英文版 人力资源管理

doi:10.1111/j.1748-8583.2010.00164.x

Over the past 20years, there has been a considerable expansion in theory and research about human resource management and performance. This paper reviews progress by identifying a series of phases in the development of relevant theory and research. It then sets out a number of challenges for the future on issues of theory, management processes and research methodology. The main conclusion from the review is that after over two decades of extensive research, we are still unable to answer core questions about the relationship between human resource management and performance. This is largely attributed to the limited amount of research that is longitudinal and has been able to address the linkages between HRM and performance and to study the management of HR implementation.

Contact:David E. Guest, Department of Management, King’sCollege, London, 150Stamford

Street, London SE19NH, UK. Email:[email protected] the Human Resource Management Journal was launched in 1990, it was able

to capture a rising wave of interest in human resource management and in

particular the relationship between human resource management (HRM)and

performance. The following decade provided the initial sound evidence about a positive association between HRM and firmperformance (see,e.g . Arthur, 1994; Huselid, 1995; Delery and Doty, 1996). A decade later, the number of studies had grown to such an extent that two major reviews of the research (Boselieet al ., 2005; Combs et al ., 2006) confirmedthat the large majority of published studies demonstrated an association between HRM and performance; but both also emphasised that their analysis provided evidence of an association rather than causation. Both reviews also concluded that there was insufficient evidence to explain why there was an association. It is this lack of an explanation that provides the point of departure for this paper. Its aim is to provide an analysis of how after 20years of extensive research we are more knowledgeable but not much wiser, in that we have not been able to explain the demonstrated association between HRM and performance with any conviction, and to outline possible lines for developing research that might provide some answers.

While it is always easy to be critical of developments in a complex area of organisational research, it is also important to acknowledge the considerable progress that has been made in research on HRM and performance. This is a rapidly evolving fieldthat has gone through a fairly typical series of steps towards a perhaps wiser and more reflectiveperspective on the subject (see,e.g . Paauwe, 2009). I will argue that in retrospect several overlapping phases can be identified,reflectingthe ebb and flowof theory, research and application and it is useful brieflyto consider these, both to recognise the progress that has been made and to highlight the distinctive challenges for future research that each reflects.

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Human Resource Management and Performance

The beginnings

The firstphase in the development of theory and research on the association between HRM and performance occurred in the 1980s. In this period a series of articles and books by, for example, Fombrun et al . (1984)and Miles and Snow (1984)began to link business strategy to human resource management. Others such as Walton (1985),writing from more of an organisational behaviour perspective had highlighted the need for a shift from control to commitment as the basis for management of people at work. In the work of the Harvard group (Beeret al ., 1984) and Schuler and Jackson (1987)we began to see an integration between a strategic view, that highlighted the importance of ‘externalfit’and organizational behaviour with its focus on ‘internalfit’to produce a conceptual perspective or ‘map’(Noon,1992) that forms the basis of contemporary HRM. In the UK, this was contrasted with the pluralism of an industrial relations perspective to highlight a distinctively normative perspective on HRM (see,e.g . Guest, 1987and Storey, 1992). In parallel with this, Foulkes (1980)and Peters and Waterman (1982),among others, had provided glimpses of evidence about successful organisations that seemed to apply the ‘highcommitment’HRM principles. This firstphase, therefore presented the promise of HRM in the form of semi-prescriptive analytic frameworks alongside somewhat anecdotal cases that appeared to confirmthis promise of an association between HRM and performance.

Empiricism

The second distinctive phase occurred in the 1990s when the firstset of survey-based, statistically analysed studies of HRM and performance began to appear. The seminal paper was by Huselid (1995)but equally useful sector specificresearch was reported by Arthur (1994)and by Ichniowski et al . (1997)in steel mills, by MacDuffie (1995)in the auto industry and by Delery and Doty (1996)in banking. All indicated that the adoption of more HR practices was associated with higher performance and in so doing began to provide an evidence-base for the claim about a link.

Backlash and reflection

A backlash swiftly followed as it was recognised that the rush to empiricism had occurred at the expense of sufficient consideration of some key conceptual issues, and a third phase emerged. Articles by Dyer and Reeves (1995)and by Becker and Gerhart (1996)demonstrated that the published studies used an array of different HR practices, measured in different ways. There were similar though less strongly voiced concerns about the measures of performance. The implication was that we needed a sounder conceptual basis for determining the appropriate HR practices and needed a serious debate about generalisability highlighted in the discussion of universalist, contingency and configurationalperspectives (Beckerand Gerhart, 1996; Delery and Doty, 1996).

A rather different kind of backlash had been developing among a number of critics, particularly in the UK, who viewed the emergence of HRM in general and of a normative high commitment approach in particular as a new and insidious form of exploitation of workers (see,e.g . Blyton and Turnbull, 1992; Legge, 1995; Keenoy, 1997), a view that still persists in certain quarters (Heskethand Fleetwood, 2006). The response to the concerns about the need for greater conceptual clarity and worker exploitation ushered in two further streams of conceptual and empirical work that overlap chronologically but which I will describe as phases four and five.

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Conceptual refinement

The fourth phase focussed on conceptual refinement.Guest (1997)had argued that we needed a better theory about HR practices, about outcomes and about the link between them. Both he and Becker et al . (1997)had advocated an approach that drew on expectancy theory (Vroom,1964; Lawler, 1971) as a basis for determining core elements of HRM content and its link to performance. Variants of this approach were subsequently widely adopted in the work of Appelbaum and colleagues in the US (Appelbaumet al ., 2000) and by Purcell and colleagues in the UK (Purcelland Hutchinson, 2007) in what has come to be known as the Ability, Motivation, Opportunity (AMO)model. This approach represents an essentially universalist perspective.

A rather different approach emerged out of the theoretical work of Barney (1991)who had presented the resource-based view of the firm.This has been developed and applied to HRM by others (see,e.g . Wright et al ., 1994; Lepak and Snell, 1999; 2002) as a basis for focusing investment in human resources and predicting the types of investment most likely to result in superior performance and competitive advantage.

A third shift in emphasis was presented by Paauwe (2004)who highlighted the importance of an institutional perspective and reminded us that in Europe the legislative framework as well as the institutions relating to education and training and to employee representation ensured that a minimum set of HR practices were in place in most organisations. This meant that any competitive advantage was more likely to come either from the way in which these standard practices are implemented or from the use of additional distinctive practices. The refinementsthat emerged from this period arguably continue to dominate our conceptual thinking about HRM and performance today and are reflected,for example, in the burgeoning interest in human capital.

Bringing the worker centre-stage

The fifthand overlapping phase in the development of research that has emerged as more central in the past decade concerns the key role of workers and the importance of workers’perceptions and behaviour in understanding the relationship between HRM and performance. The workers’voice had been surprisingly neglected in some of the early research and its absence had been cited as a major issue in some of the more critical writing about HRM. More generally, there was a frequent call to ‘openthe black box’to explore the process linking HRM and performance and this invariably led to a greater focus on the way in which workers responded to HRM (see,e.g . Wright and Boswell, 2002). In recent years therefore this neglect has been remedied. In the UK, the inclusion of a survey of employees in the Workplace Employment Relations Surveys of 1998and 2004provided a large national data base with which to study workers’perceptions. Some initial interpretations of these results led to a claim that HRM might not be in workers’best interests (Ramsayet al ., 2000). In the North America, some surveys critical of HRM on the basis of workers responses began to emerge (see,e.g . Cappelli and Neumark, 2001; Godard, 2004) giving greater credence to the view that any gains in performance from HRM might be at the expense of workers rather than because of their positive reaction to it. Subsequent research has offered a more nuanced view. One result has been to focus on worker outcomes as a central issue in HRM and to consideration of how far it is feasible for HRM to result in both higher performance and enhanced workers’well-being (Peccei,2004).

Growing sophistication

The final,in the sense of the most recent phase of development of theory and research on HRM and performance can be definedin terms of growing sophistication and complexity. This HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 21NO 1, 2011

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includes increased sophistication in particular with respect to theory and research methods and it provides a stepping off point for considering future developments. An important starting point for consideration of both sophistication and complexity is the work of Bowen and Ostroff (Ostroffand Bowen, 2000; Bowen and Ostroff, 2004). In their firstpaper (Ostroffand Bowen, 2000), they presented a conceptual multi-level framework suggesting that the HRM –performance relationship could be considered at both the individual and organisational levels and through the linkages between them. The second paper (Bowenand Ostroff, 2004) offered a theory of HRM implementation. In this paper, they suggested that to understand the HRM –performance linkages, much of the emphasis needed to be placed on processes, reflectingthe oft-cited view that it is not enough to have good practices if they are not properly implemented. What this does is switch the focus to line management and places greater emphasis on HRM effectiveness.

A further indication of growing sophistication is the use of models from organisational and social psychology. An interesting reflectionof this can be found in the work of Nishii et al . (2008)who argue that it is not just the presence of practices that is important but perceptions about the intentions behind the practices. They have used attribution theory to explore the way in which workers interpret practices and to show how this interpretation can shape their response. This is further confirmationthat it is not sufficient to restrict our focus to the presence of practices and it points to the need for organisations to pay much more attention to how they communicate the purpose as well as the content of HR practices.

Bowen and Ostroff set out the case for a ‘strong’HRM climate and HR system and researchers are acknowledging that we gain a limited picture by collecting information on HR practices without paying full attention to the context within which they are enacted. The need to link organisation, unit, group and individual level climates, inputs and outcomes requires a complex research methodology and sophisticated statistical analysis. The use of structural equation modelling, with the discipline required to specify linkages, has become commonplace in HRM research. We are beginning to see more multi-level analysis and where this is allied to longitudinal data, we are entering a more sophisticated level of methodology. At the same time, it makes researching much more difficult, particularly if the aim is to research across rather than within organisations, since gaining a sufficient number of organisations for multi-level analysis with detailed information on internal climates, is daunting. Recognition of the requirements this presents has led to an optimistic call for ‘bigresearch’(Walland Wood, 2005) and the associated funding.

A methodological issue that continues to be debated concerns who should provide information about HRM. There have been persistent calls for multiple informants about the presence of practices (Gerhartet al ., 2000). It has been suggested that, particularly in the context of large organisations, senior HR managers are not very reliable informants and that it is more sensible to seek information from those experiencing the practices, namely workers. Bowen and Ostroff suggest that consensus about HR practices is one indication of a ‘strong’HRM climate and Liao et al . (2009)provide some empirical support for this view.

If the contemporary picture of HRM is one of growing complexity and sophistication, it also implies a risk of fragmentation. By raising the bar in terms of complexity of research methods and statistical analysis, a growing number of researchers may feel excluded from the field.There is also a risk that the research ceases to be accessible to practitioners and policy makers. This highlights a need for regular integrative reviews. However, it also neglects the many areas of potential research on HRM and performance that are still amenable to a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods.

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particularly the longitudinal study by Schneider et al . (2003)also challenges the standard assumption that satisfaction, perhaps resulting from good HRM, leads to higher performance and concludes that the opposite direction of causality is at least as powerful an explanation. This reinforces the need for better theorising about the likely size of the HRM impact and for research that tries to take into account the timing of the introduction and updating of relevant HR practices or other key changes. Allied to this, we need to give more attention to the largely neglected issue of the anticipated lag between the introduction, implementation and impact of HR practices. This is a well-recognised concern in longitudinal studies but has not been extensively discussed in relation to research on HRM and performance.

Other problems with the dominant research methods have been widely cited (see,e.g . Gerhart, 2007). There is a need for multiple sources of information about both the presence and the implementation of HR practices. As already noted, it is naive to assume that a senior HR manager can provide information about local practice either in terms of whether practices are implemented or whether they are effective. We also need to explore more carefully the effectiveness of practices. Goal setting may be present but it might be poorly formulated. Everyone may get an appraisal but it may be based on a poor system. The research evidence suggests generally low levels of agreement on the presence of practices when management accounts, usually from HR managers, are compared with workers accounts (foran exception, see Liao et al ., 2009) with managers invariably reporting more practices in place than reported by workers. Since the intended impact is on workers, and they are closer to the point of implementation, there is a strong case for assuming that their views should be given more credibility. Perhaps the key message is that research needs to move beyond simply reporting the presence of practices.

Despite the presence of quite well-established models linking HRM to performance through the impact of HRM on workers’attitudes and behaviour, their link to internal performance such as productivity and quality and through this to external measures such as sales and profitper employee, very few studies have explored this chain. We would expect a stronger association between HRM and proximal rather than distal outcomes. Yet the meta analysis by Combs et al . (2006)indicated a stronger link to financialoutcomes than to productivity. This may reflecta problem of measurement, bearing in mind that the measurement of productivity in the service sector can be particularly problematic (Atkinson,2005), whereas it may be easier to obtain standard, comparable financialdata. Overcoming the methodological requirements for testing these linkages presents considerable challenges, perhaps requiring the big research called for by Wall and Wood. But we can get closer within specificorganisations such as banks and retail businesses where there are numerous branches.

In summary, the research is riddled with error both with respect to data on HRM and on outcomes. As some have argued, this may hide the size of any true effect (Gerhartet al ., 2000). But is also leaves room for considerable doubt about the processes at play. We therefore need to recognise the need for more careful formulation of research and perhaps less research with a wide sweep. Indeed, we probably need to move away from the ‘bigresearch’concept.

There is a risk that research sophistication, and more particularly statistical sophistication can become an end in itself, driven in part by the publishing policies of some top journals. It can also lead to a focus on the use of established measures, even if their appropriateness for the research context is questionable. It would be unfortunate if this deterred some good researchers, including qualitative researchers, from entering the fieldsince there are still some basic methodological questions that remain unresolved. For example, we remain uncertain about how to measure HR practices and HR implementation. We have made little progress in establishing ways to measure an HR system. Indeed, it is salutary that we still do not know 10HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 21NO 1, 2011

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