that of extracting money from companies for further
trading activities, which yielded higher returns’ (2010, 7)

Organisations are increasingly dominated by the principles of ‘market
rationalism’ and normative interventions promoting commitment
and focusing on cultural change are becoming less relevant or
marginalised (Kunda and Ailon-Souday, 2005; Thompson, 2003).


Financialization as a variant of market discipline
Can we explain performance outcomes without HCM?
 Capelli and the ‘frightened worker model’
 Old and new forms of insecurity: ‘overall, the results provide
reasonably good evidence that employees exert high levels of
effort in insecure conditions’ (McGovern et al)
 Increased emphasis on performance managementdown the
chain
 Weakness of capacity to resist, compliance as a substitute for
commitment and trust: to what extent is effort discretionary?
 Market individualism and the ‘free worker’

So, why HPWP? ‘more intensive investment in raising the
performance of existing employees’ (McGovern et al, 145).
It does extract effort and in a variety of (selective) ways
and contexts. Can co-exist with employee commitment to
work, occupation, profession etc
The dysfunctions of a best place to work employer, best
practice HR department and an award winning
‘employment deal’
 Managerial delusions
 Angry employees

 ‘It’s very hard to swallow, extremely hard. One day they’re
telling you how important you re, the next day they are making
you redundant…It’s just hypocrisy after hypocrisy. They don’t
eat their own dog food basically’
 ‘You are so out of touch, so out of touch! You’re meant to be in
charge of the human beings in this company. You’re actually
meant to be in charge of the people, not the profit or the margin
or whatever else, you’re actually meant to be in charge of the
actual human beings in the building’


But still high performing
Rationalising failure and shifting the blame






Is there any sense in which ‘people are our most
important asset’ remains true? An asset with value
rather than a valued asset.
Kochan: HR from steward of the social contract to
business partner and handmaiden to corporate elite
Structural isolation and disappearance from shop floor
Nobody wants to be employee champion (Francis and
Keegan 233); employees know where HR stands and
they (mostly) don’t like it
Pouring oil on troubled waters: trends towards
outsourcing and HR service centres
A more professional, more ethical, more reflexive and
balanced HR – don’t hold your breath.
There is no realistic path to internal reform of HRM;
regulation of employment systems
 The commitment chimera, commitment to what?

 ‘For employers there is a need to recognise that the
promise of the high performance paradigm may be false
one. It may make better sense for most to adopt what
have always been good management practices, possibly
with some alternative work practices grafted on. These
practices may not yield the high levels of commitment
promised by the high performance paradigm, but they be
expected to yield reasonable levels of consent and realistic
levels of performance’ (Godard 2005: 170)
Abandon the idea that HRM is a distinctive approach
to managing people at work.
 Any chance of an honest conversation?















Thompson, P. (2011) ‘The Trouble with HRM’, Human Resource Management Journal, 21/4: 355–367.
Cushen, J. and Thompson, P. (2012) Doing the Right Thing? HRM and the Angry Knowledge Worker, New
Technology, Work and Employment 27.2: 79-92, 2012.
Boxall, P. And Macky, K. (2009) ‘Research and Strategy on High-Performance Work Systems: Progressing
the High Involvement Stream’, Human Resource Management Journal, 19/1:3-23.
Thompson P. 2003 ‘Disconnected Capitalism: or Why Employers Can’t Keep Their Side of the Bargain’,
Work, Employment and Society. Vol 17, no.2 pp. 359-378
Pfeffer, J. (1994). Competitive Advantage Through People. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Huselid, M. (1995). ‘The Impact of Human Resource Management Practices on Turnover, Production and
Corporate Financial Performance’, Academy of Management Journal, 38: 635-672.
Godard, J. (2004) ‘A Critical Assessment of the High Performance Paradigm, British Journal of Industrial
Relations, 42.2: 349-378.
Boxall, P., and Purcell, J. (2003). Strategy and Human Resource Management, London: Palgrave.
Boxall, P., Purcell, J. and Wright, P. (2006) ‘Human resource management: scope, analysis, and
significance’, in the Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management, Edited by P. Boxall, J. Purcell and P.
Wright, Oxford University Press.
Thompson, P. and van den Broek, D. (2010) ‘Managerial Control and Workplace Regimes: An Introduction’,
Work Employment and Society E-Special 1: 1-12.
Wood, S. and V. T. Albanese (1995). “Can We Speak of a High Commitment
Management on the Shop-Floor” Journal of Management Studies 32(2): 215-247.
Legge, K. (2005a). Human resource management: rhetorics and realities. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Legge, K. (2005b). “Human Resource Management” in Oxford Handbook of Work and Organization. S.
Ackroyd, R. Batt, P. Thompson and P. Tolbert. (eds) Oxford: Oxford University Press: 220-241.







Kochan, T. (2006) ‘Social Legitimacy of the Human Resou8ce Management Profession: A U.S> Perspective’, in
Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management,, P. Boxall, J. Purcell and P. Wright (eds.), Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Kunda, G. and G. Ailon-Souday (2005). “Managers, Markets and Ideologies: Design and Devotion Revisited” in
Oxford Handbook of Work and Organization. S. Ackroyd, R. Batt, P. Thompson and P. Tolbert. (eds) Oxford:
Oxford University Press: 200-219.
Kaufman, B. (2010) ‘SHRM Theory in the Post-Huselid Era: Why It is Fundamentally Mis-Specified’, Industrial
Relations, 49 (2): 286-313.
Kaufman, B. (2010) ‘SHRM Theory in the Post-Huselid Era: Why It is Fundamentally Mis-Specified’, Industrial
Relations, 49 (2): 286-313.
McGovern, P., Hill, S., Mills, C. And White, M, (2007) Market, class and Employment, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Alvesson, M. and H. Willmott (2002). “Identity regulation as organizational control: Producing the
appropriate individual” Journal of Management Studies 39(5): 619-644.
Batt, R. and Applebaum, E. (2010) ‘Globalization, New Financial Actors, and Institutional Change: Reflections
on the Legacy of LEST’, Paper to Colloquium, Université de Provence, 27-28 May.