Personal Blogs

In my first Fabian Society policy paper, written for the Society's Local Government and Housing (LGH) Policy Group, I have attempted to carefully suggest, and to an extent, solve a problem created by an imbalance between the Autumn Budget announcement by the new Chancellor (for energy consumers), given externalities and efficiency-related issues that are prevalent to tenants in Southwark. Now Labour is in Government, this report highlights a key pathway and opportunity for Labour's Net Zero and Energy Security Government Department and Labour's Council leaders in Southwark. I anticipate this essay will spur discussion on renewal toward the Chancellor's target of meeting the Treasury's projected expenditure and decarbonizing Council residences in the Camberwell and Peckham constituency.

There has been a lot of insight put forward by worker's rights advocates around the debate on advantageous aspects of lower net migration over the fourteen years of a Conservative government. What springs to mind is 2019, when it published changes to freedom of movement just before Britain's rather messy withdrawal from the European Union, and during the lead-up to the 2024 General Election. The United Kingdom’s net migration rate hovered at a precariously high level relative to much larger economies such as Canada or Australia (approximately 1.22 million people migrated to the United Kingdom, while 532,000 people migrated from the United Kingdom, resulting in a net migration figure 685,000). How is a figure of 685,000 treated by policymakers and what, if anything, is the effect of the previous government's selective migration policy on the aggregate wage level of natives? 

There are two models and associated policy effects I would like to discuss here:

• The United Kingdom’s ‘Selective Migration’ model
• The Canadian ‘Human Capital’ model
• The Australian model (not mentioned)
• The U.S. model (not mentioned)

These models (UK and Canada) are very similar but also very distinct. The UK’s employer-led model is perhaps the most recently revised approach in the above. Indeed, the ‘skilled worker visa route’, which is a points-based immigration system (PBS) came into force on 1 December 2020. 

However, my concern is that pressure has been placed on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently to assess and revise the Canadian ‘Human Capital’ model used by Canada in recent months (Yousif, 2024). Since Trudeau’s announcement in October, stating his government's intention to reduce immigration to Canada by 21% to 395,000 from a net migration rate of 500,000, the UK has yet to lay down the gauntlet or respond with appropriate unilateral measures.

Are we aware of the Canadian plight or the predicament of the Canadian economy? Where will defected skilled migrants go if they are turned away by both the UK and Canada? The UK’s selective migration model has come under criticism for its focus on maintaining employer rather than worker interests. If the UK is going to lead on immigration policy globally, then the new Labour government must ensure worker’s interests are protected and that another Windrush scandal is avoided (Crawford, 2020). 

We already know the migration of skilled workers from the UK to Canada and Australia can affect labour supply in entire sectors and therefore create domestic labour market gaps due to what is usually seen as a domestic skill shortage or a similarly oriented problem. With efficiency wages, what my theoretical economics paper aims to highlight is the threshold for global skills-based migration (Mayaki, 2024).

Look at this table. My question here is - is the threshold to qualify high or low given the points criteria? Is the wage level high or low given the threshold, and are our criteria relevant criteria?

Table 1: Selective Migration – Points Criteria for Skilled Worker Route (2021)

Source: Migration Observatory analysis of Statement of changes in Immigration Rules, HC 813, p. 221–222

What, if anything, does Table 1 tell us about UK skills-based immigration? According to Leonida (2023), the Conservative government enacted a 'point-based immigration system, similar to that adopted in Australia, according to which citizens of EU states would not be favoured over non-EU citizens, and priorities would include securing a job offer, having the necessary skills to secure that job and speaking English.’ However, was there any consideration by the migration policy advisory committee responsible for deriving these thresholds on the wage effects of this policy? Especially in lieu of what policy the Canadian government intends to pursue (reduce permanent residency to 365,000 by 2025).

According to this presentation, immigration in France has markedly decreased the wages of highly educated natives and increased those of low-educated ones. Has such a study been conducted on our PBS? In the presentation, Ottaviano and Peri (2012) argue in ‘Distributional Effects of Immigration on Native Wages’ that there are limited but sub-optimal effects on the wages of native workers when PBSs are enacted domestically. Is UK wage growth optimal given its immigration level? Will this be the case in 12 months if Canada’s net migration level falls in 2025?

References

Crawford, R. (2020) ‘Why the new points-based immigration system threatens everyone's rights at work’, Trade Union Congress, Available at https://www.tuc.org.uk/blogs/why-new-points-based-immigration-system-threatens-everyones-rights-work (Accessed on 04 November 2024)

Koslowski, R. (2014). Selective migration policy models and changing realities of implementation. International Migration, 52(3), 26-39.

Leonida, L. et al. (2023) ‘Britain and BrExit: Is the UK more attractive to supervisors? An analysis of the wage premium to supervision across the EU’, British journal of industrial relations, 61(2), pp. 291–312. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12675 (Accessed on 05 November 2024)

Mayaki, A.A. (2024) ‘Pareto-Nash Reversion Strategies: Three Period Dynamic Co-operative Signalling with Sticky Efficiency Wages’, arXiv preprint, Available at https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2406.18471 (Accessed on 05 November 2024)

Ottaviano, G. I., & Peri, G. (2012). The effects of immigration on US wages and rents: A general equilibrium approach. In Migration impact assessment (pp. 107-146). Edward Elgar Publishing. Available at https://ferdi.fr/dl/df-DbyEeT4AskUvL6DEjZ2Chudx/presentation-selective-migration-policies-and-wages-inequality-edo-a.pdf (Accessed on 04 November 2024)

Yousif, N. (2024) ‘Trudeau announces sharp cuts to Canada's immigration targets’, BBC World News, Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd7n3rqyjqzo (Accessed on 05 November 2024)

Been a busy summer. Glad to be back on job. Just last month I was privileged enough to have attended an early career research (ECR) conference held by ESRC, UKRI and Closer.ac.uk with a plenary session presented by Commons Librarian Prof. Grant Hill-Cawthorne. Much of the conference experience involved ascertaining how good research studies are constructed, where exactly relevant sources of data are extracted from and how study results are compiled and interpreted via publication for various audiences including academia and those involved in policymaking.

https://closer.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/CLOSER-ECR24-Grant-Hill-Cawthorne-keynote.pdf

Designing a Robust MSc in HRM Dissertation Research Question

Craig Starbuck (2023) has a great entry in his book on People Analytics which explains the fundamentals of research design. He begins with a focus on the research question. In homage to the 5 A’s of evidence-based practice, Starbuck (2023) explains a simplistic design process that begins with the premise of a (null) hypothesis. The 1^st A, i.e. ask, is made analogous to the following criteria in his book:

• Internal validity refers to the robustness of the study.
• Confounding variables refer to an extraneous variable whose presence affects the results
• External validity (i.e. ‘the general or ‘can what we deem to work, work in general contexts'?)
• The use of Randomization…

Starbuck (2023) is a good source of short, sharp, and punchy insights. He later explores quantitative and non-experimental research approaches, particularly cross-sectional, correlational, and observational research in a people analytics context.

References

Workshop on the economics of crime for junior scholars. With support from the Royal Economic Society and Arnold Ventures

This one is focused on Bayesian inference. Bayes’ Theorem in combination with dynamic stochastic general equilibrium theory is really popular as a tool for monetary policy (where I first encountered its use) but also has applications in other areas such as biology and, in this case, people analytics.

References

Boersch-Supen, P. H., Ryan, S. J. and Johnson, Leah, R. (2016) “deBInfer: Bayesian Inference of dynamical models of biological systems in R”, Special Feature: Technological Advances at the Interface between Ecology and Statistics, 8(4), pp. 511-518, Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/2041-210X.12679 (Accessed on 15 March 2024)

Gomez-Rubio, V. (2020) ‘Bayesian inference with INLA’, 1st Edition, New York: Chapman and Hall, Available at https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315175584 (Accessed on 15 March 2024)

Martin, A. D. and Quinn, Kevin. M. (2006) “Applied Bayesian Inference in R using MCMCpack”, R News, 6(1), pp. 2-7 – Available at: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/116223/rnews06.pdf?sequence=1 (Accessed on 15 March 2024)

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This post was written by Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM. It was inspired by an Economic Issues article by Sarah Brown and John Sessions entitled “Absenteeism, Presenteeism, and Shirking”.

My chosen topic for the part 1 lit review within Wellbeing is Presenteeism, which is mentioned a few times in the B812 module in tutorials and the TGFs. One of the earliest references is in December (Week 6). I have since been learning by using various sources (OU’s Library, Google Scholar, JSTOR, etc.) which provide journal articles that explain a diversity of views on why presenteeism is so excessively costly in comparison to a theory known to many in the field as ‘shirking’. Dr Andrew Bryce (Sheffield) wrote in one of my other blog posts that the two aspects of productivity, that is, shirking and presenteeism, are similar but distinct. However, are both the responsibility of HR to ascertain the impact of therein?

According to Dr. Teresa Bejan of Oxford’s Department of International Relations, in Ancient Greek democracy, Isegoria (Bejan, 2017) is often used to describe the equal rights of citizens to participate in public debate in the democratic assembly. Why is the concept of Isegoria important to an HR academic? It is important because it is a critical attribute in democratic forms of leadership. Furthermore, in what Revd. Dr. William Lamb (2021) also of Oxford University refers to as a ‘spiritual exercise’ as opposed to a ‘rhetorical device’ another form of free speech is mentioned. Parrhesia or ‘expressive freedom’ is witnessed most visibly during Jesus's spoken interaction with the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Gospel according to Matthew. How does this famous instance affect our view of democratic forms of leadership?

In the words of Collinson et. al (2018), where the Raelinian notion of Leadership-as-Practice (L-A-P) or ‘Leaderful’ practice is referenced to define the norms of ‘democratic tradition’ as enshrined and embedded in practice, or demokratia per se[1], Collinson explains that Raelin is referring to ‘participatory’ and ‘deliberative’ process. In this view, leadership is democratic and "holds an inherently positive connotation associated with certain democratic norms of equality and freedom to participate”. These are the 4C’s that constitute Raelin’s model of L-A-P: Compassion, Collaboration, Collectiveness and Concurrency.

As a postgraduate on the MSc in HRM at the Open University Business School, in a 2-part blog post, I took the liberty to summarise the basic premise of EBP with respect to Gifford’s hierarchy and the four types of evidence (Open University 1a, 2023). In my summary of Gifford’s hierarchy, I also critiqued the perspective of academic and practitioner involvement in EBP citing the work of Dr. Carol Gill, an Associate Professor of HRM at Melbourne Business School. In speaking with Dr. Gill, whose work on evidence-based knowledge and management outlines various flaws in practitioner involvement, I was interested to observe the pluralist^[1] foundations in existence with respect to HRM.

Because HR’s function is primarily non-client facing, in other words, because its role is fundamentally to operationalise other departments in a manner that optimises outlay and adds value, there are added pressures internally to continuously improve^[2] its core offering as a budgeted expense. The setting for this pressure is increasingly a contested showdown between staunch advocates and unwary dissenters to the implementation of EBP. The pluralist debate concerning HR’s value in this respect is principled upon the idea that both quantitative and qualitative research practices can only denigrate HR’s value (Hughes and Hughes, et. al. 2021).

Now, the case for implementing EBP into people management is a relatively recent one, so much so that as recently as October this year an online article was published in People Management (Elder and Nikodem, 2023) which agrees with my blog post on Gill (1998) and her work concerning this thing called an awareness deficit. Elder and Nikodem (2023) state, “there is [perhaps] less awareness of academic evidence” that supports the argument in favour of implementation into HR, stating this lack exists with respect to employee empowerment programs and unconscious bias training initiatives. It should be noted that a perceived lack of awareness is one of the central arguments put forward by Gill (1998).

Discovering the CIPD Professional Map and the value of selective hiring

Vandenabeele and co-authors (2013) build on the work of Moore (1995) who writes on the topic of creating value in the public sector. Their paper states that the concept of strategy as it relates to HRM should be conceptualised more robustly than Moore’s case-study orientation. In the work of Moore, he essentially argues for something referred to as “public-sector production” (1995:53) which Moore explains is a type of public value that is not associated with a “physical good” or “consumed service” but rather created in the mind of the public executive to improve the lives of “particular clients and beneficiaries”. To implement this, Moore notes, in the case of strategic implementation^[3] in diversified conglomerates, that because of a nuanced business context, key personnel could develop into, what he calls a “strategic asset” (1995:68).

How does this extract from Moore relate to evidence-based practice and recruitment? Well, firstly, Moore is resonated by Leisink and Steijn (2008) who regard “selective hiring” as part of a bundle of best HR practices (2008:118). Secondly, it supports the case for selective hiring, which is regarded by several labour economists as the artistic translation for Pissarides (2000) and his search and matching formulae (Merkl and van Rens, 2019). Vandenabeele et. al. (2013) point out in their paper what Moore fails to achieve; to define a structural framework that outlines the findings of his extensive study for application in the conglomerate context. Regarding the strategic advantage of key personnel in a conglomerate, the work of Vandenabeele and co-authors is resolved by the CIPD Profession Map (Elder and Nikodem, 2023). The Professional Map sets out what the CIPD call the “international benchmark”.

References

1.     Elder, S.R. and Nikodem, M. (2023) “Considering the application and relevance of evidence-based HR”, People Management, Available at: https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1845833/considering-application-relevance-evidence-based-hr [Online] (Accessed on 30 November 2023)

2.     Gill, C. (1998) “Don’t know, don’t care: An exploration of evidence-based knowledge and practice in human resource management”, Human Resource Management Review, 28(2), pp. 013-115

3.     Hughes, J., Hughes, K., Sykes, G., Wright, K. (2021) “Moving from what data are to what researchers do with them: a response to Martyn Hammersley”, International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 24(3), pp. 399-400

4.     Learmonth, M. (2008) “Speaking Out: Evidence-Based Management: A Backlash Against Pluralism in Organisational Studies?”, Organization, 15(2), pp. 283-291

5.     Leisink, P. and Steijn, B. (2008) “Recruitment, Attraction and Selection”, chapter in Perry, J. and Hondeghem, A. (eds) ‘Motivation in Public Management: Call of Public Service’, Norfolk: Oxford University Press

6.     Malloch, H. (1997) Strategic and HRM Aspects of Kaizen: A Case Study. New Technology, Work, and Employment. [Online] 12 (2), pp. 108–122.

7.     Merkl, C. and van Rens, T. (2019) “Selective Hiring and Welfare Analysis in Labour Market Models”, Labour Economics, 57(1), pp.117-130

8.     Moore, M. H. (1995) ‘Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government’, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press

9.     Open University 1a (2023) “Gifford’s Hierarchy and Carol Gill on the “Knowing and Belief” Gap”, [Online] Available at https://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=279019 (Accessed on 24 November 2023)

10.  Pfeffer, J. and Sutton, R. I. (2006) ‘Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management’, Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press

11.  Pissarides, C. (2000) ‘Equilibrium Unemployment Theory’, Second Edition, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press

12.  Vandenabeele, W., Leisink, P. and Knies, E. (2013) ‘Public value cation and strategic human resource management: public service motivation as a linking mechanism’, chapter in Leisink, P., Boslie, P., van Bottenburg, M. and Marie Hosking, D. ‘Managing Social Issues: A Public Values Perspective’, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 37 – 54 [Online] Available at: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781781006962.00010 (Accessed on 30 November 2023)

Explaining Evidence-Based Practice in People Management

The academic literature on evidence-based practice is seemingly split into two distinct yet important themes of research. These themes are 1) real-world studies that apply evidence-based methods and 2) what we will call the theory and critique of evidence-based knowledge, and management, indeed as their own nascent domains. As we will now come to see, and as Barends, Rousseau, and Briner (2014) explain, the fundamentals of evidence-based practice can be simply described as the “conscientious”, “explicit” and “judicious” use of the best available evidence from multiple sources by Asking, Acquiring, Appraising, Aggregating, Applying, and Assessing to increase the likelihood of what Briner (2019) calls a "favourable outcome". 

The six A's he cites can be elaborated as follows:

1. Asking: involves converting real-world circumstances into answerable questions
2. Acquiring: involves systematically gathering evidence to answer such questions
3. Appraising: involves thinking critically about the trustworthiness of the evidence
4. Aggregating: involves pulling together the best bits from each source of data
5. Applying: involves deriving a decision-making process using the evidence selected
6. Assessing: involves evaluating the outcome of the decision taken

Source: Briner (2019)

There are generally also 4 types of evidence:

 Source: Barends, Rousseau and Briner (2014) 

1.2: The Hierarchy of Evidence

Source: Gifford (2016)

Carol Gill's Critique of Evidence-Based Practice in Human Resource Management (HRM)

We already know that evidence-based practice in HRM is a contested territory, but the question is, do HR practitioners and academics alike understand why there is this contested arena? 

Gill (2018:103) suggests three perspectives for understanding this question. 

The first perspective is what Gill calls a lack of awareness of such a duality. In essence, here, Gill describes a situation where there are “sides” who “care” or in this case, who may not care, about the interests of the other. Gill illustrates this through evidence-based practices such as high-performance work. Generally speaking, in the view of Gill, the two “sides” are pitted against one another. Here, HRM ultimately to its own detriment, suffers from an awareness deficit that engulfs the empirical research side and the real-world practice side, respectively.

Practitioners are labeled “Machiavellian” in their intent to avoid research, which leads to the second perspective: a lack of belief from both sides or what Gill calls a “knowing and belief gap”. Gill (2018:112) states using the research content on university courses as an example, that evidence-based practice is often vacuous once students depart from university courses in HRM, which leaves practitioners vulnerable to “unreliable” sources of information further permeated by a great divide between these two respective “sides” (academics and practitioners). Gill then reiterates in proposition 1a that precariously unfavourable “attitudes” are formed from managerial beliefs about a lack of evidence-based knowledge.

The third perspective that defines Gill’s critique of evidence-based practice is what, in the backdrop of a decline in managerialism, is known through her paper as a lack of implementation. Throughout the paper, the author proposes an abbreviation known as “HPWP” otherwise known as ‘high-performance work practices. These work practices are what the Institute of Directors (2023) in a recent article published in August concedes can be a “challenging and complex process” to implement. Gill’s findings are that lack of implementation occurs once again because of a lack of belief in the link between investment in human resources and “financial performance”. Here, evidence-based knowledge must compete with what one paper interprets as its role as the organisation’s “handmaiden of efficiency”.

References

1.     Barens, E. Rousseau, D.M. and Briner, R.B. (2014) ‘Evidence-Based Management: The Basic Principles’, Amsterdam: Centre for Evidence-Based Management – Available at https://cebma.org/assets/Uploads/Evidence-Based-Practice-The-Basic-Principles.pdf (Accessed 24 November 2023)

2.     Briner, R.B. (2019) ‘The Basics of Evidence-Based Practice‘, Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)  - Available at: https://www.shrm.org/executive/resources/people-strategy-journal/winter2019/pages/ebp-briner.aspx (Accessed on 24 November 2023)

3.     Gifford, J. (2016) “In search of the best available evidence”, CIPD positioning paper. London: CIPD. Available at: https://www.cipd.co.uk/Images/in-search-of-the-best-available-evidence_tcm18-16904.pdf (Accessed: 24 November 2023)

4.     Gill, C. (2018) “Don’t know, don’t care: An exploration of evidence-based knowledge and practice in human resource management”, Human resource management review, [Online] 28 (2), 103–115 – Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2017.06.001

5.     Institute of Directors (2023) ‘High-Performance Work Practices: A Beginners Guide’, IOD Resources Blog – Available at: https://www.iod.com/resources/blog/business-advice/high-performance-work-practices-beginners-guide/ (Accessed on 24 November 2023)

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This post was written by Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM and was inspired by an Academy of Management Perspectives article by Rob Briner, Denise Rousseau and David Denyer (2009) entitled: “Evidence-Based Management: Concept Clean Up Time?”

References

1.     Abedi, V., Olulana, O., Avula, V., Chaudhary, D., Khan, A., Shahjouei, S., Li., J. and Zand, R. (2021) “Racial, economic, and health inequality and COVID-19 infection in the United States”, Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 8(3), pp. 732–42.

2.     Collings, D.G., McMackin, J., Nyberg, A.J. and Wright, P.M. (2021) ‘Strategic human resource management and COVID‐19: Emerging challenges and research opportunities’, Journal of Management Studies. Available at: https://doi-org.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/10.1111/joms.12695 (Accessed: 19 November 2023)

3.     Johns, G. (2006) "The Essential Impact of Context on Organizational Behaviour", The Academy of Management Review, 31(2), pp. 386–408

4.     Société Générale Report: Future of Work: ‘Building a new work experience together at Société Générale’, July 2020 – Available at https://www.societegenerale.com/sites/default/files/documents/2020-10/future_of_work_livre_blanc_va.pdf

5.     Stuart, M., Spencer, D. A., McLachlan, C. J., Forde, C. (2021) “COVID-19 and the uncertain future of HRM: Furlough, job retention and reform”, Human Resource Management Journal, 31(4), pp. 904-917

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This post was written by Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM and was inspired by a Forbes article entitled: "Companies with flexible remote work policies outperform on revenue growth: report"

Thank you to Hilary Scarlett for taking the time out of your schedule to speak to me about your amazing journey towards your current aspirations (for all but 20 minutes) and thank you for sharing with me how we can help answer important questions with your book on the subject of change.

It was great meeting up with cognitive neuroscientist, author, and scholar Hilary Scarlett yesterday on Zoom. I told her how I used to work opposite two very capable project consultants who each led on change. I also sat beside a very well-paid BA. As I introduced my questions, I noted that what impressed me about these respective roles was the fact that they were concerned with change concurrently with operative business; these people worked on endlessly whilst the business of the department trotted alongside. So, I sort of got the impression that the business was constantly moving and always evolving. Jiras were being filed seamlessly, and Pega requests were being signed off, without interruption.

Now, as you guys know, I recently wrote in an OU blog post that stated “in the postmodern literature on organisational change, the subject is often thought of as an ontology" (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). I asked Hilary if she would agree that neuroscience is at the forefront of the multi-disciplinary movement to help better understand organisational thought? I didn't quite get the reply I was looking for.

I then told Hilary that one of my main influences was the work of Cambridge University's Professor of Clinical Neuropsychology, Barbara Sahakian in a study she pioneered alongside co-author, CfEL's Professor Shai Vyakarnam entitled: "The Innovative Brain", which was published in Nature (Sahakian, et. al., 2008). Hilary's response was amazing. She gave me insight into a few prominent perspectives on change and explained that in her time as a Languages undergrad and Psychology graduate, she herself was introduced to a paper on neuroscience which convinced her that was the industry she wanted to pursue. We ended our brief conversation shortly after. 

Now, there is a widely cited academic article that focuses on the role of “context” in OB discourse (Gary Johns, 2006). Succinctly put, "context" is seen by Johns as: “the surroundings associated with phenomena which help to illuminate [sic] phenomenon, typically factors associated with units of analysis above those expressly under investigation” (Capelli and Sherer, 1991:56). Alongside this widely cited article are several other articles which reference the work of Gary Johns (2006), and which present the influence of this nature of “context” on the field of HRM. 

I shall leave us all with a question based on this premise: How relevant are cognitive models of analysis such as the Maslows and the McGregors on the emergence of HRM as an interdisciplinary field or as its own research domain? More or less important than our respective realities? 

References

1.      Cappelli, P. and Sherer, P. D. (1991) "The missing role of context in OB: The need for a meso-level approach",  Research in Organizational Behaviour, 13: pp. 55–110

2.      Chia, R. (1995) "From Modern to Postmodern Organizational Analysis", Organization Studies, 16(4), pp. 579-604

3.      Johns, G. (2006) "The Essential Impact of Context on Organizational Behaviour", The Academy of Management Review, 31(2), pp. 386–408

4.      Tsoukas, H. and Chia, R. (2002) “On organizational becoming: rethinking organizational change”, Organization Science, 13(5), pp. 567+

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This post was written by Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM, and was inspired by the work of Barbara Sahakian (2008) in a Nature article entitled: "The Innovative Brain".

Last Wednesday, I wrote a brief e-mail to Peter Ackers asking the prolific Industrial Relations academic to interpret which book or article or indeed which critical perspective he would decide holds the most influence in Alan Fox's extended oeuvre. 

"Is it Unitarism, Pluralism, or Marxist / Radical? " I asked Prof. Ackers, hoping for enlightenment.

Fast forward an academic week and I finally got that long-awaited reply from Peter Ackers yesterday:

"Hello Alfred, Good to hear from you & pleased you found the idea of neo-pluralism interesting. As you'll see from the bottom reference below, I'm still developing this. The old Industrial Relations Pluralism was fairly narrowly based on conflict between trade unions and employers within the IR system. My 1st IRJ piece in 2002 tried to expand this for contemporary society, where unions are weaker, there are other forms of 'voice' & there are tensions between work & family life. Your blog & question are interesting. All 3 frames are still in play, but within academic Employment Relations the main debate is between neo-pluralism & a radical- pluralism based on Fox's later writing. At the same time, much of management thought is unitarist, assuming simple shared interests between management & employees."

Interesting response from Peter Ackers. More here.

Let's get started!

Today's blog post focuses on a critical perspective of HR in what I will argue is HR's gradual excursion into Zeno's paradox of motion. To illustrate, I will begin with an anecdote. When I first joined Société Générale as a Data Analyst intern in May 2014, I was invited to a social event at an illustrious venue in the City - 1 America Square - by the Head of Human Resources, Benjamin Higgens. This was the first informal encounter I had with colleagues from other departments in the bank. By the time I departed from the role in the following year, I had learned enough about the corporate banking industry to move on; I informed my manager of my intent to leave, and a letter of termination was issued by a HR clerk in the following days. Upon reflection, it is easy to see that HR was indeed the first and last form of representation that I had engaged with. Although, HR is arguably an integral part of any successful business operating model, its strategic role in practice is perhaps not as well understood as it could potentially be.

There is a philosophy borrowed from Ancient Greece that may very well have inspired the thinking behind how modern sports analysts observe the reasons behind why some sprinters are so much more exceptional in comparison to other athletes, particularly across generations. Zeno’s paradox of motion states that “the fast runner Achilles can never overtake the slow-moving tortoise” (Wesley, 1980; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). What has this got to do with changes in HR’s function? Well, likewise, in the field of research, it is often worthwhile to occasionally take a step back and evaluate the successes and shortcomings of change in organisations. Why? Because as academics and practitioners, change does not necessarily signal progression. This blog post will argue that the evolving role of human resource management (HRM) is suffering from a gradual excursion into Zeno’s paradox.

As this blog post explains, using a three-part framework with real-world examples, there are notable ‘drivers’ of change that have influenced comparatively less ethical consideration in the workplace, particularly in HR. This three-part framework corresponds to the ‘TOP’ framework found in the work of Parry and Bondarouk, where a significant driver of change is the concept of Technology or e-HRM (Bondarouk et. al., 2017; Fernandez and Gallardo-Gallardo, 2021; Shipton, et. al., 2017; Tansley et. al., 2014; Poba-Nzaou, et al., 2020). According to Parry and Bondarouk, much of the change in HR’s function has come as the result of web or cloud-based innovations that have emerged within the last 15-20 years. We already know that changes in HR tech over time can be understood in many ways, for example, through ‘rates of adoption’ (Marler and Parry, 2016; Poba-Nzaou et al., 2020). Questions of relevance are important to consider. Has the uptake of HR tech been universal? Through the prism of impact, or ‘degrees of automation’. Has the uptake of HR tech been competitive or transformational (Diaz-Fernandez et. al., 2017; Tansley et. al., 2014)? How do we better understand the impact of changes in HR’s function through tech innovation?

The second significant driver of change is Organisational. HR’s function is already a delicate one. It involves coercive and rhetorical enforcement of the employee-employer relationship with a view to protecting against the possibility of overt breaches and instances of vicarious liability, especially in the world of infrastructure finance. The foresight of any repudiation of a binding contract is a necessary function of HR in the modern workplace. Such rhetorical enforcement is indicative of a shift to the ‘human resource’ professional approach beyond the realm where formal procedures are merely followed, as opposed to a ‘personnel’ management approach, increasingly as large corporates seek to guard themselves against expensive litigation. Take repudiation as one such instance (Cabrelli and Zahn, 2012; Cabrelli and Zahn, 2013) or as in ‘Société Générale vs Raphael Geys (2012)’, where the ‘automatic’ and ‘elective’ theories of repudiation are annotated by the Rt. Hon. Justice, Lord Sumption.

In the postmodern literature on organisational change, the subject is often thought of as an ontology (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). There are weak ontologies and strong ontologies of becoming in what Chia (1995) emphasises is a transient reality. But it is how the organisation is philosophically viewed that is of the essence. Surveillance, particularly ‘hierarchal surveillance’, has been noted by some HRM academics as an externality that is all too perceivable in modern HR (Kamoche and Newenham-Kahindi, 2012).

Finally, the third driver of change is what the TOP framework references as People. This is akin to shifts in the modes and practices of work (Bowen and Ostroff, 2004; Nwachukwu, 2016).

The TOP framework suggests that HR’s function is adoptive towards digitisation (Fernandez and Gallardo-Gallardo, 2021). However, is this sort of adoption ethical? In a series of qualitative interviews with over 40 respondents from HR, the evidence that one academic presents suggests that HR actively engages in what this blog post will refer to as the 3D’s of unethical HRM - distancing, depersonalising, and dissembling. The respondents achieved the 3D’s in their workplace relationships by neutralising any moral imputes to the role of HR (De Gama et. al., 2012). What does this tell us? Well, it corroborates the view that the rhetoric of digitisation is not always ethical (Legge, 2005). As such, concerns with workforce mobility (Bader et. al., 2023; Harzing et. al., 2020) and imbalances in cross-cultural talent identification (McDonnell et. al., 2023) as an inherent responsibility of the multi-stakeholder model have possibly led to more contested outcomes in the present day.

Aside from the ethicality of the changes I have highlighted in the TOP framework, research on the acquisition by HR professionals of new competencies coincides quite well with Zeno’s paradox. According to the interviews which inform Arthur Yueng’s rendition of the HR competency model (Yueng et. al., 1996), only 10-15% of HR professionals possess the necessary competencies for a transition into a new reinvented business function.

This blog post has shown how HR follows the pattern of Zeno’s paradox. Philosophical and rhetorical changes in HR’s function are an evolving, and multi-faceted concept but in a multi-stakeholder model, these changes are usually unaligned to more rapid changes in business strategy. Using a three-part framework, I have shown how driving factors in the form of the Parry and Bondarouk framework continue to affect the evolving role of HR in practice.

Practitioners should embrace the concept of change in HR’s function, but practice should be informed by evidence founded in relevant areas of empirical research. Developing strategies of competitive advantage with respect to wider operating models.

References

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This post was written by Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM, and was inspired by the work of Peter Ackers in an International Journal of Human Resource Management article entitled: “Neo-pluralism as a theoretical framework for understanding HRM in sub-Saharan Africa”