a perspective of research in contemporary hrm [compatibility mode]

Dr. Harry CD [email protected]

Research Interests include Globally distributed teams / Virtual teams Behavioral patterns of distributed teams Software teams (WGX, TMX, LMX) Cross culture

Jain University, August 19, 2012

Part 1- Research in contemporary HRM

Part 2-Theory building in HRM Research

Part 3- Critical terms in HRM research

Dr. Harry CD -"A perspective of research in contemporary HRM", 2012

Dr. Harry CD -"A perspective of research in contemporary HRM", 2012 Name of

Organization Total

revenue FY 2010 (In

USD-Billion)

Employees strength

Geographical locations

(Countries)

Overall number of

offices

TCS 8.26 198000 42 200

Infosys 6.35 133560 30 63

Wipro 6.0 100000 70 100

HCL Technologies

5.9 80000 31 60

IBM 100 426751 170 ___

Gap Gemini --- 110000 40 136

Ness 0.5 6900 18 36

Information on Technology Companies

Source: Harry CD, 2012, OCB of distributed teams: A study on the mediating effect of organizational justice in software organizations


Electronics Companies

Countries Operating in

Flextronics 30

Sony 183

Canon 44

LG 40

Samsung 100

Automobile Companies

Countries Operating in

Ford 70

GM 157

Toyota 28

Benz & BMW 35 & 150 respectively


The Latest Trends in Business Social media –the obvious choice Global reach Outsource anything No business is a bad business A bigger role for government Management as a science Shifting consumption patterns Asia rising Industries taking new shape Innovation marching on Price stability in question

“Unless you are networking, you will soon be not working” Dr Denis Waitley


Macro and Micro context of Contemporary HRM

Dynamically changing global scenario

Belief in people processes has superseded other organizational processes

Changing from borrowed to indigenized

Administrator to strategist and change agent Increase technology driven jobs while low skilled jobs decrease

Highest global mobility- helps global alignment Centralized to distributed approach

World at your feet tendency

People are no more just resources

Process on sensitivity to sensitivity on processes

Hiring through social media

Localized compensation

HR policies based on trust, openness, equity and consensus

Better working conditions – Fun place to work

Encourage zeal, initiative, innovation and entrepreneurship; make people feel like winners

Sensitivity to relationships-Internal and external Equitably reward and integrate aspirations with corporate goals.

Organizations in every domain all over the world are confronted with growing complexity due to changing forms of organization.

Apart from relationships with competitors, customers, and suppliers becoming more complicated and involved, internally, many companies have complex processes, diverse business units, matrix structures and a diverse employee base as organizations become globally distributed.


Perception of organizational complexity is related to their process of understanding and appreciating the changing forms of organization.

High-Performance Organizations (HPO) such as GE, Becton Dickinson, Campbell Soup, IBM, and ASDA etc., has systematically developed their research capabilities (RC) over time.

Successful Indian multinational organizations such as Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant and TCS has worked on their people processes, competency building, performance management, compensation systems based on inputs obtained from their initiative or outsourced research.


Chatterjee, S. R. (2007). Human Resource Management in India: ‘Where From’ and ‘Where To?’, Research and Practice in Human Resourc e Management, 15(2), 92-103.


There are five core areas where optimizing the use of research outcome in an organization can provide additional value and ammunition for fighting competition.

Structure and design

Research capabilities can play an integral role in eliminating redundancy or unnecessary layers in an organizational structure by streamlining processes, minimizing management layers, facilitating communication and improving monitoring. Continuous research can help create more agile and flexible organizational structures.

Specific experience of roles, interaction and exchanges, treatments, benefits, culture, communication and brand status of an organization provide sufficient space for research.


For example:

• Backward and forward integration • Merger and acquisition • Collaborations and joint ventures • Outsourcing and in sourcing • Virtual and open source approaches • Grouping and regrouping of businesses • Private or public participation • Single or multiple products and services • Collocated or distributed location • Size and depth of the business


Processes and policies

Organizations are continually looking at ways to make their processes more competitive, effective and efficient.

HRM processes include

• Employment and engagement • Performance management • Competency building • Learning and development • HR auditing, assessment centers and Balanced score card • High performance culture • Career progression and succession • Deployment and redeployment • Rehabilitation • Local, national and global HRM practices • Culture sensitivity • Innovative people practices • Compensation and benefits • Attraction and retention etc.,

Stakeholders dynamically compare and ascertain their worth instantly and determine procedure for an effective move ahead.


People practices

Organizations can also optimize people resources by investing in research capabilities. With the right people, technology and processes, companies can reduce the number of people needed to achieve the same desired business results.

• Domestic versus overseas assignments, transfers and deputations

• Exchange within and between teams

• Interaction between collocated and distributed teams

• Gaps in beliefs and practices between core and non-core teams

• Differential treatment in work location

• Differential treatment between expatriates and domestic employees Cultural gaps and related problems

• Work life balance

• Inter dependence between employees


• Knowledge transfer and sharing • Role efficacy experiences

• Rewards and recognitions related behaviours

• Perceived organizational support • In-role and extra role behaviour (ERB or OCB) • Organizational retaliatory behaviour (ORB) • Justice Perceptions

• Decision participation

• Employee ambassadorship

• Withdrawal symptoms and organizational problems

• Organizational politic

• Differential treatment between contract / consultants versus direct employees

• Relationship between employees and customers / clients, between one unit to other units

• Performance assessment – Domestic and onsite • Cross culture experiences


Innovative HR practices

Developing business acumen Giving importance to EQ and SQ Human capital Intellectual capital Changing Trends in the area of Training and Development Transforming training delivery mechanisms Assessment centres Localization of culture HR branding Emotional / psychological approach Competency and capability developemnt Change management Balanced score card Career progression and succession plan Stay interview Flexi working High performance culture

Contemporary research has been concentrating on HR transformation


International management / HR alignment

Globally distributed team Cross culture Expatriates and in-patriates Virtual teams Contract resource management Global compensation


Part 2


HRM is concerned with people practices, thus the interaction and exchange in organizations mostly focus on how such interaction and exchange happens then why it happens.

A data driven analytical approach provides an in depth understanding of every people related phenomena across organization and offers means for reducing the intensity of challenges.


Theory is described as “a coherent description, explanation and representation of observed or experienced phenomena” (Gioia & Pitre, 1990, p. 587).

Theory building is the ongoing process of producing, confirming, applying, and adapting theory (Lynham, 2000b). Theory is required to be of practical value (Kaplan, 1964; Lynham, 2000b; Mott, 1996; Swanson, 1997, 1999; Van de Ven, 1989)


Challenge and usefulness One of the challenges of theory-building research in applied disciplines is making the logic used to build the theory explicit and accessible to the user of the developed theory.

• Theory building contributes to the existing body of

knowledge

• Help bridge the gap between research and practice

• Provides growth and maturity to the discipline


False assumptions of theory building include the following : (Susan A. Lynham, 2002)

• that theory is disconnected and removed from practice,

• that the process of theory construction happens in isolation of the real world,

• that those who engage in theory building or development are not the same as those who engage in practice or in the real world, and

• that usefulness and application are optional outcomes of theory.


Theory building is described as “the purposeful process or recurring cycle by which coherent descriptions, explanations, and representations of observed or experienced phenomena are generated, verified, and refined” (Lynham, 2000b, p. 161)

Theory building include

• Systematically collecting and interpreting new data

• Defining gaps and problems • Identifying responses to new problems • Define practical problems • Evaluating solutions • Discerning priorities • Identifying new research directions • Developing common language

• Defining boundaries • Sharing the findings and


The theory building process

The building of theory occurs in two major stages- The descriptive stage and the normative stage.

Within each of these stages, theory builders process through three steps: Observation, categorization and association .

Good theory and theory building should also reflect two important qualities: rigor and relevance (Marsick, 1990a), or what are also termed validity and utility (Van de Ven, 1989).


Building the research process

Categorization based on attributes of phenomena

(Frameworks & Typologies)

Observe, Describe and Measure phenomena

(Constructs)

Statements of association (Models)

Deduction Process Induction Process

Anomaly


The first is one of a research -to-theory strategy, whereas the second is one of a theory-to -research strategy (Reynolds, 1971). The research-to-theory strategy, also termed the research-then-theory strategy, is related to “deriving the laws of nature from a careful examination of all the available data” (Reynolds, 1971, p. 140).


As described by Reynolds (1971), the essences of this research-to-theory strategy are as follows: 1. Select a phenomenon and list all the characteristics of the

phenomenon 2. measure all the characteristics of the phenomenon in a variety of situations (as many as possible) 3. analyze the resulting data carefully and determine if there are any systematic patterns among the data “worthy” of further attention, and 4. once significant patterns have been found in the data, formalization of these patterns as theoretical statements constitutes the laws of nature (axioms, in Bacon’s terminology).


The second strategy for building theory is that of theory to research, or what Reynolds (1971) called the “theory-then-research strategy” Reynolds highlighted the essences of this theory-building strategy as follows: 1. Develop an explicit theory in either axiomatic or process description form; 2. select a statement generated by the theory for comparison with the results of empirical research; 3. design a research project to “test” the chosen statement’s correspondence with empirical research; 4. if the statement derived from the theory does not correspond with the research results, make appropriate changes in the theory or the research design and continue with the research; and 5. if the statement from the theory corresponds with the results of the research, select further statements for testing or attempt to determine the limitations of the theory.


A useful way of conceptualizing the research method for applied theory building is as a recursive system of five distinct phases: • conceptual development, • operationalization, • application, • confirmation or disconfirmation, and • continuous refinement and development (of the theory).



Popular Theories Equity Theory Motivational theory of Abraham Maslow, 1954 Theory X and Theory Y were developed by a management professor Douglas McGregor at MIT Sloan School of Management in the 1960s. Chris Argyris (1957)- worker-structure conflict theory Frederick Herzberg (1959)-Two factor theory (Hygiene and motivational factors) Douglas McGregor (1960)- Theory of management, Theory X and Theory Y Argyris & Schön (1974, 1996)- Model I and Model II Role efficacy –Self efficacy theories- Uday Pareek, 1980 Co-creation model - Jason Colquitt, 2007 Sense-making and breaking-Roberson, 2008

Part 3


Macro and micro context in HRM The environment furnishes the macro context and the organization is the micro unit. The external environment is comprised of those factors which affect an organizations human resources from outside the organization. Important among them are: economic, social, political, governmental, legal, technological, traditional and cultural; customers other organizations and trade unions in other organizations.


Differentiate between deduction and induction

In deduction, we deduce generalization from universal to particular but in induction we arrive at universal generalizations from particular facts. Therefore, sometimes deduction is thought to be opposite to induction. In inductive reasoning, you try to get a result based on a theory. Deductive reasoning you work backwards you have the result and you try to come up with the reasoning behind it.


Quantitative Research Confirms Quantitative research looks at the general case and moves toward the specific. This deductive approach to research considers a potential cause of something and hopes to verify its effect. Qualitative Research Confirms Qualitative research begins with the specific and moves toward the general. The data collecting process in qualitative research is personal, field-based, and iterative or circular. As data are collected and organized during analysis, patterns emerge.


Nonprobability and Probability Sampling Nonprobability sampling does not involve random selection But Probability sampling does

Empirical and Conceptual

Empirical and conceptual are two different approaches of

research.

• While empirical is dependent upon observation and

experimentation, and produces verifiable results, it is mostly used

in scientific studies

• On the other hand, conceptual analysis is a popular method of

research in social sciences, and philosophy and psychology.


The Moderator-Mediator Variable Distinction

Mediating effects allow researchers to understand underlying complex relationships whereby the effect of an independent variable is transmitted to a dependent variable through a third variable (Baron and Kenny(1986)

Theorists and researchers should be aware of the importance of not using the terms moderator and mediator interchangeably by carefully elaborating, both conceptually and strategically, the many ways in which moderators and mediators differ

a moderator is a qualitative (e.g., sex, race, class) or quantitative (e.g., level of reward) variable that affects the direction and/or strength of the relation between an independent or predictor variable and a dependent or criterion variable.


Validity and Reliability . Essentially, validity entails the question, “does your measurement process, assessment, or project actually measure what you intend it to measure?”. The related topic of reliability addresses whether repeated measurements or assessments provide a consistent result given the same initial circumstances.


Aims and Objectives Aims are actually goals which we set for ourselves but objectives are the measures which we undertake to achieve our aims Methods and Methodology Research methods involve conduct of experiments, tests, surveys

and the like. On the other hand research methodology involves

the learning of the various techniques that can be used in the

conduct of research and in the conduct of tests, experiments,

surveys and critical studies.


A doctoral dissertation is a serious piece of research upon which you will spend months or years of your life. Strangers cannot select topics for you without knowing something about your interests and experiences. You should not settle for a topic selected by strangers but should be reading extensively and meeting with your adviser at the university in order to determine a topic that will be sufficiently original and rigorous to meet the university's requirements while at the same time feasible for you to pursue.


References: 1. Chatterjee, S. R. (2007). Human Resource Management in India: ‘Where

From’ and ‘Where To?’, Research and Practice in Human Resource Management, 15(2), 92-103.

2. Gioia, D. A., & Pitre, E. (1990). Multiparadigm perspective on theory building. Academy of Management Review, 15(4), 584-602.

3. Reynolds, P. D. (1971). A primer in theory construction. New York: Macmillan 4. Reuben M. Baron and David A. Kenny, 1986, Journal of Penality and Social

Psychology, Vol. 51, No. 6, 1173-1182 5. Susan A. Lynham, 2002, Advances in Developing Human Resources ; 4; 221 6. Van de Ven, A. H. (1989). Nothing is quite so practical as a good theory.

Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 486-489.


Contacts:

[email protected]

+91 9845713736

Wish you a successful doctoral Journey
