Personal Blogs

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)

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This post was written by Alfred Anate Mayaki, a student on the MSc in HRM, and was inspired by a book by Mark H. Moore entitled "Creating Public Value: Strategic Management in Government"

Had a fascinating B812 tutorial today. Whilst attempting to form an opinion on the differences between Pluralism and Unitarism, guided by the direction provided by Dr Gill. I kept seeing the work of the late Alan Fox (an author who is undoubtedly a popularly cited authority in the field) on Pluralism.

An interesting read I found refers to a discussion that I would like to share. The e-book defines the term “Employment Relations” as possessing a context which internalises the conflict between institutional groups, (mainly managers and unions), which is typically considered distinct from the focus of what we refer to as “Human Resource Management (HRM)”. The latter is often viewed as a way of describing the critical perspectives on managerial business functions such as appraisal, recruitment, and interviewing.

So, as the title of the post alludes to the e-book introduces a term coined by Alan Fox referred to as “frames of reference”. We are then introduced to Pluralism in the following paragraphs. Fox’s 1966 paper: “A Note on Industrial-Relations Pluralism” is a good primer on this. 

As a peer mediator in my school days, I was certainly intrigued by the practical balance that may be achieved through approaches founded on unitarism, but inherently I was drawn toward the middle ground. I reluctantly chose to fence sit. Somewhere between Fox's unitarian perspective and Fox's radical perspective.

Neo-pluralism.

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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”.

Short post today. 

There exists a gem of an article, that I suspect many are attuned to, so I will be very brief with my own interpretation. The article is by Dr. Carol Gill of Melbourne Business School. Dr. Gill’s article is interesting in that it establishes the argument that the HR profession has not really changed much in the last 25 – 30 years (which is a very long time horizon and somewhat of an odd claim to have made if not only due to advances we've all experienced in digital technology).

But, the more important fact is that the human resource profession seemingly, according to Gill, exudes itself through a pellucid vortex of insufficient academic oversight. Central to Gill’s position in this article is the view that current industry approaches (and more so, by extension, its rhetorical domain) are not siphoned enough to contemporary models of practice through informed research.

An interesting view.

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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 Carol Gill in a Human Resource Management Review article entitled: “Don't know, don't care: An exploration of evidence-based knowledge and practice in human resource management”