O Partner, Where Art Thou? A critical discursive analysis of HR managers’ struggle for legitimacy

Heizmann, Helena; Fox, Stephen

doi:10.1080/09585192.2017.1314974

Cited by 36 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Finally, the profession's shift to a strategic jurisdiction has yet to be fully realized. Indeed, in contrast with HR's success in adopting guardianship over legal compliance in organizations, its protracted effort to claim a more strategic jurisdiction has often been characterized as a failure (Beer 1997, Lawler 2007, Heizmann and Fox 2017. The HR profession thus offers an ideal setting for studying jurisdictional shifts within organizations.…”

Section: Strategy-oriented Hr: An Ongoing Attempt At Jurisdictional Smentioning

confidence: 99%

The Double-Edged Sword of Jurisdictional Entrenchment: Explaining Human Resources Professionals’ Failed Strategic Repositioning

Sandholtz

Chung

Waisberg

2019

Organization Science

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To protect themselves against deskilling and obsolescence, professionals must periodically revise their claims to authority and expertise. Although we understand these dynamics in the broader system of professions, we have a less complete understanding of how this process unfolds in specific organizational contexts. Yet given the ubiquity of embedded professionals, this context is where jurisdictional shifts increasingly take place. Drawing on a comparative ethnographic study of human resources (HR) professionals in two engineering firms, we introduce the concept of jurisdictional entrenchment to explain the challenges embedded professionals face when they attempt to redefine their jurisdiction. Jurisdictional entrenchment describes a condition in which embedded professionals have accumulated tasks, tactics, and expertise that enable them to make jurisdictional claims in an organization. We show how such entrenchment is a double-edged sword: instrumental to the ability of professionals to withstand challenges to their authority but detrimental when expertise and skills devalued by the professionals remain in high demand by clients, thus preventing the professionals' shift to their aspirational jurisdiction. Overall, our study contributes to a better understanding of how embedded professionals renegotiate jurisdictional claims within the constraints of organizational employment.

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Section: Strategy-oriented Hr: An Ongoing Attempt At Jurisdictional Smentioning

confidence: 99%

The Double-Edged Sword of Jurisdictional Entrenchment: Explaining Human Resources Professionals’ Failed Strategic Repositioning

Sandholtz

Chung

Waisberg

2019

Organization Science

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“…Methods for analysis of voluntary disclosure. The discourseanalytical research of HR management has received increasing attention in the literature [Heizmann, Fox, 2017;Keegan, Francis, 2010;Zanoni, Jans sens, 2004]. These papers provide positive illustration in combining the strategic HR management and the institutional theory.…”

Section: Making Sense Of Human Resource Disclosuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Work Systems as Frames of Reference for HR Disclosure

Aleksandra

Sofia

2019

RMJ

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The paper focuses on the challenge of coding and interpreting the human resource disclosures. Treating disclosed signals as positive or negative depends on the implicit contextual frames of reference. Such frames represent a combination of legitimate human resource practices, processes, initiatives, values and beliefs. The research explores applicability of human resource management systems, also known as work systems, within the confines of such frames. Additional attention is paid to the reasons of variety in the human resource disclosures and the rationale of preferring one work system over the other despite limited freedom of choice among available standards. Through analysis of the content, extent and quality of the employees-related disclosure by 18 top banks in Russia for the 2016 period, the research discusses opportunities and barriers of work systems as the frames of reference for HR disclosure. Research design relies on thematic and content analysis to compare existing standards with the ones proposed by the strategic human resource management literature.

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“…It can also encourage the adoption of more reflexive research frameworks and help researchers to consider their role and the situatedness of their research, also in relation to its aims and outcomes. Geertz (1972Geertz ( , 1973 Thomas (1993) Derrida (1978) and Lyotard (1984) Ashcroft et al (2006 Key concepts or techniques Native categories (Buckley and Chapman, 1997); comparison of deep universal structures (Moore and Brannen, 2018) Thick description (Geertz, 1972); multi-sited ethnography (Marcus, 2008) Critical discourse analysis (Francis et al, 2014;Heizmann and Fox, 2017) Deconstruction (Derrida, 1978;Critchley, 1992); agency (Foucault, 1980); reflexivity (Cunliffe and Alcadipani, 2006) Third space, hybridity (Bhabha, 1994); subaltern studies (Spivak, 1988) Relevant focus points from an IHRM perspective Employee experiences (Kunda, 1992;Westney and Van Maanen, 2011;Weeks et al, 2017); organizational culture (Garsten, 1994); cultural flows (Ho, 2009) Unequal powerstructures in MNCs (Nash, 1979); effects of global capitalism on workers (Ong, 1987); system critique (Cooke, 2003...…”

Section: Implications: the Multi-paradigmatic Potential Of Ethnographmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethnographic studies in international human resource management: Types and usefulness

Mahadevan

2020

German Journal of Human Resource Management

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This article provides a first conceptual discussion of the usefulness of ethnography for International Human Resource Management. In line with its original anthropological meaning, ethnography is understood as a multi-paradigmatic mindset involving five interrelated strands, all of which have the potential to contribute to International Human Resource Management studies. Structural-functionalist ethnography enables deep comparison and can thus contribute, for instance, to meeting the structural and institutional integration challenges of International Human Resource Management. Interpretive ethnography sheds light onto the hidden realities of International Human Resource Management and can thus help, for example, to acknowledge the diversity of employee and stakeholder experiences. Critical, postmodern, and postcolonial ethnography reveal the power-inequalities associated with diverse frameworks, practices, and work experiences in a global context. They can thus help overcome the inherent power-inequalities of International Human Resource Management and might utilize previously marginalized knowledge for the development of alternative International Human Resource Management strategies and practices. Yet, leveraging the full potential of ethnography for International Human Resource Management studies requires International Human Resource Management scholars not to borrow pre-selected ethnographic approaches, such as interpretive ethnography, from related disciplines, such as International Business and Cross-Cultural Management, because these might not fit the specific needs of International Human Resource Management. For facilitating this goal, this article provides a first multi-paradigmatic discussion of the development and principles of ethnography in anthropology, and its present and potential contributions to International Human Resource Management studies. It is not a guide of how to do ethnography, but a roadmap enabling future International Human Resource Management researchers to choose their ethnographic research strategy consciously, reflexively, and as their research interest demands for.

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O Partner, Where Art Thou? A critical discursive analysis of HR managers’ struggle for legitimacy

Cited by 36 publications

References 48 publications

The Double-Edged Sword of Jurisdictional Entrenchment: Explaining Human Resources Professionals’ Failed Strategic Repositioning

The Double-Edged Sword of Jurisdictional Entrenchment: Explaining Human Resources Professionals’ Failed Strategic Repositioning

Work Systems as Frames of Reference for HR Disclosure

Ethnographic studies in international human resource management: Types and usefulness

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