Can Employability Do the Trick? Revealing Paradoxical Tensions and Responses in the Process of Adopting Innovative Employability Enhancing Policies and Practices in Organizations

Abstract

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.

Please Don’t Look at Me That Way. An Empirical Study Into the Effects of Age-Based (Meta-)Stereotyping on Employability Enhancement Among Older Supermarket Workers

“…Nowadays, employers and managers increasingly realize that supporting workers’ employability enhancement through SCD policies and practices is important (De Vos et al, 2016). Despite this, however, organizations still tend to focus on high potentials only, rather than taking an inclusive approach (De Vos and Dries, 2013; Peters and Lam, 2015). Consequently, more disadvantaged groups in the workforce (e.g., older workers, women workers, immigrants and less qualified workers) may be excluded from organizations’ employability policies and practices.…”

“…This may be different for workers in other industries, such as workers in high manual and physically demanding jobs. For example, warehouse workers may face stronger physical demands due to lean production processes (Peters and Lam, 2015), whereas knowledge workers in high tech organizations operating in turbulent markets, may experience knowledge, tools and techniques to be constantly in flux. Possibly, the older workers in our study may not have experienced such rapidly changing demands in their jobs and may therefore feel that they are able to keep up with occurring changes in the workplace.…”

State-of-the-Art and Future Directions for HRM from a Paradox Perspective: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…To advance understanding of this field, qualitatively rich research methodologies that incorporate a focus on contextual features as well as individual level skills and capabilities would be valuable. The paper of Peters and Lam (2015) exemplifies the value of this approach for exploring the unfolding and intertwined nature of paradoxes, where contextual richness is important for clarifying how paradoxes emerge and evolve, at different levels, and for different actors, over time.…”

“…So far, Hahn and colleagues (2014) identified important paradoxical tensions organizations have to deal with if they wish to pursue organizational sustainability. For HRM, Ehnert (2009), Guerci and colleagues (2015) and the article by Peters and Lam (2015) identify relevant paradoxical tensions when the objective of the organization and/or HRM is to become and remain sustainable.…”

Human Resource Management in Organizational Project Management

“…While formal assignment processes often exist in practice, they found that practices and processes for dispersing personnel at the end of projects are often not explicitly organized by companies. The dispersal function we envisage may be similar in nature and principle to the outplacement function in traditional organizations, where employees are facilitated to move from work to work in organizations with active employability processes (Peters & Lam, 2015). Failure to actively facilitate project-to-project mobility creates the potential for insecurity among personnel and loss of valuable knowledge and expertise acquired by personnel who leave the organization at this time.…”