Journal of Organizational Change Management - Volume 16 Issue 3 (2003) - Special Issue: HRM and Organizational Change: All's Well That Ends Well or Much Ado About Nothing?

Journal of

ISSN 0953-4814

Organizational Change Management

Volume 16 Number 3 2003

HRM and organizational change: all’s well that ends well or much ado about nothing? Guest Editors Yvonne W.M. Benschop and Jeanie M. Forray

Access this journal online __________________________ Editorial advisory board ___________________________ Abstracts and keywords ___________________________ Editorial __________________________________________ Starting the HR and change conversation with history

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John R. Ogilvie and Diana Stork ___________________________________

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HRM and organizational change: an emotional endeavor Hans Doorewaard and Yvonne Benschop ____________________________

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Subcultures and employment modes: translating HR strategy into practice Jennifer Palthe and Ellen Ernst Kossek ______________________________

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HRM and the beginnings of organizational change Helen Francis __________________________________________________

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Increasing diversity as an HRM change strategy Ellen Ernst Kossek, Karen S. Markel and Patrick P. McHugh ___________

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Book review_______________________________________ 353 Conference announcement _________________________ 356

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EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD James Barker HQ USAFA/DFM Colorado Springs, USA David Barry University of Auckland, New Zealand Jean Bartunek Boston College, USA Dominique Besson IAE de Lille, France Steven Best University of Texas-El Paso, USA Michael Bokeno Murray State University, Kentucky, USA Mary Boyce University of Redlands, USA Warner Burke Columbia University, USA Adrian Carr University of Western Sydney-Nepean, Australia Stewart Clegg University of Technology (Sydney), Australia David Collins University of Essex, UK Cary Cooper Manchester School of Management, UMIST, UK Ann L. Cunliffe California State University, Hayward, USA Robert Dennehy Pace University, USA Eric Dent University of Maryland University College, Adelphi, USA Alexis Downs University of Central Oklahoma, USA Ken Ehrensal Kutztown University, USA Max Elden University of Houston, USA Andre´ M. Everett University of Otago, New Zealand Dale Fitzgibbons Illinois State University, USA Jeffrey Ford Ohio State University, USA Jeanie M. Forray Western New England College, USA Robert Gephart University of Alberta, Canada Clive Gilson University of Waikato, New Zealand Andy Grimes Lexington, Kentucky, USA Heather Ho¨pfl University of Northumbria at Newcastle, UK Maria Humphries University of Waikato, New Zealand

Arzu Iseri Bogazici University, Turkey David Jamieson Pepperdine University, USA Campbell Jones Management Centre, University of Leicester, UK David Knights Keele University, UK Terence Krell Rock Island, Illinois, USA Hugo Letiche University for Humanist Studies, Utrecht, The Netherlands Benyamin Lichtenstein University of Hartford, Connecticut, USA Stephen A. Linstead University of Sunderland, UK Slawek Magala Erasmus University, The Netherlands Rickie Moore E.M. Lyon, France Ken Murrell University of West Florida, USA Eric Nielsen Case Western Reserve University, USA Walter Nord University of South Florida, USA Ellen O’Connor Chronos Associates, Los Altos, California, USA Cliff Oswick King’s College, University of London, UK Ian Palmer University of Technology (Sydney), Australia Michael Peron The University of Paris, Sorbonne, France Gavin M. Schwarz University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Abraham Shani California Polytechnic State University, USA Ralph Stablein Massey University, New Zealand Carol Steiner Monash University, Australia David S. Steingard St Joseph’s University, USA Ram Tenkasi Benedictine University, USA Tojo Joseph Thatchenkery George Mason University, Fairfax, USA Christa Walck Michigan Technological University, USA Richard Woodman Graduate School of Business, Texas A&M University, USA

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Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 16 No. 3, 2003 Abstracts and keywords q MCB UP Limited 0953-4814

Starting the HR and change conversation with history John R. Ogilvie and Diana Stork Keywords Organizational change, Human resources, History, Negotiating Contemporary questions about human resources (HR) and organizational change reflect historical tensions around whose interests HR should represent and its role in the change process. HR’s recent strategic focus has brought it greater legitimacy; at the same time, voices it represented earlier have been muted. This paper provides an historical context to today’s conversation about HR and organizational change. We interpret the early footings of HR – scientific management, welfare work, and vocational guidance – focusing on issues of change for whom, on whom, and for what purpose. Three subsequent eras, important to the history of HR, are also discussed. Throughout, HR’s approach to change has emphasized efficiency, stability, and fit. As an alternative to this conservative approach to change, we propose a negotiations perspective that would allow HR to build on its history by enacting a role where different interests can be explored, probed, and realized.

HRM and organizational change: an emotional endeavor Hans Doorewaard and Yvonne Benschop Keywords Organizational change, Employee relations, Human resource management, Employee involvement This paper sketches the outlines of a differentiated approach towards the contribution of HRM to organizational change. While departing from a critique on the assumptions of the human resource-based view of the firm, we develop an alternative approach which has been derived from the core elements of the relational theory of emotions. These elements, which pertain to the complexity of human beings, emphasize the processes and relational characteristics of emotions and the hegemonic power base of emotions. We argue that it is necessary to

sensitize HRM to the emotional subroutines entwined in organizational change, and that an empathic and respectful approach towards people’s authenticity should be cultivated.

Subcultures and employment modes: translating HR strategy into practice Jennifer Palthe and Ellen Ernst Kossek Keywords Human resource development, Employment, Human resource management, Culture Past research suggests that most culture change efforts proceed with limited attention to the pluralistic nature of contemporary organizations. We argue that the relationship between organization subcultures and the implementation of new HR strategies into HR practice has not been adequately explored because of the lack of a comprehensive framework for defining and integrating culture change and the strategic HR literature. We review the organization culture and strategic HR literature and present a heuristic that serves as a step toward exemplifying the role of changing employment modes and organizational subcultures in enabling or constraining the implementation of HR strategy.

HRM and the beginnings of organizational change Helen Francis Keywords Human resource management, Organizational change, Communication, Teamworking This paper presents a discourse-analytic approach to the study of human resource management (HRM) and organisational change, which is more sensitive than conventional research designs to the dynamic role of language in shaping processes of change. The prevailing positivism within business and management research is noted, in which language is treated as unproblematic; it simply mirrors or represents an objective “reality” that can be measured in some way. In contrast, discourse-based studies accept that

language is not simply reflective of reality, but is significant in constituting reality. The paper moves on to examine the potential of discoursebased studies to offer fresh insights into the role of HRM in producing change. Drawing on the work of Ford and Ford, change is treated as a “shift in conversation” and case-study evidence is presented of the surfacing of a change initiative within a large UK manufacturing firm.

Increasing diversity as an HRM change strategy Ellen Ernst Kossek, Karen S. Markel and Patrick P. McHugh Keywords Human resource management, Diversity, Change management In order to manage strategic demographic change in economic and labor markets, a

common human resource (HR) change strategy is to increase the diversity of the workforce through hiring over time. This study examined department level consensus and valence regarding an organizational HR strategy to shift demography toward greater diversity in race and sex composition over an eight-year period. Though the organization had experienced significant change in organizational demography: an increase in the overall representation of white women (36 percent) and minorities (41 percent) over time; work group members in units with the greatest change did not necessarily agree nor hold positive perceptions regarding these HR changes. The results show that HR strategies that focus on structural change without working to develop supportive group norms and positive climate may be inadequate change strategies.

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Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 16 No. 3, 2003 pp. 250-253 q MCB UP Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810310475505

Editorial About the Guest Editors Yvonne W.M. Benschop is Associate Professor of Gender and Culture at the Nijmegen School of Management, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. She received her PhD in Policy Sciences from the University of Nijmegen in 1996. Her publications in English include articles in Organization Studies, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, and Gender, Work and Organization. Her current interests include influences of diversity on organizational practices and gender mainstreaming in HRM. She serves on the Editorial Review Board of the Dutch Journal of Gender Studies. Jeanie M. Forray is Assistant Professor of Management at Western New England College, Springfield, Massachusetts. She received her PhD in Management from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1998. Her recent work has appeared in Organization and Organization Studies. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of Organization Management Journal, serves on the Editorial Review Board of Journal of Organizational Change Management and Gender, Work and Organization, and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Organizational Behavior Teaching Society. Her current interests include interpretive research methods in HRM, organizational justice, and management education and development.

1. Considering HR and organizational change: all’s well that ends well or much ado about nothing? Serendipity, defined as the “faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident” (American Heritage Dictionary, 2000), is a word first credited to the English author, Horace Walpole. In 1754, Walpole wrote that the term was taken from the old name for Sri Lanka, Serendip, and was part of the title of a Persian fairy tale, “The three princes of Serendip”, in which “. . . as their highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”. This quality in life, the “stumbling on” opportune circumstance, receives little notice in the organizational change literature – but that does not mean that it is not a part of organizational experience. Serendipity is a singularly apt descriptor for the way we view the development of this special issue of JOCM. Jeanie met David Boje in 1992, at the OBTC conference in Calgary, Canada. In 1995, Yvonne finished her dissertation at the University of Nijmegen and traveled to the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, to study with Linda Smircich and Marta Cala´s. There she met Jeanie, a student in the organization studies doctoral program. At the 1999 Academy of Management meeting, David invited Jeanie to join the editorial board of JOCM and they discussed possibilities for a special issue of the journal. A year later, in 2000, Yvonne and Jeanie reconnected through the Gender and Diversity in Organizations Division when they both joined the executive committee. During that year’s presidential luncheon (which they did not attend), they discussed human resource management (HRM) and organizational change as a possible theme for a JOCM special issue. With David’s enthusiastic support, this issue was born.

Why HRM and organizational change? We both believe that this relationship, ubiquitous in organizational life, could use significantly more attention. Much of the work on change involves identifying the means for implementing organizational change efforts while including human resources (HR) as an instrumental element of relevance to a firm’s success or failure in change programs. Or, alternatively, the change literature takes a processual approach in which HR are but one of many factors to be considered. In the HR literature, more recent work focuses on the strategic importance of HR, embracing a “human resource-based view of the firm”, that allegedly provides HR with enhanced status. However, while the implication is that HR is thus crucial to successful organizational change, this relationship has been under theorized, researched, and critiqued. We also hope to provide JOCM readers with an enhanced understanding of HRM beyond the naive and simplistic “human resources as assets” viewpoint. To us, each of these current approaches fails to explore explicitly and in any depth the relationship between HRM and change. We are skeptical about the central role of HR in organizational change. Further, we both share a concern with the contemporary emphasis in HR on “manageable” employees. Thus, the sub-theme of this issue, “All’s well that ends well or much ado about nothing?” represents the ambivalence of our position. Change management and HRM imply a focus on control and regulation that does not always sit well with the messy reality of employees involved in processes and practices of organizational change. The emphasis on instrumental concerns in HR seems too narrow and too exclusive to capture the full richness and complexity of the change experience in organizational life. It is our intention to expand the possibilities so as to contribute to more meaningful and representative depictions of the relationship between HR and change. In our “Call for papers”, we offered space for examining the influence and relevance of HRM on organizational change efforts. We hoped to look both backward and forward in examining the interrelations between HR and organizational change from a wide variety of perspectives. Authors were encouraged to conceptualize HR broadly, either as a set of institutional practices or as an everyday professional activity, and could draw on a range of critical or affirmative positions from modern as well as post-modern perspectives. While some authors responded to these interests, we were surprised to find that many authors viewed our “Call” as a desire for work that justified HR’s role in planned change programs. Still others, it seems, did not feel that their critical stance was as invited as we had intended. What we learned from this experience is that the vocabularies of HR, organizational change, and critical management studies do not always provide clear opportunities for theorizing or research between these realms. That said, we believe this special issue includes studies that take up the question of HR and

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organizational change in a number of different ways and from a number of different positions. The first three papers in this issue consider current conceptual frameworks within HR and offer alternative ways of theorizing the relationship between HR and change. John R. Ogilvie and Diana Stork offer an overview of HR’s historical roots in order to provide context for the contemporary conversation about HR and organizational change. They then use this history to suggest that HR’s approach to change has been conservative and they suggest a more complex approach, that of negotiation, that allows different interests to be represented in the change process. Hans Doorewaard and Yvonne Benschop critique the HR-based view of the firm for its utilitarian and instrumental approach to change. Based on the relational theory of emotions, they argue that HRM needs to be sensitive to emotional sub-routines entangled in organizational change in order to develop a sense of empathy and respect for people’s authenticity. In the third paper, by Jennifer Palthe and Ellen Ernst Kossek, the authors review various strategic HRM theories and their treatment of organizational culture. From this, they propose an integration of HRM strategies, employment modes, organizational sub-cultures, and HR practices, arguing that previous strategic human resource management (SHRM) theorizing has tended to underestimate the role of organizational sub-systems in constraining or enabling change within the HR domain. They suggest a more complex framework provides an approach better geared to the pluralistic nature of contemporary organizations. The last two papers both present empirical work concerning the relationship between HRM and organizational change. In the fourth paper, Helen Francis focuses on the dynamic role of language in shaping processes of change. She draws on Ford and Ford’s conceptualization of organizational change as “shifting conversations”, and provides a discourse analysis of the early stages of an organizational change project within a large UK manufacturing firm. In so doing, she explores the nature of power and control in change and illuminates the importance of HRM in producing conversations of change. In the final paper, Ellen Ernst Kossek, Karen S. Markel, and Patrick P. McHugh, examine a component of HRM, the management of diversity, as an organizational change strategy. Their study focuses on the levels of consensus and support for diversity initiatives in work groups, and the extent to which diversity strategies are impacted by these perceptions. They suggest that diversity, as an HR change strategy, should focus not only on structural and demographic attributes but also characteristics reflecting values within the context of specific groups. In closing, we wish to gratefully acknowledge our colleagues who reviewed manuscripts submitted for this issue: Paul Bacdayan, Lynn Bowes-Sperry, Tony Chelte, Ann Cunliffe, Dafna Eylon, Bill Ferris, Jane Giacobbe-Miller,

Lilian Halsema, Joel Harmon, Peter Hess, Kim Hoque, Maddy Janssens, Paul Jansen, Gwen Jones, Laurie Levesque, Deborah Litvin, Jan Kees Looise, Bram Neuijen, Huub Rue¨l, Rene Schalk, Michiel Schoemaker, Roel Schouteten, Julie Siciliano, Tjoborn Stjernberg, Cheryl Tromley, Catherine Truss, Marloes Van Engen, Diana Wong-Meiji, Jill Woodilla, and Lyle Yorks.

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The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/0953-4814.htm

Starting the HR and change conversation with history John R. Ogilvie University of Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut, USA, and

Diana Stork Received 15 March 2002 Simmons School of Management, Boston, Massachusetts, Revised 15 September, 27 December 2002 Accepted 2 January 2003 Keywords Organizational change, Human resources, History, Negotiating

USA

Abstract Contemporary questions about human resources (HR) and organizational change reflect historical tensions around whose interests HR should represent and its role in the change process. HR’s recent strategic focus has brought it greater legitimacy; at the same time, voices it represented earlier have been muted. This paper provides an historical context to today’s conversation about HR and organizational change. We interpret the early footings of HR – scientific management, welfare work, and vocational guidance– focusing on issues of change for whom, on whom, and for what purpose. Three subsequent eras, important to the history of HR, are also discussed. Throughout, HR’s approach to change has emphasized efficiency, stability, and fit. As an alternative to this conservative approach to change, we propose a negotiations perspective that would allow HR to build on its history by enacting a role where different interests can be explored, probed, and realized.

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 16 No. 3, 2003 pp. 254-271 q MCB UP Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810310475514

For more than 100 years, human resource (HR) professionals in the USA have been involved in the design and implementation of change. For most of this time, HR reacted to perceived needs and pressure from stakeholder groups, both internal and external to the organization. Recently, several authors have advocated that HR become more visionary, as “champions” of change (Ulrich, 1997) or “transformative” change agents (Caldwell, 2001). Yet, as Caldwell observes, there are gaps between the rhetoric and reality of HR’s involvement in change. This special issue is designed to focus on HR’s role in organizational change, and to explore whether lofty visions or relatively conservative approaches might characterize the future of HR and change. Before looking ahead, we believe that an examination of HR’s history will further this discussion. We propose that understanding the different threads and perspectives, from which contemporary HR emerged, would enrich current discourse. While we acknowledge that understanding the past does not answer questions about the future, it provides context for current conversations. Another reason for starting this special issue with history is that relatively recent entrants to the field may never have been exposed to an historical perspective (Ulrich et al., 1997), and others may have forgotten the history they once knew. Many newer editions of HR textbooks, like DeNisi and Griffin (2001) and Dessler (2003) no longer even include chapters on HR history.

Change has always been part of the fabric of HR, although the nature of change and HR’s role in design and implementation of change has varied at different times in its history. As we identify and discuss historical movements, trends, and forces, we will highlight the different perspectives on change that are relevant to our current discussion of HR. Thus, this paper provides an important context for understanding many of the contemporary change questions facing HR today. Here, we focus on HR as a staff group engaged in people processing programs and activities for the rest of the organization. We distinguish our interest from “human resource management” (HRM), which is a more contemporary concept that embodies a broader set of activities involving practices, systems, and actions that managers undertake in the organization. All managers practice HRM; the scope of HR is more limited. While it can be difficult to identify and isolate HRM in organizations, HR units are easier to identify and track. As such, it is easier to provide a coherent history of the HR function and to comment on its relevance to organizational change. It is important to note that the phrase “human resources” is relatively recent. When Drucker (1954) coined it, he described managing human resources as one of the three key functions of management (Marciano, 1995). Changing the function’s name from “personnel” to “human resources” reflected more complex understandings about worker motivation among HR practitioners and an interest in shedding the clerkish, bureaucratic image associated with the prior name. With the new name came new visions for HR and changing role expectations. We are not the first authors to suggest that HR examine its past (see Ulrich et al., 1997). Yet, our call to honor the past as it pertains to HR and organizational change takes a slightly different view of what is meant by the past. Dave Ulrich, a well-known HR voice in the academic community, speaks of HR’s history in the singular. “We have a great heritage”, he recently said about HR (Bates, 2002, p. 32). As we look to the past, however, we find no unitary history. HR’s great heritage is neither singular nor linear; it is comprised of diverse traditions and histories, making the phrase “great heritages” more accurate. The different heritages of HR reflect different interests and concerns, some of which may be comfortably reconciled and some of which may not be. If we understand how the relationship between HR and change developed, we gain a deeper understanding of the ambivalence and divided loyalties reflected in the contemporary discourse around HR and change. This sensitivity allows us to see beyond the managerialist focus of mainstream HR advocates (Ulrich, 1997; Beatty and Schneier, 1997; Bates, 2002) as well as those voices more critical of HR practice (Clark et al., 1998; Foote and Robinson, 1999; Legge, 1998), to propose a third view of the future role of HR in organizational change – that of a negotiations perspective. Thus, as we identify and describe the different footings of HR, we highlight issues of interests and change. Our

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story starts in the 1800s before the emergence of the first personnel unit at B.F. Goodrich in 1900 (Eilbert, 1959).

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1. Early industrial work in the USA: the context for HR The 1800s saw rapid change in where and how non-farm work was done but little change in the worker-boss relationship. In 1800 the typical American manufacturer was a master craftsman or mill proprietor, the typical employee a handicraft worker, and the typical plant a room or series of rooms in the craftsman’s home or in a small building adjacent to a stream (Nelson, 1995, p. 3).

By 1880, the typical manufacturer was a manager, employees were machine operators and the plant was a huge brick structure. The overt context of work had changed dramatically, but there was little change in work relationships. Bosses were still autocratic and independent; owners were little involved. In most firms, the technology was unit or small batch, and the workers were reasonably skilled. Production problems were solved in an ad hoc manner, with the foreman having the final say. Late nineteenth-century factory systems were often very lean, with little or no middle management. Top managers were owners, acting like venture capitalists of today, supplying financial resources and reaping profits. Top management was typically concerned with the sale and distribution of goods, but not with issues of procurement or production. At this time, firms were usually narrowly focused; for example, buying parts from suppliers and assembling final product, but then selling to independent selling agents, rather than having their own sales force. Outsourcing was common, creating flexibility for the organization. The prevalence of inside contractors (up to 50 per cent of factory headcount) also added flexibility, much like today’s independent contractors. Thus, the nineteenth-century factory was lean, flexible, and adaptive to change in terms of headcount, work, and financing. As contractors’ profits rose, owners became concerned with their own level of profits, and they began to replace inside contractors with company foremen and employees. These foremen practiced a very autocratic leadership style, known as the “drive system”. Cappelli (2000, p. 78) summarizes the drive system as “the foreman yelled at the workers, threatened them, and sometimes hit them to make them work faster and harder”. Foremen hired, decided wage rates, gave work assignments, and ran their operations autonomously. During this time, the only organizational relationship the worker had was with his foreman, not with the company. Also in the late nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century, the USA experienced heavy waves of immigration, resulting in a more diverse labor pool. Immigrants typically held the least skilled jobs. When newer immigrants arrived to assume the less attractive jobs, they moved up the hierarchy and became acculturated (Nelson, 1995). Immigrants provided a source of labor that mitigated turnover concerns. At the same time, however,

they were also viewed as unruly and difficult to manage, so foremen felt justified in using an autocratic style of supervision. 2. HRs early history As industrialization accelerated and factories grew, problems of production and coordination increased. With growing size and complexity, the existing systems strained to produce goods in the numbers and quality needed. The response was greater systemization and rationalization of production. Scientific management emerged in the early 1880s with methods, standard forms, and instructions to organize this increasingly complex production system; it is one of the early footings of contemporary HR. Along with scientific management, welfare work, and vocational guidance were other movements that influenced the nature of early HR. These influences serve as foundations on which contemporary HR was built. 2.1 Scientific management The focus of scientific management was the rationalization of inconsistent, ad hoc production processes. The adopted changes impacted the way work was done and the way foremen performed their jobs. As changes in production were implemented, another set of secondary changes were introduced, i.e. administrative support which was needed for production. By highlighting the need for centralized administrative support, scientific management contributed significantly to the development of the field of HR (Eilbert, 1959; Jacoby, 1985; Baron et al., 1986, 1988). Taylor, scientific management’s leading proponent, recommended the creation of planning departments and centralized units to create rules and procedures and to maintain records on production, absenteeism, time worked, and pay earned (Eilbert, 1959). The first specialized staff function took form. The position title of “employment clerk” came into being as individuals in these units took on other responsibilities and made recommendations about hiring. As management emerged as a discipline of formal study, scholars and practitioners began to analyze human labor in order to identify costs that could be eliminated (Eilbert, 1959). Turnover was identified as a costly problem which foremen could not solve on their own. The consensus was that making the processes of hiring, training, and pay more consistent and less open to abuse by autocratic supervisors could reduce turnover. Eventually, employment departments took over responsibilities that had been the supervisor’s. Selection procedures were formalized so that “superior” operators could be identified and hired. Then, simple on-the-job training and, later, performance-based compensation practices emerged; these were expected to improve production efficiency and reduce waste. Internal procedural bureaucracies emerged as a consequence. Taken together, these substantial organizational changes relieved supervisors of a variety of duties and

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foreshadowed the continuing conflicts and power struggles between HR and line management. It is interesting to note that many HR practitioners of this time came from the ranks of reformers and social advocates who enthusiastically endorsed the reduction in foreman power and the fairer, more consistent treatment of workers (Jacoby, 1985). Their philosophy and beliefs about worker motivation stood in stark contrast to those of supervisors. Planning units and employment bureaus were not met with unanimous enthusiasm. Although much of scientific management focused on the processes of work, it was the development of such staff units that provoked the greatest negative reaction from both workers and their supervisors. When Taylor set up planning departments in several organizations, massive walkouts and strikes followed (Jacoby, 1985). The new staff unit’s decision-making authority was a structural manifestation of the erosion of foreman power and autonomy, which was also being eroded by the “scientific” studies of work, time, and motion. For the factory employee, work had become more routine, and control more remote and depersonalized. Both workers and foremen resisted these changes. Scientific management’s people processing programs and activities were aimed at bringing about significant change. Proponents believed that the changes they introduced were in the interests of both the organization and the workers. Scientific management’s change efforts made production more efficient (i.e. better for the company) and systems of hiring and pay more consistent (i.e. better for the worker). 2.2 Welfare work Another stream of influence in the development of HR came from welfare work. In contrast to scientific management, welfare work had its roots outside the organization, in both religion and philanthropy (Jacoby, 1985). It began to emerge in the late 1800s, during a time of significant labor unrest. In Eilbert’s (1959, pp. 348-9) words, industrial welfare “sought to achieve improvements in the home and working life of American working people”. In hiring welfare secretaries, companies launched programs to provide services that were generally not part of the work organization’s domain, nor directly intended to improve production. These efforts would have included: . . . any activities of a company for the comfort and well-being, social, moral, intellectual, or physical development, of its employees, carried on by the efforts of the owner or manager personally or by volunteer or specially employed workers (Herring, quoted in Thompson, 1929, p. 148).

Libraries, recreational facilities, and hygienic measures were among the more common on-site innovations introduced at work. Workers were given financial support for housing and education, as well as medical and health assistance. Welfare workers frequently entered the homes of employees, and the involvement of welfare secretaries in the lives of the workers was perhaps one

reason why unionization was lower in industries with extensive welfare work efforts (Jacoby, 1985). Welfare secretaries typically came from backgrounds like medicine, nursing, social work and domestic science (Eilbert, 1959) and were often women. Although companies endorsed welfare work programs, the motivation for their doing so was quite different from the motivation of the welfare workers themselves. From management’s perspective, welfare work and scientific management worked well together. Like scientific management, welfare work sought to prevent strikes and to improve production, though its methods were more indirect, focusing on the worker after he had put down his tools and left the shop. It was rooted in the belief that the worker himself – the intemperate, slothful worker or the ignorant immigrant, prey to radical nostrums – was directly responsible for labor unrest, social tension, and the decline of the work ethic (Jacoby, 1985, p. 49).

Although scientific management innovations were aimed at changing work practices, supervisor behavior, and administrative support, companysponsored welfare programs can be seen as an early effort to change the worker. In a sense, these welfare programs were unilateral attempts at “domesticating” workers, cleaning them up and helping to instill the right attitude toward work. With the development of welfare secretary positions, reformers institutionalized the employee improvement role. With much of their efforts non-work in nature, they were early boundary spanners, working in the home. As with scientific management, opposition also arose to welfare work. Workers characterized the programs as a poor substitute for wages and as an intrusion into their private lives. From their perspective, welfare work was also undermining union efforts, and welfare programs became known as “hell-fare” programs among many labor groups (Geier, as cited in Eilbert, 1959). Thus, despite the positive intentions of the welfare workers and of the welfare movement, the programs themselves were questioned. At about this time, senior management also began to expand its engineering orientation, evaluating many different activities and programs using concepts like efficiency and return on investment (Jacoby, 1985). Early on, HR was pushed to justify its programs to the hard-nosed, more financially-minded operational managers (with the contemporary views of Fitz-enz (2000) in documenting return on investment of HR). Eventually, welfare programs became early examples of corporate outsourcing. YMCA programs were set up by Cornelius Vanderbilt and others to house and deliver welfare programs outside of the company. Other companies followed suit, if not helping to set up YMCA programs, certainly making use of them. The people programs and activities of welfare work were focused on the worker. Proponents believed that their change programs made things better for workers, simply by giving them support and resources they needed, regardless

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of their place of employment. As companies signed on to bring welfare activities inside, welfare workers were under increasing pressure to show that their change efforts (directed toward the worker and with worker interests at heart) were also in the best interest of the company. Senior management was not easily convinced. Eventually, most companies outsourced their welfare programs. 2.3 Vocational guidance Work was becoming less skilled by the end of the nineteenth century. At the same time, somewhat paradoxical concerns were being raised about worker preparation: School systems were not providing “suitable” HR for industry (Jacoby, 1985). The need for the broadly educated New England artisan had faded, but company executives charged that schools were not properly training future workers. Management was looking for the “right attitude”, a willingness to follow rules and obey supervisors. Labor unrest had become common (in response to both social conditions and to the autocratic style of foremen), and management wanted to hire workers with a different attitude and work ethic. Those outside of management had a different perspective on the linkage between schools and employers and the responsibilities of both. A few educators went even further, arguing that the schools should be used to regulate the youth labor market and that employers should adopt vocational techniques and should provide good jobs to young graduates. Thus, a number of vocational guidance enthusiasts shifted their efforts away from the schools, focusing instead on industrial employment reform. Vocationalists became some of the most active proponents of personnel management, and they infused the new profession with an abiding interest in employee selection and career development (Jacoby, 1985, p. 66).

The vocationalists kept records in a number of areas, and companies began to feel pressure to change their HR practices. Vocationalists encouraged the development of standard occupational terminology and collected detailed information on the characteristics of jobs (Jacoby, 1985), a forerunner of job analysis. These reformers also became concerned that the jobs being offered to graduates of their schools were not good enough; they began to keep records on individual companies and what jobs they offered. This movement eventually fostered a measurement focus and a concern for matching the “right” people with the organization. The people processing programs and activities of the vocational guidance movement reflected a two-pronged approach to change, neither of which was aimed at changing the worker directly. Implicit in the vocational movement was a dual influence – jobs and schools should both change. At the same time, it was worker interests that drove the vocationalists’ efforts to change how schools prepared students for work and how organizations designed and structured jobs for employees. From outside, they exerted pressure for change.

Vocationalists believed that employees should have careers, which involved a sequence of jobs of increasing complexity, pay, and status. They believed that upward movement was not only the “American way”, but also built morale, a better work ethic, and greater productivity. In 1912, a group of them banded together in the northeast to form an HR professional organization, the Boston Employment Managers’ Association. This group came to believe that it could only have lasting impact on industry through internal positions in companies (Jacoby, 1985), and some of its members sought positions within employing firms. As personnel managers they would be able to apply better selection and training methods so that workers had “good” jobs – jobs that were appropriate to their skills and talents and in which they could further grow and develop. The concerns and practices of industrial engineers, welfare workers, and vocationalists intertwined as personnel administration shortly thereafter. Each of the groups that fed into personnel management focused on a different aspect of work relations: The engineers looked at job design and administrative practices; welfare workers were concerned with the factory environment and the worker’s edification; and vocationalists emphasized employment policies and procedures. These separate strands began to come together in the years before America’s entry into the war (Jacoby, 1985, p. 99).

Given these different heritages, early HR units were torn between being advocates for employees (helping them), keeping records of their activities (monitoring them) and finding ways to make workers more efficient and less wasteful (fixing or eliminating them). Many of these same conflicts remain in HR today. The lean, flexible manufacturer of the past had become larger and more complex, with internal controls, policies, and procedures used to bring stability to the organization. HR became part of a growing internal bureaucracy, but its various heritages cast shadows forward; early HR was conflicted and ambivalent about its role in the organization and its role in the design and implementation of change. When early personnel units were first formed with reformers believing that change could be more effectively implemented from within, ironically, their impact on change became more conservative. As part of the management system, new pressures emerged. Whose interests should it serve? Could it serve the interests of management and workers? Scientific management had looked on interest differences as reconcilable; change could be initiated which made things better for workers and for management. Welfare workers focused more explicitly on the interests of workers, with very little concern for the interests of management or concepts like effectiveness and efficiency. Theirs were largely efforts from the outside, with changes that appeared to benefit workers. To the vocationalists, worker interests were also primary, and they exerted pressure on both school and employing organizations to change. Vocationalists positioned their approach to change as consistent with management interests and organizational productivity.

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3. HR’s more recent past Having gained a secure foothold in the organization, HR units began to expand the kinds of roles and functions they performed in the organization. In responding to major external forces, the HR function expanded, its organizational role evolved, and its power within the organization increased. The first external issue that HR dealt with was war. The second was legislation and regulation enacted at the national level. Economic pressures and cycles were the third external issue or force that shaped HR’s more recent past. 3.1 Wars: growth and institutionalization of HR In the USA, the World Wars have served as a catalyst for expansive growth and development of HR units and responsibilities. The rapid mobilization of armed forces and the need to replace military personnel in the workplace created the need for HR services in both industry and the military. Even prior to the entry of the USA into the First World War, a labor shortage had developed; war aggravated it substantially (Nelson, 1995). The war brought a renewed emphasis on hiring and employment, as workers became a scarce and valuable resource. Worker shortages led to higher wages. Because they were less concerned about being replaced, instances of tardiness and absenteeism also rose. HR units began viewing workers as problems and developed change programs in response to these difficulties. During and after both World Wars, HR units grew rapidly in many types of organizations; the types of activities they engaged in also became more specialized and diversified (Baron et al., 1986, 1988). During this time, the federal government also played a direct role in the expansion of HR bureaucracy. The Government needed domestic and economic stability and so intervened in labor and employment relations as never before: . standardizing work arrangements; . stabilizing wage rates; . institutionalizing seniority provisions; and . reducing turnover. Government controls led directly to more HR staff for recording and analyzing information. Job analysis, job evaluation and performance appraisals became widespread during this period. By sanctioning modern employment practices and by encouraging the diffusion of those practices throughout the economy, the state has played a major role in the spread of bureaucratic control and internal labor markets (Baron et al., 1986, p. 379).

Practices pushed by the Government were accepted by the unions and then incorporated into subsequent contracts. In contrast to organizational or efficiency-based change programs of previous eras, government-“sponsored” changes met with less resistance. The seniority-based and job evaluation

systems were consistent with worker interests as well as economic stability. From management’s perspective, the loss of control with these measures was offset by a need for greater stability. A period of HR consolidation followed both World Wars, but HR was more proactive in converting their efforts and arguing their case after the Second World War. HR proclaimed its expertise in productivity assessment, rewards systems, and labor relations (Baron et al., 1986). Their measurement systems and wage processes seemed useful in promoting stability and improving productivity, and thus management supported their efforts. The war controls and the passage of the Taft Hartley Act in 1947, also gave HR key roles as intermediaries in labor-management negotiations. HR continued to grow as its activities were institutionalized across firms and industries. After the Second World War, practices that facilitated long-term employment, extensions of scientific management processes, and senioritybased practices became commonplace. With institutionalization came greater legitimacy. 3.2 Regulating behavior Another era of external pressure for HR occurred when Government became more active in its efforts to influence people processing programs and activities in organizations. Both civil rights legislation (i.e. Civil Rights Act of 1964) and workplace environment laws (i.e. Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970) created new regulations for employment practices. Violations of these regulations could and did lead to costly lawsuits. As a result of social advocacy, Government again became a major driver of HR growth and reasserted itself as a major stakeholder. Whereas in prior periods, HR shielded workers from arbitrary supervisors; now, HR’s job focused on protecting the organization. The troublesome behaviors of managers needed to be controlled and changed in order to limit legal liabilities. Specialized roles and units were added to HR’s domain, e.g. compliance agent, EEO officer, diversity manager, and so forth. From the organization’s perspective, these roles were created to help lessen uncertainty and bring about greater stability. Again, change in response to Government efforts to regulate behavior was reasonably well received by workers, but less well received by management. As they had lost hiring latitude in the scientific management era, discretion was also lessened here. Not all workers accepted these new practices either. White male employees, workers and managers alike, felt threatened by what they viewed as unfair affirmative action programs. These programs challenged the status quo and the unexamined power position of white men. 3.3 Planning and strategic HR In the 1970s, another set of problems emerged related to staffing. As some companies grew rapidly, they found labor shortages in certain key areas. At the

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same time, many companies experienced economic pressures that resulted in cycles of hiring and lay-offs. HR responded with change programs designed to help management better project staffing requirements – in terms of numbers and skills. Staffing patterns could be smoothed, reducing costs and efforts, and HR played a major role in helping to bring about greater organizational stability and reduced uncertainty. By basing certain hiring decisions on external trends, both economic and demographic, HR began anticipating change, rather than just reacting to it (as had been its past pattern). Employees benefited to the extent that they could get, keep, and be trained for jobs that were forecast to be in demand, but the driving force for change was organizational and managerial in nature. HR planning eventually led to strategic human resource management (SHRM). Tichy et al. (1982) described SHRM by building on organizational theory notions of fit among macro components. Strategy, structure, and HR strategy (as well as other functional strategies) should all be aligned. This line of reasoning was extended to horizontal alignment of HR programs and vertical alignment with business strategy. As with the early vocationalists, the notion of fit again became prominent in the discourse of HR. Whereas the concept had been applied to individual workers and the organization, the concept was now being applied at a broader level to HR programs and the organization. Linking HR activities to the strategy of the firm had dramatic impacts on HR. Prior to this time, HR’s focus had largely been tactical and operational. It specified techniques, policies, compliance with regulation, etc., that were to assist in managing individual employees of the firm. With its more strategic positioning, HR had the potential to become a business partner (or player, as Beatty and Schneier (1997) advocated). The strategic shift continued the period of external focus for HR and was accompanied by additional power and legitimacy for HR. Despite the apparent benefits to HR (added power and an enhanced role in decision making), this newer strategic shift in HR was resisted by HR staff. Many in HR were reluctant to leave the comfort of their clerkish, procedural roles. Others were reluctant to leave their “welfare” roots of helping workers. The earlier tactical approaches to HR had been universalistic in nature, as the underlying assumption was that recruitment, selection, and appraisal methods, first advocated by vocationalists, could be applied anywhere. The newer strategic focus looked at organizational context and the degree of fit between external and internal conditions (see Becker and Huselid, 1998; Wright and Sherman, 1999) for more extensive description of theory and research in this area). Here, HR was again dealing with concepts of fit, a conservative change perspective by looking to tie HR to business goals and managerial interests.

The vertical linkage with the business strategy meant that HR was directly aligned with managers’ interests, embodying the managerialism criticized by many (Clark et al., 1998; Foote and Robinson, 1999; Legge, 1998). As a partner with senior managers, HR tried to find new ways to help accomplish business goals by making incremental change to the people processing activities and programs of the organization. Caldwell (2001, p. 5) observed that such change required “internally focused and piecemeal adjustments of HR processes and systems”. Positioning itself at the strategic level, HR had the potential to elevate its role – to provide visionary leadership and advocacy for transformative change. The reality, however, is that in its institutionalized role, HR has aligned itself with senior management. Whatever change HR advocates and implements, it must either represent the interests of senior management or “sell” the change by convincing senior managers that the change reflects their interests. Recognizing HR’s institutionalized position and alignment with senior management, it is not surprising that both Ulrich (1997) and Caldwell (2001) comment on HR’s reluctance in general to embrace a more substantive role in change, content with more conservative, incremental efforts. It is also during this time that senior management began to place experienced and successful “business” people in top HR jobs – people who fully supported the business and were willing to accept the greater risk and uncertainty associated with anticipating the future. HR had become staffed with senior people who knew the business and thought like other business executives. This recent era infused HR with two newer views of organizational change. One is that in adapting to external circumstances, the degree of fit between external and internal factors (as well as congruency among internal factors) is important. Another perspective derived from HR planning is anticipating or being proactive with respect to changing external events. 3.4 “Rightsizing” of organizations and HR Change became a common late twentieth-century buzzword. The business world was undergoing changes with respect to speed, globalization, technology, and more. Paradigms for business and organizing also began to change. Global competition brought urgent pressures. Businesses first needed to cut costs and then move faster (i.e. greater speed and agility). The 1980s and 1990s brought a dramatic era of mergers, acquisitions, downsizings, and realignments for organizations. Employees were often the first casualties of cost cutting – being viewed as expenses, rather than as assets. Responding to this newest staffing problem, HR’s job shifted to moving employees out of the organization. Although reductions were justified in terms of excess labor and redundancies, often those left behind simply had more work to do for the same rewards. Early retirement programs designed to reduce costs

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often got rid of the most capable. The concept of fit still applied to the change efforts HR undertook. Their focus was on the fit between the organization and the economic and industrial reality it faced. The application of the concept of fit internally seems to have become less important. Outside of HR, there were calls for a different approach to change. Rather than simply cut headcount, Hammer and Champy (1993), for instance, advocated examining how work could be redesigned so that unnecessary work could be cut. Reengineering efforts did not typically come from HR, perhaps because these efforts were seen as dealing directly with a work design problem rather than with people processing programs and activities. As a staff area, HR has itself been vulnerable to headcount lay-offs during economic downturns for the organization. Not being viewed as a critical resource needed for organizational survival, positions and budgets were cut during economic downturns. More recently, HR has been subjected to the same efficiency and reengineering pressures as the rest of the organization. Apart from outsourcing portions of welfare work early on, the rightsizing of HR represents the first major change effort that resulted in HR’s shrinking, rather than growing. Benchmark ratios of total employees to HR staff were established and routinely reported by HR organizations, like the Society for Human Resource Management. As a function, it experienced the same rationalization of headcount that it had helped impose on the rest of the organization. HR had become the object of change instead of the agent. 4. Using the past to look ahead Many stakeholders – industrial engineers, social activists, and government – influenced the development of early HR. Their influence was felt through HR’s more recent past and continues to be felt today, although to a lesser extent. Though change has always been part of the fabric of institutionalized HR, most often HR has reacted to events and pressures and applied its expertise to bring about greater fit and stability. This fit approach to change is conservative – leading HR to initiate small, incremental change rather than the kind of transformational changes advocated in contemporary role descriptions (Caldwell, 2001; Ulrich, 1997). Until the downsizing era of the late twentieth century, perhaps the only consistent outcome of HR change efforts had been growth in HR staff. Traditional HR has been involved with helping to create or improve the degree of fit between and among the work, the worker, the supervisor, and the organization. HR’s efforts focused on changing individuals to improve the fit. In the strategic era, HR broadened its perspective to include macro notions of fit and moved HR closer to management interests, often at the expense of the worker. At the same time, others encouraged HR to bring about more balance by expressing worker interests and treating employees as critical stakeholders (Kochan, 1997).

HR today is still in the strategic positioning era that may constrain its ability to induce significant change. Beer (1997) suggested a new wave of change for HR is influencing the CEO. Modern strategic positioning elevates HR from prior tactical levels to a more proactive role in change, which requires influencing senior management. However, alignment, power, and legitimacy issues may limit HR’s willingness to induce transformative change. Once reformers moved inside the organization in the early days of HR, its focus on change became incremental. Extending this reasoning to the current strategic era, HR is now a partner at the decision table and may be even less willing to take risks or challenge its hard-won position in the hierarchy. A recent comment in an HR practitioner publication embodies this perspective: “HR people have to be true believers that the business comes ahead of advocacy for employees” (Bates, 2002, p. 29). For us, the question is really whether good business requires that employees’ concerns become secondary. For contemporary HR, the conflicts it feels around alignment and voice can be traced to earlier times. In certain eras, HR has confronted and tried to fix supervisors and workers. At other times, it sought to assist and support them. Mistrust and tensions have been present in these relationships. At times, it seems as though HR bears archetypes from the past as it practices today. Archetypes of administrative record-keeper, employee social worker, aligner of worker-organization interests, and government compliance officer seem to constrain its ability to drive more radical change. However, HR is still required to practice these roles today. The multiple historical roots of HR practice, described in this paper, have led to contemporary tensions in HR values, expectations, and allegiances. Throughout its history, HR has shifted focus, dealing with the interests and issues of different constituencies, as pressure sources changed. It pragmatically aligned with different groups and dealt with different concerns as they arose over time. There has never been a comfortable resolution of the tensions around its many allegiances. Recognizing the tension between the record-keeper and strategic roles, Beer (1997) suggested that new structures are needed, such as administrative service centers, to structurally differentiate new and old roles. He believed that separation of activities was needed to resolve the tension. Administrative service centers and outsourcing may lessen HR’s administrative load without resolving the underlying tension around different role and historical traditions. Tensions remain today with respect to underlying assumptions about the nature of employer-employee differences. The advocates of HR (Ulrich, 1997; Beatty and Schneier, 1997) who encourage HR to take a seat at the table (and criticize them for not doing so) assume that employer goals are fully reconcilable with those of workers. This assumption, however, is rarely articulated or explicitly acknowledged. Ardent critics (Clark et al., 1998; Foote and Robinson, 1999; Legge, 1998), who assert that HR is simply the voice of

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management, believe that employer goals are inherently incompatible with worker interests. We believe a third position exists; an alternative perspective on interests and change that derives from the negotiations literature. Negotiations experts assume that although individuals and groups bring different interests to the table, some mutual need or dependence has brought them together (Lewicki et al., 1999). Differences are viewed as inherent in the system; they are expressed and resolved through discourse and exchange. Participants are encouraged to express divergent views and explore where interests can be merged through bilateral, negotiated solutions. Whether interests are compatible or not, a context is needed in which interests can be discussed, probed, and aligned where possible. Interdependent groups, like workers, managers, and owners, who must continue to interact need to consider each other’s preferences as they make decisions and plan action. Within a negotiations perspective, each party’s interests are viewed as vital and legitimate. If HR embraces a negotiations approach, it would move away from its managerial orientation to help bring about change and balance for the collective good. HR would be well positioned to facilitate a process of inquiry and advocacy (Senge, 1990) among the different parties as they search for a higher common ground. As organizations undergo rapid change and the blurring of boundaries and roles, a negotiations perspective (which allows for changing interests over time and satisfaction by multiple parties) provides a set of process guidelines without dictating a specific agenda. Moving away from a managerial agenda is also critical for HR, as so “many of today’s most critical workplace problems lies beyond the capabilities of any single firm“ (Beer, 1997, pp. 123-4). To reflect a managerial perspective is too narrow for any change agent wanting to facilitate substantial change. There are several reasons why it might be difficult for HR to adopt a negotiations perspective and a negotiating role in organizational change. One is that interested parties have very different levels of power in the organization. The potential certainly exists for a see-saw effect, with one party dangling in the air as the more powerful group sits comfortably on the ground. Negotiating under such circumstances is very unlikely to lead to a mutual solution. At the same time, it is the mediator/facilitator who must try to prevent more powerful interests from dominating the negotiation. Besides the power imbalance, a second problem concerns how well each party’s needs and interests are articulated. Clearly, management is better able to speak with a single voice than are employees in many organizations. Combining power and voice differences suggests that for a negotiations model to have any utility, HR would not only mediate but would also assist in the process of interest articulation and voice amplification. Whether in day-to-day negotiations or in formal negotiation meetings, HR would help identify and

clarify interests and then work to help bring about greater understanding, appreciation, and enough resolution to move on. When others cannot articulate their concerns and issues, then HR would make sure that all relevant interests are part of the conversation and decision process. The negotiations framework applies broadly; its usefulness is not limited to formal or high level bargaining. HR’s comments and questions focus the attention of managers and workers alike. Their everyday conversations have an important impact on culture and emergent change. Acting as facilitators and mediators, HR professionals could continue to represent different interests and voices as they help to forge new employer-employee relationships. Any effort at complete unification of divergent interests would not honor HR’s history, nor even be possible. A negotiations perspective may help HR in the process of facilitating change, but it does not help clarify what the greater good might look like. For that, HR must articulate its own values and work with others to clarify core values, core purpose, and a shared vision for the future (Collins and Porras, 1996; Kouzes and Posner, 2002). The negotiations model does not assume differences are always or fully reconcilable, and HR’s job should include challenging the common assumption of reconcilable interests. In the wake of Enron, WorldCom and others, renewed calls are being made for HR to serve as an ethical watch guard and advocate for the non-executive workforce. Putting business interests (or those of senior management) first, without considering employee interests (or those of various external stakeholder groups) contributed to these problems. Dissenting viewpoints should be part of daily discourse in organizations. HR could play an important role in today’s organizations by bringing historical voices and contemporary interests into conversations about work, people, change, and the future. Having struggled to get to the table, HR executives, comfortable with status and privilege, should consider how less powerful and articulate voices can be heard. By articulating its values, inspiring a shared vision, and adopting a negotiations perspective, HR is in a position not only to facilitate change, but to assume an ethical role on higher ground in organizational change. References Baron, J.N., Dobbin, F.R. and Jennings, P.D. (1986), “War and peace: the evolution of modern personnel administration in US industry”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 92 No. 2, pp. 350-83. Baron, J.N., Dobbin, F.R. and Jennings, P.D. (1988), “Mission control? The development of personnel systems in US industry”, American Sociological Review, Vol. 53, August, pp. 497-514. Bates, S. (2002), “Facing the future”, HR Magazine, Vol. 47 No. 7, July, pp. 26-32. Beatty, R.W. and Schneier, C.E. (1997), in Ulrich, D., Losey, M.R. and Lake, G. (Eds), Tomorrow’s HR Management, Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, pp. 69-83.

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Becker, B.E. and Huselid, M.A. (1998), “High performance work systems and firm performance: a synthesis of research and managerial implications”, Research in Personnel and Human Resources Journal, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 53-101. Beer, M. (1997), “The transformation of the human resource function: resolving the tension between a traditional administrative and new strategic role”, in Ulrich, D., Losey, M.R. and Lake, G. (Eds), Tomorrow’s HR Management, Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, pp. 84-95. Cappelli, P. (2000), “Market-mediated employment: the historical context”, in Blair, M.M. and Kochan, T.A. (Eds), The New Relationship: Human Capital in the American Corporation, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC, pp. 66-101. Caldwell, R. (2001), “Champions, adapters, consultants and synergists: the new change agents in HRM”, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 39-52. Clark, T., Mabey, C. and Skinner, D. (1998), “Experiencing HRM: the importance of the inside story”, in Clark, T., Mabey, C. and Skinner, D. (Eds), Experiencing Human Resource Management, Sage Publications, London, pp. 1-13. Collins, J. and Porras, J. (1996), “Building your company’s vision”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 74 No. 5, pp. 65-77. DeNisi, A.S. and Griffin, R.W. (2001), Human Resource Management, Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, MA. Dessler, G. (2003), Human Resource Management, 9th ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Drucker, P. (1954), The Practice of Management, Harper & Brothers, New York, NY. Eilbert, H. (1959), “The development of personnel management in the United States”, Business History Review, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 349-64. Fitz-enz, J. (2000), The ROI of Human Capital: Measuring the Economic Value of Employee Performance, AMACOM, New York, NY. Foote, D. and Robinson, I. (1999), “The role of human resources manager: strategist or conscience of the organisation?”, Business Ethics: A European Review, Vol. 8 No. 2, pp. 88-98. Hammer, M. and Champy, J. (1993), Reengineering the Corporation: a Manifest for Business Revolution, Harper Business, New York, NY. Jacoby, S.M. (1985), Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions and the Transformation of Work in American Industry 1900-1945, Columbia University Press, New York, NY. Kochan, T.A. (1997), “Rebalancing the role of human resources”, in Ulrich, D., Losey, M.R. and Lake, G. (Eds), Tomorrow’s HR Management, Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, pp. 119-29. Kouzes, J. and Posner, B. (2002), The Leadership Challenge, 3rd ed., Jossey-Bass, San Fransisco, CA. Legge, K. (1998), “The morality of HRM”, in Mabey, C., Skinner, D. and Clark, T. (Eds), Experiencing Human Resource Management, Sage Publications, London, pp. 14-32. Lewicki, R.J., Saunders, D.M. and Minton, J.W. (1999), Negotiation, Irwin, McGraw-Hill, Boston, MA. Marciano, V.M. (1995), “The origins and development of human resource management”, in Academy of Management Best Papers Proceedings, Academy of Management, August. Nelson, D. (1995), Managers & Workers: Origins of the Twentieth-Century Factory System in the United States 1880-1920, 2nd ed., The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, WI. Senge, P. (1990), The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Doubleday, New York, NY. Thompson, H. (1929), “Review of welfare work in mill villages: the story of extra-mill activities in North Carolina, by Herring, H.”, The American Historical Review, Vol. 35 No. 1, pp. 147-8.

Tichy, N.M., Fombrun, C.J. and Devanna, M.A. (1982), “Strategic human resource management”, Sloan Management Review, Winter, pp. 47-61. Ulrich, D. (1997), Human Resource Champions, Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA. Ulrich, D., Losey, M.R. and Lake, G. (1997), “Respect history, create a future”, in Ulrich, D., Losey, M.R. and Lake, G. (Eds), Tomorrow’s HR Management, Wiley & Sons, New York, NY, pp. 137-8. Wright, P.M. and Sherman, W.S. (1999), “Failing to find fit in strategic human resource management: theoretical and empirical problems”, in Wright, P.M., Dyer, L.D., Boudreau, J.W. and Milkovich, G.T. (Eds), Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, Supplement 4, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 53-74.

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Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 16 No. 3, 2003 pp. 272-286 q MCB UP Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810310475523

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HRM and organizational change: an emotional endeavor Hans Doorewaard and Yvonne Benschop University of Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands Keywords Organizational change, Employee relations, Human resource management, Employee involvement Abstract This paper sketches the outlines of a differentiated approach towards the contribution of HRM to organizational change. While departing from a critique on the assumptions of the human resource-based view of the firm, we develop an alternative approach which has been derived from the core elements of the relational theory of emotions. These elements, which pertain to the complexity of human beings, emphasize the processes and relational characteristics of emotions and the hegemonic power base of emotions. We argue that it is necessary to sensitize HRM to the emotional subroutines entwined in organizational change, and that an empathic and respectful approach towards people’s authenticity should be cultivated.

1. Introduction In the various considerations which are made when discussing the possible contribution of human resource management (HRM) to organizational change, the line of reasoning offered by the human resource-based view of the firm (see for a recent overview, Barney et al.., 2001) pops up frequently. The promising role ascribed to strategic HRM in the accomplishment of organizational success has seduced many academics and practitioners to embrace the insights found in this particular theory. The human resource-based view of the firm argues that the chance for an organization to obtain and retain sustainable competitive advantage largely depends on the degree of exclusivity found in the employees’ competencies and skills. The more unique, irreplaceable and inimitable these competencies and skills are, the higher their contribution to the achievement of organizational goals is supposed to be. What goes for the strategic goals of an organization in general, also holds for the objectives of organizational change. Hence, when applied to the field of organizational change, the line of reasoning offered by the human resource-based view of the firm stresses the unique contribution the employees can make to organizational change processes. In light of this theory, HRM should provide the conditions under which such a contribution can be made. In this paper, we will critically reflect on the assumptions and assertions of the human resource-based view of the firm. The human resource-based view of the firm is limited in its unambiguous, instrumental, and rationalistic conceptualization of the relationships between the HRM practices, the HR outcomes in terms of knowledge, skills and commitment, and the success of the organization. Our critique is directed towards the utilitarian and

formal/technical assumptions of this view, since it reduces human beings to “human resources”. In our opinion, this view represents the “standard systemcontrol frame of reference of much management thinking” (Watson, 2002, p. 375). We argue that such a conceptual model does not do justice to the complexity of human beings and their functioning in organizational processes. In particular, the approach neglects the ambiguities, irrationalities, and emotions that characterize the usual practice in organizational change (Downing, 1997; Carr, 2001). The purpose of this article is to sketch the outlines of a more differentiated approach towards the contribution HRM can make to organizational change, an approach which corresponds to a process-relational perspective, and one which “acknowledges the pluralistic, messy, ambiguous and inevitably conflictridden nature of work organizations” (Watson, 2002, p. 375). Such a conceptual model pays more attention to both the rational and instrumental considerations and the emotional needs and desires that influence processes of organizational change. We base our approach on the core elements of the relational theory of emotions (Burkitt, 1997). This view helps us in understanding the complex functioning of human beings in the processes of organizational change (see, for example, Albrow, 1992; Duncombe and Marsden, 1996; Ashforth and Humphrey, 1995; Downing, 1997; Pedersen, 2000; Fineman, 2000). According to the relational theory of emotions, the actions and intentions of a person do not only stem from their rationality, but they are always and inextricably bound up with the emotions he or she has. Furthermore, emotions are viewed as being both individual characteristics and features of the power-based relationships between people involved in organizational change. In particular, we will focus on emotions as elements of implicit, so-called “hegemonic”, power processes, which function as subroutines in the daily practices of organizations. Hegemonic power processes may induce the organizational members to consent to prevalent organizational views and to accept their insertion into organizational practices, despite the possible disadvantages these practices might pose for them (Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998; Doorewaard and Brouns, 2003). After having critically discussed the core ideas of the human resource-based view of the firm, we elaborate on the main features of the relational theory of emotions. Finally, we discuss the additional insights presented by this view in order to gain a better understanding of the relationship between HRM and organizational change. 2. The human resource-based view of the firm and a critical perspective A recent debate within the HRM literature focuses on the possible contribution that HRM might make to the performance of organizations (see, for a recent overview, Barney et al.., 2001). A central position in this debate is taken up by

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the human resource-based view of the firm. This view stresses that in order to gain and sustain a competitive advantage, the management should concentrate on the uniqueness of its human resources. If HRM measures succeed in cashing in on what is unique in terms of human potential, then HRM will contribute to the effectiveness, efficiency and productivity of organizations. This is not an easy job to accomplish. Unlike other factors (such as data, computer systems, and machinery), human potential is extremely difficult to manage and to direct in a strategically-desired direction. Hence, the promising uniqueness of HR is also a challenging problem for HR managers. To our knowledge, the recent literature on organizational change does not explicitly refer to the human resource-based view of the firm. Nevertheless, we do recognize the line of reasoning of this approach in the literature on organizational change. In particular, the literature on participatory organizational change (for example, Sauer, 1993; Kotter, 1995; Collins, 1998) points at both the promises and the problems of HRM. On the one hand, the success and failure of organizational change is said to basically depend on the unique contribution of HR to organizational change processes. On the other hand, the challenge to manage unruly and uncontrollable HR in organizational change processes places high demands on HRM. For instance, many research studies in regard to the development and implementation of information technology (IT) indicate the importance of the communicative skills of IT staff. An IT professional, who is able to understand the users’ needs and who can communicate with the users themselves, will make a substantial contribution to the success of an IT project. On the other hand, the many misunderstandings between IT staff and users often cause people to avoid active participation and to retreat within the safe boundaries of their original tasks. IT staff members, after having banged their heads against users’ unwillingness and inability, may simply decide to refrain from further involvement and to strictly comply to the rules, while their unique talents remain unrevealed (Doorewaard and van Bijsterveld, 2001). Similarly, from organizational change projects which concern the integration of a gender perspective in HRM, we learn that the networking capacities of equality officers are crucial. Their unique ability to build alliances with the HRM staff makes all the difference in whether these projects succeed or fail (Verloo and Benschop, 2002). On the other hand, research done on the slow progression of female scientists towards the top of academia shows that the remedial projects to counter this problem do not seem to help much. In The Netherlands, the extra efforts put into recruiting and selecting women have not made any significant change in the sex ratios, because of the high turnover rates of women academics. These women report that they are not comfortable with the academic culture and its mores, as they perceive them to have been made by and for men. They are dissatisfied with their work situation, more

specifically with their marginal, temporary positions, the content of their work, the power games, and the lack of supervision, support and co-operation they receive, and so they inevitably exit the workplace (Portegijs, 1993). According to the insights of the human resource-based view of the firm, HRM has an important and difficult task in stimulating the people involved in organizational change processes so that they will develop their unique qualities and that they will mobilize them for the success of the change effort. Despite its focus on the promising role of HRM, the human resource-based view of the firm is based on a poorly thought-out system-control model and can be characterized as a utilitarian/instrumental approach, when looked on from a critical perspective. First, the human resource-based view of the firm does not examine the complex and contradictory context within which decisions are made. The view assumes that management is unambiguous by nature. In this respect, the view is a classic example of what Watson (2002) calls “systems-control thinking”. The organization is seen as a system, which is controlled by qualified and rational managers, all of whom are neutral experts, capable of designing, engineering and driving the system to reach pre-established organizational goals. To be more precise, in the human resource-based view of the firm the elements can be traced of technocratic dependence on the manager-expert who controls the organizational mechanism and steers it in the direction of translucent organizational goals. The approach is based on a simple inputthroughput-output (ITO) model, i.e. a power-neutral set of coherent decisions, taken by rational thinking managers. Such a model takes for granted the many black boxes characterizing the obscurity of these ITO-processes. It also fails to address properly the complex, power-based and chaotic relationships between the system and its environment (Achterbergh and Riesewijk, 1999). Simple systems thinking excludes from its domain the limits of managerial expertise, the uncontrollability of organizational processes, the complex power processes and the contradictory goals which constitute the reality of the many messy processes of organizational change. A second critical comment addresses the basic underlying assumption of the human resource-based view of the firm, which states that HR can make crucial contributions to the success of organizational changes. In our opinion, this illustrates the utilitarian character of the approach. HR are considered to be production factors (“the employee as work flow processor”), factors which are to be used or neglected on the manager’s own discretion, like any other production factors. The utilitarian approach explicitly comes forward in the instrumental/technical assumptions of thinking in terms of “resources”. Human beings are seen as resources, which means that they are seen as sets of competencies, knowledge, skills and attitudes that are required to realize specific organizational outcomes. HR are looked on as abstract, disembodied entities, arranged and classified in categories and sub-categories of required

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qualifications. As such, HR appear as an undifferentiated and homogeneous category (Benschop, 2001). We question the moral/ethical assumption of this utilitarian character because its implications are manifold. Obviously, such an approach does not do justice to the complexity of human beings nor to the way human beings function in organizations. HRM does not deal with abstract resources, which are to be used by and for the organization. One inevitably ends up with human beings: flesh and blood individuals, each with his or her own free will, values, desires, wishes and irrationalities. When we consider employees as human beings, it becomes clear that their skills and competencies are intertwined with demographic, physical and psychological characteristics, such as gender, race, class, social background, and their physical and psychological condition. All of these characteristics bring forward different kinds of rational and non-rational considerations and impulses, which interfere with the skills and competencies of employees. Hence, to call on people’s skills and competencies means to call on the complexity of human beings. Furthermore, organizations are not capable of or even allowed to use human beings in the same way as they deal with other resources, like computers and garbage cans. Unlike machines and goods, employees have a voice and a say in what they will and will not contribute to any kind of sustainable advantage. To a certain extent, people in Western societies are able to mobilize their capacities according to their sets of ideas, wishes and values about what is good for them, for the organization, and for the society they live in. In this article, we refer to this set of ideas and values as people’s intrinsic value or authenticity. Charles Taylor’s analysis of the moral ideal of authenticity in Western modern culture (Taylor, 1991) helps us to understand how people’s authenticity influences their functioning in organizations. First, we stress that authenticity is a culturerelated phenomenon. In Western culture, authenticity operates as a prevailing impetus for action, and it plays a substantial role in how people function in various settings in society (work, family, religion, and so forth). Second, although such an intrinsic value appears to be based on the individual’s own free will, this set of ideas and values is not purely subjective, but it is inextricably tied to the moral framework of our society. People engage actively in the norms and values of their environment, and therefore their authenticity is always moulded and shaped by the “mores” of the society they live in and the organizations they work in. However, the utilitarian nature of the resourcebased view of the firm prevents us from seeing the impetus of the intrinsic value of the employees in our organizations (what would be the intrinsic value of a work flow processor?). Instead of a utilitarian and instrumental approach, HRM requires a way of thinking which values the complexity of the employees as human beings and the way people function in organizations. We need to pay closer attention to the intrinsic value of the people involved in organizational change, and – above all

– to the messy and power-based complexity of change processes. Within critical management studies, different approaches have been developed to elaborate these complex processes, the ambiguity, the uncertainty and the power relations that are at the core of organizational change (see, for instance, Dawson, 1994; Clegg and Hardy, 1996). In this article, we would like to examine this subject matter from another, rather unconventional angle, that could shed new light and bring additional insight to the critical arena. We can find that angle of approach in the relational theory of emotions. 3. The relational theory of emotions . . . emotions are an integral and inseparable part of organisational life, and emotions are often functional for the organisation (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1995, p. 97).

The relational theory of emotions places an emphasis on emotions, as it regards them as important aspects of interpersonal relationships in organizations (for an overview, see Brown and Brooks, 2000). Burkitt (1997, p. 37) expresses the basics of this approach as follows: The view is put forward of emotions as complexes rather than things, ones that are multidimensional in their composition: they only arise within relationships, but they have a corporeal, embodied aspect as well as a socio-cultural one. They are constituted by techniques of the body learned within a social habitus, which produces emotional dispositions that may manifest themselves in particular situations. Furthermore, these techniques of the body are part of the power relations that play an important part in the production and regulation of emotion.

From this description we select the following three core elements of the relational theory of emotions. 3.1 The undivided body The relational theory of emotions is characterized by a holistic view of emotions. It is more concerned with the connections between rational, emotional and physical characteristics than with the precise distinctions between them (Fineman, 1993). With a brief acknowledgement of Kurt Lewin, we could say that nothing is as emotional as a rational thought (look, for instance, at the effect of a single sublime move in a game of chess) and there is no more powerful rationale to be found than in the act of hatred (as any reader of Macbeth will know). Alongside reason and emotion, the relational theory of emotions also stresses the physical aspect. This aspect of emotions has been examined during research done on gender and emotion (see, for example, Duncombe and Marsden, 1993, 1996) and sexuality in organizations (see, especially, Hearn and Parkin, 1987). People express their opinions and experience their feelings in organizations, not only through verbal processes, but also by using body language, through the whole range of non-verbal physical attitudes, patterns of behavior, mannerisms, mimicry and gestures.

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3.2 Processes and relations The relational theory of emotions exemplifies the process-relational perspective on organizations (Watson, 2002). It regards emotions as being ongoing processes, closely related to, and hard to distinguish from, processes such as decision-making, communication and interaction. Emotions are important in all different kinds of relationships in organizations (Fineman, 1993; Burkitt, 1997; Pedersen, 2000; Brown and Brooks, 2000), from contractual relations between employer and employee to professional relations between colleagues, from relations between superiors and subordinates to personal relations based on attraction and competition. For example, there is the anger and disappointment at one’s failure to get a promotion, there is the satisfaction when you have done well, the revulsion and embarrassment at a colleague’s behavior in the lunch break, and the secret love for a colleague. All these emotions shape the various work relations. Emotions belong to the complex whole of ideas, actions, experiences and assumptions, which people use to give meaning to their work and the way they relate to others, within the context of social and organizational norms and values. In the terminology of social constructivism, emotions are part of the process by which people construct and reconstruct their view of reality. The relational theory of emotions regards emotions as being part of the organizational subroutines through which people assign explicit and implicit meanings to the distinct work relations in organizations. Sometimes, emotions and feelings play the role of supportive subroutines in the day-to-day business of the organization. Consider, for instance, the pleasure members of a team derive from working together on a particular project. In other situations, emotions have an intervening (moderating or mediating) influence on work processes. Mutual trust, for example, is an intervening factor in collaborative relationships (Eberl and Koch, 2000). Finally, emotions and feelings can be steering subroutines for the work in organizations. A well-known example of this type of influence can be found in the ground-breaking study done by Hochschild (1983), who investigated the “feeling rules” that impose how stewardesses should feel in order to do a good job. 3.3 Power and emotion When we speak of how emotions and feelings play the supportive, intervening and steering role in various relationships, we are simultaneously dealing with the way emotions operate within control and power relations in organizations (Fineman and Sturdy, 1999; Pedersen, 2000). Sometimes, emotions are explicitly used as control mechanisms; for instance, in police forces, in the army and in hospitals. In precisely these lines of work, employees are regularly confronted with moving events, which stir up emotions and feelings both in their clients and patients and in themselves. However, an implicit effect of emotions is not only encountered in the organizations mentioned above, but in all

organizations. As long ago as 1989, Van Maanen and Kunda (1989) focused on emotion as a form of control. Apart from explicit forms of control, they distinguished the so-called control of the heart, which concerns control via the system of implicit norms and values of the culture of the organization. It is in this form of implicit control above all that emotions play a crucial role (Van Maanen and Kunda, 1989). The implicit control mechanisms of emotions can be framed in terms of so-called hegemonic power processes. Within organizations, hegemonic power processes are implicit forms of influence that play an important role when trying to reach a consensus in daily business matters (Barker, 1993). People are not always aware of this power; it is a power that is taken for granted. Under the influence of these hegemonic power processes, people produce and reproduce a dominant vision of what is “true” and what is “good” in their organization and they behave accordingly, despite the possible disadvantages this vision may have on some of those involved. The role of emotions in hegemonic power processes is to be found in the seductiveness of the dominant vision. Employees are enticed to agree to particular organizational practices, seduced by the emphasis on the attractiveness of the prospects. Tempted as they are by the promise of the realization of their interests (challenging tasks, empowerment), people tend to overlook the possible disadvantages (such as heavier workloads, curtailing the opportunities to advance one’s career). The propeller turning the wheels of “management by seduction” is hidden in the seduction itself: the future presented is pink and rosy and appears to be full of opportunities. Clearly this seduction process is truly a matter of emotions and feelings rather than rational considerations. As in the case of love, it seems that temptation lures the heart and the body rather than the mind. After having discussed the main features of the relational theory of emotions, we will examine in the next section how this theory can contribute to the better understanding of HRM and organizational change. 4. The relational theory of emotions and HRM To sketch the outlines of a differentiated approach to the role of HRM in organizational change, we elaborate on the insights provided by the relational theory of emotions: we argue that HRM could benefit from recognizing the importance of the differentiated roles of emotions as subroutines and by understanding how emotions are entwined in implicit power processes in organizational change. 4.1 Towards a relational theory of HRM and organizational change From a system-control perspective (Watson, 2002), the human resource-based view of the firm would stress the importance of HRM practices which constitute effective patterns of communication, empowerment and participation in order to “produce” the employees’ competencies and

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commitment required for such a major change project. From a processualrelational point of view (Watson, 2002), the relational theory of emotions points at different aspects. This view focuses on the analysis of the different ways in which emotions, feelings and irrationalities of the employees involved in organizational change influence complex processes of communication, motivation and power. For example, people are afraid of losing their ability to perform sufficiently after organizational change has been implemented. Other examples might be, the pleasure of working together with new colleagues after a merger, or the frustration of not being able to understand the instructions on how to use a new IT system. Each of these emotions can influence the effectiveness of the measures HRM takes in regard to communication, motivation and participation. “Fear” and “frustration”, for example, would hinder the effectiveness of well-considered models of participation, whereas “pleasure” might help to get things accomplished without a plan. We are not always fully aware of how emotions shape our work relations. From the relational theory of emotions we can derive two important insights on how emotions are intertwined with processes of organizational change. First, emotions function as implicit subroutines or feeling frames and, second, they do so in non-neutral, often hegemonic power processes. To start with emotions as subroutines, it is important to stress that the emotional influence usually takes place in the twilight zone of people’s “practical consciousness” (Giddens, 1984), between the levels of consciousness and unconsciousness. Downing (1997) has analyzed organizational change as a body of implicit and power-bound processes in which new management concepts are not only disseminated through forms of rational transfer, but also through emotions. Downing describes processes of organizational changes in terms of an emotional plot, or a feeling frame, which functions as a simple frame of reference and a pattern that gives meaning to all involved in the change process. Change, for example, can have the nature of a quest, in which case the emotional satisfaction of finding the lost treasure plays an important role. Change can also be seen as a loss, in which anxiety is the dominant emotion. In other situations, those involved see the change process as a conquest imbued with the strong emotion of hostility. In each of these scenarios, emotions play a different, but always decisive role, depicting how those involved give meaning to what happens in their organization. We have learned from the relational theory of emotion, that the decisive role of emotions often takes place in the form of a subroutine, implicitly playing a supportive, intervening and steering part in the failure or success of organizations. To illustrate these subroutines in processes of organizational change, we return to the example of the change projects integrating a gender perspective in HRM, mentioned earlier in this paper (Verloo and Benschop, 2002). The five organizations involved in this type of organizational change, showed a

differentiation in the success of the gender projects. This differentiation can be understood by looking at different emotional subroutines. One particularly successful project was developed in a friendly atmosphere; it involved a highly appreciated HRM officer, an equality officer who radiated enthusiasm about the project, and it met with a lot of sympathy from the top manager. The general emotional framework or plot in this organization functioned as a supportive subroutine towards the initiated changes. Another, particularly unsuccessful project, met with a lot of fear and resistance from the management team. They were concerned about the time and effort the project would cost them, and they were skeptical about the contribution HRM could make to their organization. They were not convinced of the necessity to pay attention to gender issues at all. In this case, the emotional subroutines obviously were part of a plot, which negatively intervened with the intended outcomes of the change project. It is crucial for HRM to be aware of the fact that the implicit and differentiated role of emotions as subroutines in organizational change is always non-neutral, but power-based. In particular, emotions play their roles in hegemonic power processes, through which the employees are tempted to accept the changing organizational practices, despite the possible disadvantages for some of the people involved. From a number of studies concerned with implicit power processes in organizational change, we have gained insight into the power-based roles of emotions. The emotions of fairness, resignation and acquiescence, for example, induce people to accept a gendered division of labor in organizations, thus reinforcing the inequality of career opportunities for men and women (Benschop and Doorewaard, 1998).The pleasantly seductive feeling of “being your own boss” (entrepreneurship) can cause team members to accept the introduction of team-based work, despite the fact that team work may bring about situations which could be detrimental to them in terms of workload and stress (Doorewaard and Brouns, forthcoming, 2003). Power also underlies the way new IT projects are being diffused and adapted in organizations. It is the “euphoria of the new”, which paves the way for the umpteenth management fashion in IT, despite the fact that IT change may cause unintended negative side effects for both the IT staff and the users (Doorewaard and van Bijsterveld, 2001). 4.2 Beyond regulation and mobilization We learn from the relational theory of emotions that is important for HRM to pay attention to the implicit, power-based and differentiated roles of emotions in organizational change. However, it is not so easy to put this suggestion into practice. We definitely do not recognize this awareness of the role of emotions in the well-known, often criticized, but still wide-spread, HRM strategy of direct control and bureaucratic regulation (Friedman, 1977; Kinnie, 1989).

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Bureaucratic regulation is based on strict orders, contractual arrangements and the manipulation of an employee’s autonomy. This approach tends to neglect the emotional consequences of strict orders and contractual arrangements. On rare occasions, that this approach pay attention to emotions, it tends to convert emotions into controllable objects. Bureaucratic regulation deals with emotions in the form of emotion management. Emotion management aims both at the managerial control of people’s emotions and at the effective deployment of the individual’s feelings in order to produce the required competencies and commitment. At first sight, it would appear that the other well-known HRM strategy concerning responsible autonomy or HR mobilization (Friedman, 1977, Kinnie, 1989), does pay attention to emotions in organizations. HR mobilization “mobilizes” – as opposed to “manages” – the employees’ knowledge, skills and motivation (De Sitter, 1998). Its appeal to the employees’ commitment, responsibility, entrepreneurship and loyalty seems to be based on the recognition of the employees’ genuine feelings and emotions, such as selfesteem, trust and happiness. However, a more precise analysis of the practices of HR mobilization indicates that this approach is also based on the utilitarian/instrumental assumptions. The “strategy of bestowing someone with an emotional gift” (Clark, 1997) and the “feeling rules at work” (Hochschild, 1983) are now being analyzed as HRM strategies, which focus on the control of emotions, be it more by emotion manipulation than by emotion management. We recognize emotion manipulation in HR mobilization strategies which deal with organizational change. In order to be ensured of the employees’ loyalty towards accepting organizational changes, change managers often turn to the HRM practices of empowerment and user participation (Doorewaard and van Bijsterveld, 2001; Doorewaard and Brouns, 2003). These practices evoke strong emotions, such as the enthusiasm and joy of being involved, the pride and honor of being asked to participate, and the eagerness to get things done. These emotions are indispensable to the success of the organizational change program. HRM practices, such as user participation and empowerment, manipulate the employees’ emotions of enthusiasm and involvement in order to secure the success of organizational change. The way in which emotions are dealt with in both the HRM strategy of bureaucratic regulation and in the strategy of HR mobilization comes down to controlling emotion. Ashforth and Humphrey (1995) extensively analyzed the practices of the control of emotions. They conclude that the ultimate and implicit effect of emotion control is not to develop and enrich the impact of emotions on the functioning of employees in organizations, but to obliterate the unmanageable aspects of their emotions. Apparently, emotion control is based on the one-dimensional idea that a reduction of the complexity of human beings to a limited set of controllable characteristics improves the controllability of the

personnel. Entering through the back door, the strategy of emotion control will bring the utilitarian approach of thinking in terms of resources back in. Obviously, this is the opposite of what HRM should accomplish, according to the relational theory of emotions.

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5. Towards a differentiated approach of HRM and organizational change What kind of HRM approach to organizational change would incorporate the insights gained from the relational theory of emotions? We derive the outlines of such an approach from our critical reflections on the limitations of the human resource-based view of the firm and from the additional insights the relational theory of emotions brings to HRM. One issue concerns the change of focus from a system-control perspective to a process-relational perspective. A process-relational HRM would be sensitive to the functioning of emotional subroutines in organizational change processes and would not shy away from activating and stimulating those emotions, rather than neutralizing them in the futile attempts to control emotions. The key task of HRM is to bestow dignity on the intangible and unfathomable characteristics of emotions which function as supporting, intervening or steering subroutines in organizational change processes. The consideration given to emotional subroutines also calls attention to the implicit power processes that underlie organizational change processes. The type of HRM that is willing and able to conceptualize the role of emotions and power in organizations from a process-relational perspective, is a HRM that acknowledges conflict and diversity. Such a HRM can handle the uncertainties and ambiguities of change processes, and does not try to repress and control them automatically. In doing so, HRM can go beyond the limitations of the simple system-control perspective of the human resourcebased view of the firm. In the wake of the consideration for emotional subroutines and power processes, the relational theory of emotions also helps to cultivate an alertness to the complexity of human beings and their functioning in organizations. Such an alertness goes beyond the narrow-minded vision (in which employees are considered human “resources”), which underlies the utilitarian and instrumental approach of the human resource-based view of the firm. The relational theory of emotions focuses on the undivided body, as the unity of ratio, emotion, physical and psychological characteristics. By doing this, it helps HRM to deal with human “beings” whose competencies and skills are inextricably bound up with demographic, physical and psychological characteristics. The relational theory of emotions also helps HRM to develop and cultivate a respectful and attentive understanding of the intrinsic value or authenticity of everyone involved in organizational change, i.e. the set of ideas, norms, values and mores which steer the mobilization of employees’ capacities. Valuing the intrinsic worth of human beings implies – in the view of Clark – a

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strategy of niceness (Clark, 1997), a micro-political attitude based on empathetic openness towards one another. The emphasis placed on people’s authenticity has several implications for HRM. First of all, people’s authenticity is a non-static quality. HRM needs to be aware of the continuously changing intrinsic value of employees and of the various manners through which the development of their authenticity influences how people function. Furthermore, besides recognizing the existence and development of the employees’ authentic feelings, HRM should also be aware of the intrinsic value of the HR staff involved in organizational change. Just like other employees, HRM staff members will steer their functioning according to their own norms and values. But, above all, paying attention to people’s authenticity in HRM is complicated, because it calls for a double awareness. HRM should pay attention to both the contents of the values and ideas involved and the processes through which employees develop their authenticity. To pay attention to the continuously changing contents of people’s ideas and values requires the empathy of everyone involved, in order to relate to people as complex unities of rational arguments, emotional feelings and physical characteristics. Empathy is not a capacity that can be easily turned on or off, it implies “all hands on deck”. All those involved in organizational change (managers, colleagues, HRM staff) need to share an attitude of awe and attentive concern. Moreover, HRM should value the process through which people develop their authenticity. This requires respect for the culture-specific impetus of many people who cultivate authenticity within moral frameworks of Western society (Taylor, 1991). Respect stands for having an open and attentive attitude towards the development of people’s intrinsic value. We realize that these ideas are ambitious, but we strongly believe that it is necessary to develop a differentiated approach to HRM and organizational change. We have argued that we need a HRM which is more attuned to the ambiguities and uncertainties found in organizational change processes. Contrary to a systems-control oriented HRM, we expect a process-relational HRM to be more sensitive to the emotional subroutines and the power processes entwined in organizational change. We conclude that a major contribution of such a HRM to the better understanding of organizational change processes lies in the possibilities it creates in cultivating an empathic and respectful approach towards people’s authenticity. References Achterbergh, J. and Riesewijk, B. (1999), Polished by Use. Four Windows on Organizations, Eburon, Delft. Albrow, M. (1992), “Sine Ira et Studio – or do oganizations have feelings?”, Organization Studies, Vol. 13 No. 3, pp. 313-29. Ashforth, B.E. and Humphrey, R.H. (1995), “Emotion in the workplace: a reappraisal”, Human Relations, Vol. 48 No. 2, pp. 97-126.

Barker, J.R. (1993), “Tightening the iron cage, concertive control in self-managing teams”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 408-37. Barney, J.B., Wright, D. and Ketchen, D.J. (2001), “The resource-based view of the firm: ten years after 1991”, Journal of Management, Vol. 27 No. 6, pp. 625-41. Benschop, Y. (2001), “Pride, prejudice and performance. Relations between diversity, HRM and performance”, The International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 12 No. 7, pp. 1166-81. Benschop, Y. and Doorewaard, H. (1998), “Covered by equality. The gender subtext of organizations”, Organization Studies, Vol. 19 No. 5, pp. 787-805. Brown, R. and Brooks, I. (2000), “Emotion at work: identifying the emotional climate of night nursing”, paper presented at the 16th EGOS Colloquium, theme 3, “Emotionalizing organization”, Helsinki, 2-4 July. Burkitt, I. (1997), “Social relationships and emotions”, Sociology, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp. 37-55. Carr, A. (2001), “Understanding emotion and emotionality in a process of change”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 14 No. 5, pp. 421-34. Clark, C. (1997), Misery and Company – Sympathy in Everyday Life, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Clegg, S. and Hardy, C. (1996), “Conclusion: representations”, in Clegg, S., Hardy, C. and Nord, W. (Eds), Handbook of Organization Studies, Sage, London, pp. 676-708. Collins, D. (1998), Organizational Change: Sociological Perspectives, Routledge, London. Dawson, P. (1994), Organizational Change: A Processual Approach, Paul Chapman Publishing, London. De Sitter, L.U. (1998), Synergetisch Produceren (Synergic Production), Van Gorcum, Assen. Doorewaard, H. and Brouns, B. (2003), “Hegemonic power processes in team based work”, Applied Psychology: an International Review, forthcoming. Doorewaard, H. and van Bijsterveld, M. (2001), “The osmosis of ideas. The integrated approach of IT management from a translation theory perspective”, Organization, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 55-76. Downing, S.J. (1997), “Learning the plot”, Management Learning, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 27-44. Duncombe, J. and Marsden, D. (1993), “Love and intimacy – the gender division of emotion and ‘emotion work’”, Sociology, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 221-41. Duncombe, J. and Marsden, D. (1996), “Can we research the private sphere? Methodological and ethical problems in the study of the role of intimate emotion in personal relationships”, in Morris, L. and Lyon, E.S. (Eds), Gender Relations in Public and Private, Macmillan, London. Eberl, P. and Koch, J. (2000) “Unfolding the ‘cognition/emotion-paradox’ – the example of trust”, paper presented at the 16th EGOS Colloquium, theme 3, “Emotionalizing organization”, Helsinki, 2-4 July. Fineman, S. (Ed.) (1993), Emotions in Organizations, 1st ed., Sage, London. Fineman, S. (Ed.) (2000), Emotions in Organizations, 2nd ed., Sage, London. Fineman, S. and Sturdy, A. (1999), “The emotions of control: a qualitative study of environmental regulation”, Human Relations, Vol. 52 No. 5, pp. 631-6. Friedman, A.L. (1977), Industry and Labour, Macmillan, London. Giddens, A. (1984), The Constitution of Society, Polity Press, Cambridge. Hearn, J. and Parkin, W. (1987), “Sex” at “Work”: The Power and Paradox of Organization Sexuality, Wheatsheaf, Brighton.

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Hochschild, A. (1983), The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feelings, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Kinnie, N. (1989), “Human resource management and changes in management control systems”, in Storey, J. (Ed.), New perspectives on Human Resource Management, Routledge, London. Kotter, J. (1995), “Leading change: why transformation efforts fail”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 73 No. 2, pp. 59-67. Pedersen, P.P. (2000), “Emotional micro-politics in organizational change – the role of the manager in creating team spirit”, paper presented at the 16th EGOS Colloquium, theme 3, “Emotionalizing organization”, Helsinki, 2-4 July. Portegijs, W. (1993), Jammer dat U Gaat (Pity You are Leaving), Jan van Arkel, Utrecht. Sauer, C. (1993), Why Information Systems Fail: A Case Study Approach, Alfred Waller, Henleyon-Thames. Taylor, Ch. (1991), The Malaise of Modernity, Stoddart Publishing, Don Mills. Van Maanen, J. and Kunda, G. (1989), “‘Real feelings’: emotional expressions and organizational culture”, Research in Organizational Behaviour, Vol. 11, pp. 43-104. Verloo, M. and Benschop, Y. (2002), “Shifting responsibilities. The position of equality agencies in gender mainstreaming”, International Management, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 93-102. Watson, T.J. (2002), Organising and Managing Work. Organisational, Managerial and Strategic Behaviour in Theory and Practice, Pearson Education, Harlow.

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Subcultures and employment modes: translating HR strategy into practice

Subcultures and employment modes 287

Jennifer Palthe Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA

Ellen Ernst Kossek Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Received 15 March 2002 Revised 15 September 2002 Accepted 9 December 2002

Keywords Human resource development, Employment, Human resource management, Culture Abstract Past research suggests that most culture change efforts proceed with limited attention to the pluralistic nature of contemporary organizations. We argue that the relationship between organization subcultures and the implementation of new HR strategies into HR practice has not been adequately explored because of the lack of a comprehensive framework for defining and integrating culture change and the strategic HR literature. We review the organization culture and strategic HR literature and present a heuristic that serves as a step toward exemplifying the role of changing employment modes and organizational subcultures in enabling or constraining the implementation of HR strategy.

Adjusting to changing environmental demands has been an ongoing pursuit of organizations for centuries, but the task has become even more perplexing over the last decade. In response to the accelerated pace of change worldwide, organizations are becoming flatter and more agile, and are manifesting more diverse forms of organizational cultures. Recent trends in the changing nature of the employment relationship (Tsui et al., 1997), and the growing use of “peripheral” or temporary employees, highlight the need to focus on the impact that various organization subcultures have on a firm’s ability to adapt and change. Moreover, the movement towards the externalization of the workplace (Tsui et al., 1995) has resulted in many subgroups within the same firm being subjected to different human resource (HR) practices. In this paper, we extend research exploring changing HR strategies and employment modes within an organization, and help integrate this body of literature with organizational culture and subcultures. We argue that subcultures and their supporting routines, habits, and norms within an organization enable, transform, or constrain the implementation of a firm’s HR strategies. In addition, changing employment modes convey different meanings to employees, and reinforce different attitudes, behaviors, and HR practices. To date, strategic human resource management (SHRM) research has focused on examining the relationship between the HR strategy and firm performance, assuming a unitary organizational culture and HR architecture. However, given the increasing use of multiple HR configurations within a

Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 16 No. 3, 2003 pp. 287-308 q MCB UP Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810310475532

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single organization (Lepak and Snell, 1999), we argue that SHRM theorizing should also consider the potentially powerful influence that organizational subcultures have on the firm’s ability to change. While the impact of subcultural influences on HRM has been addressed before (Handy, 1999), subcultural issues remain under-examined in both SHRM theorizing and organizational theory in general (Detert et al., 2000; Schein, 1996). In addressing these research gaps, this paper seeks to prompt future empirical research that aims to test the role of organizational subcultures and employment modes in the effective translation of HR strategies into HR practice. This should stimulate research that is better able to capture the increasing fluidity and plurality of current marketplace realities. The structure of our paper is as follows. First, in Table I, we provide background on the main strategic HRM theories and approaches evident in the literature and their treatment of organization culture, and propose networks of configurations as an emerging HR architecture. Second, we define organizational culture and subculture and apply the concepts of integration and differentiation (Lawrence and Lorsch, 1969; Martin, 1992) and fragmentation (Meyerson and Martin, 1987) to provide theoretical rationale supporting the existence of multiple subcultures within the firm. To operationalize organizational culture and integrate it with the SHRM literature, we build on the work by Hofstede et al. (1990) and Yeung et al. (1991), by presenting a typology of organization subcultures that relate with recognized strategic HR configurations. In Table II, we show the proposed bundles and key distinctions between HR strategies, employment modes, and organizational subcultures. Third, in Figure 1, we develop a framework that shows the links between HR strategies, organizational subcultures, employment modes, and HR practices. We develop propositions to exemplify our analysis and provide implications and directions for future research. 1. Literature review Weick (1985) argued that culture and strategy are partly overlapping constructs. Yet, organizational culture has been described as the missing concept in management and HR studies (Schein, 1996). Hence, before we can explore the role of organizational subcultures in enabling or constraining the translation of HR strategies and into HR practice, we need to begin by investigating the established links between culture and SHRM. Despite assertions in the SHRM literature that culture is key to organizational performance, relatively little work to date has integrated constructs from the culture literature to SHRM theories. Though often, only implicitly considered, major SHRM theories assume cultural relationships. With the goal of fostering increased theoretical integration between culture and SHRM studies, in Table I, we consider the way in which culture has been implicitly considered in the four dominant theoretical perspectives

Contingency

Universal

Theoretical perspective Certain HR practices are better than others. Organizations should adopt these best practices to optimize firm performance. Research examples: Osterman (1994); Pfeffer (1994)

A dominant “strong” culture, that all organizational members identify with, improves firm performance. Research examples: Deal and Kennedy (1982); Dennison (1984) HR policies and The organization practices must be culture needs to be consistent with other aligned with the areas of the business if overall business they are to enhance strategy to be a source firm performance. of sustainable Research examples: competitive Delaney and Huselid advantage. Research (1996); Huselid (1995); examples: Barney Snell et al. (1996); (1986); Saffold (1988); Wright and Snell Yeung et al. (1991) (1998)

Underlying strategic HRM arguments and assumptions

Underlying organization culture arguments and assumptions

HR practices are aligned with other strategic business areas to affect firm performance

Contingent workers: Interactions, fit and part-time, contractual, congruencies seasonal, or casual are integral parts of HR in many organizations and interact with other core workers to influence firm performance. Research example: Pfeffer and Baron (1988)

(continued)

Individual best practices directly influence firm performance

Form of relationships Focus of relationships

Unidirectional, linear The workforce is viewed as a predominantly homogenous group of career employees with permanent, full-time jobs. Research example: Whyte (1956)

Underlying employment relationship arguments and assumptions

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Table I. Current theoretical SHRM approaches and their relationship to culture and employment modes

Table I.

Configuration

Bundles or patterns of HR practice have more influence on performance than individual practices working in isolation. Multiple unique configurations of the relevant factors can result in maximal performance. Theory generally assumes that bundles are positive in employee impact. Research examples: Arthur (1994); Cappelli and Singh (1992); Doty et al. (1993); Doty and Glick (1994); MacDuffie (1995); Mintzberg (1979)

Underlying strategic HRM arguments and assumptions Configurations of “ideal” organization culture types and HR strategies enhance firm performance. Bundles of practices need to be aligned with particular culture types to enhance firm performance

(continued)

Patterns or bundles of HR strategic types affect firm performance.

Form of relationships Focus of relationships

Higher order Employment relationship assumed interactions and generally to be synergies internal employment systems with internal labor markets and job security

Underlying employment relationship arguments and assumptions

290

Theoretical perspective

Underlying organization culture arguments and assumptions

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Underlying strategic HRM arguments and assumptions

Emerging A HR architecture architecture: networks with different HR of configurations configurations for employee subgroups co-exist within a single organization. Research example: Lepak and Snell (1999)

Theoretical perspective Although culture has not generally been measured, trust and organizational citizenship and psychological commitment assumed to be higher for employees in employer investment oriented relationships

Underlying organization culture arguments and assumptions HR practices are differentially applied across various employment groups in the organization. These convey different messages to employees and arouse differing assumptions and affective responses to the employment relationship. Research examples: Rousseau (1995); Tsui et al., 1995, 1997)

Underlying employment relationship arguments and assumptions Non-linear, multidimensional synergies and higher order interactions.

Patterns or bundles of HR strategies, employment modes and subcultures influence HR practice and firm performance

Form of relationships Focus of relationships

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Table I.

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Table II. Complementary bundles of HR strategies, subcultures and employment modes

Figure 1. The role of changing organizational subcultures and employment modes in moderating the translation of HR strategies into HR practices

emerging in the SHRM literature. Table I summarizes the SHRM theoretical approaches and their underlying assumptions regarding organization culture and employment relationships. In Table I, the first major theoretical SHRM perspective involves a universal approach that suggests that certain “best practices”, if adopted, will optimize firm performance (Osterman, 1994; Pfeffer, 1994). Although not always empirically measuring culture, universalistic theorists implicitly suggest that having a dominant organization culture that all organizational members identify with is a best practice that improves firm performance (Dennison, 1984). This approach emphasizes the importance of a unified “strong” culture as a key to competitive success (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; HR strategies

Organization subcultures

Employment modes

“Make” human capital “Buy” human capital Contract human capital Partner and collaborate

Employee-centered Professional-centered Task-centered Innovation-centered

Internal development of human capital Acquisition of human capital Contracting human capital Building human capital alliances

Dennison, 1984). Universalistic theorists tend to assume that most members Subcultures and have job secure employment relationships. An unspoken assumption is that employment the workforce is comprised of full-time career employees with homogeneous modes core values. By focusing on the individual best practices that directly influence firm performance, the research tends to examine unidirectional linear main effect relationships (e.g. Huselid, 1995), which have generally 293 received strong empirical support (Delery and Doty, 1996). The second dominant approach highlighted in Table I is the contingency perspective that emphasizes the importance of aligning various HR practices with other business strategies to enhance firm performance. Within this framework, strategic HR is primarily concerned with the development of an organization’s capability to adapt to changing environmental contingencies (Snell et al., 1996; Wright and Snell, 1998). Contingency theorists implicitly believe that the organizational culture needs to be aligned with the overall business strategy to be a source of sustainable competitive advantage, though little empirical work measures culture and SHRM in the same study. Contingency theorists consider non-alignment to be deadly. As Barney (1986) argued, if a firm’s culture enables it to behave in a way that is inconsistent with a firm’s competitive situation, then it cannot be a source of superior financial performance. Contingency theorists tend to focus on HR strategies and employment relationships for the main workforce. They argue that HR strategies should be developed to create a shared mindset for core workers, and may overlook other employee constituencies’ role (e.g. contingent workers, subcontractors) in the enactment of strategies and their concomitant impact on firm performance. The third dominant theoretical approach presented in Table I is the configurational perspective. Configuration theories emphasize the holistic, aggregated, and systemic nature of organizational phenomenon (Miller, 1996). This view assumes that the influence of bundles of HR practices on firm performance may be strengthened when practices are matched with the competitive requirements inherent in the firm’s strategic posture (Cappelli and Singh, 1992; Meyer et al., 1993). Much of the early configurational SHRM research focused on high-performance work systems (Arthur, 1994; MacDuffie, 1995) where job security was generally part of the bundle. A strong culture was implicit, though not always directly measured, but reinforced by HR practices selecting employees for cultural fit, and rewarding them for teamwork and high commitment behaviors. Here, patterns or bundles of HR practices and interactions are assumed to affect organizational change and performance. We argue that a fourth major theoretical approach has developed as an emerging SHRM architecture: networks of HR configurations. As Lepak and Snell (1999) note, organizations are increasing deploying HR architectures with different HR configurations for specific employee subgroups that coexist within a single organization. Although culture has not generally been discussed in these studies, employees and work groups who are targets for

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bundles of investment-oriented policies are said to have higher trust, organizational citizenship, and commitment. Though limited empirical research has caught up with theorizing (see Tsui et al., 1995, 1997, for exceptions), research studies in this stream investigate nonlinear multidimensional synergies and higher order interactions. Consistent with this approach, Whittington et al. (1999) suggest that organizational performance is likely to come from interlinked clusters or systems of practices, rather than piecemeal initiatives that are uniformly applied. Indeed, their notion of complementarities would suggest that high-performing firms are likely to be combining a number of HR strategies at the same time. Likewise, the emerging architecture suggests that there are likely to be at least three-way relationships in a configuration and these, in turn, are likely to influence the effects of other configurations. Hence, while configuration theories suggest that certain HR strategic types affect performance, the emerging architecture that we propose suggests that this process is in fact more complex, involving a network of interacting configurations. 2. Organizational culture, subcultures and SHRM Detert et al. (2000), in their recent review of the role of culture and improvement initiatives in organizations, call for future research to explore the role of organizational subcultures to better understand why some initiatives give rise to real changes and others cause a return to the status quo. They argue that, in case after case, organizations have paid limited attention to the values and beliefs of lower level employees, “acting as if their management subculture represents a unitary, organization-wide culture” (Detert et al., 2000, p. 858). As Legge (2001) asserts, this unitary approach ignores dual labor markets, contingent workers and business strategies that logically do not require “high commitment” HR strategies to achieve success. Consistent with her argument, we believe that a unitary approach to culture is too simplistic, given the growing variation in employment modes across employee groups in organizations. While some scholars have argued that organization cultures are keys to organizational performance (Barney, 1991), others have suggested that even the most brilliant HR strategy is useless if not socially accepted (Green, 1988). With this in mind, we acknowledge the controversies surrounding both the definition and measurement of organization culture, recognizing that culture and subcultures can be studied at multiple levels, some of which are less observable than others. A predominant view of culture is that it is a pattern of basic assumptions, beliefs, and values that members of an organization have in common (Gowler and Legge, 1986; Schein, 1985; Schneider, 1990; Smircich, 1983). Others study culture at a more observable level, choosing to focus on the manifestation of underlying beliefs and values through behavioral norms and artifacts (Deal and Kennedy, 1982; Hofstede, 1998; Martin, 1992; Trice and Beyer, 1984).

Van Maanen and Barley (1985) define subcultures as a subset of an Subcultures and organization’s members who interact regularly with one another, identify employment themselves as a distinct group within the organization, share a set of problems, modes and routinely take action on the basis of collective understandings unique to the group. The main difference between cultures and subcultures is that a culture is a unitary whole while subcultures paint a picture of multiple small 295 cultures coexisting within the same organization (Hatch, 1997). Moreover, subcultures or countercultures (Martin and Siehl, 1983) may resist or deny predominant organizational values, thereby undermining or constraining the implementation of particular HR strategies. Where subcultures within a firm clash with its HR strategies, conflicts of interest naturally arise, strategies are resisted, and the firm’s performance may ultimately be impaired. Consistent with this perspective and the belief that organizations comprise multiple subcultures, we argue that subcultures with their associated behavioral norms, routines, and habits not only exist but also play a significant role, influencing the degree to which HR strategies are successfully translated into HR practice. Additional perspectives on organizational culture that have implications for HR architectures suggest that organizational culture may be integrated, differentiated, or fragmented (Meyerson and Martin, 1987). The integrated view emphasizes organization-wide consensus, consistency and clarity (Trice and Beyer, 1993). From this perspective, culture is viewed as an integrating mechanism that fosters a level of sharing and homogeneity among organizational members. Cultural integration is said to exist in organizations where all members share in an organization-wide consensus (Martin, 1992). Some would argue, however, that these “integrative” or “strong culture” models are too simplistic (Saffold, 1988), and that similarities among cultural traits may create the appearance of a unitary, integrated culture in organizations, while actually disguising or ignoring subcultural differences. Likewise, Legge (1989) argues that this “strong culture” is aimed at uniting employees through managerially sanctioned values that assume an identification of employee and employer interests. We agree that these assumptions oversimplify the true nature of organizational functioning and assert that, rather than striving for a “strong culture” as a best practice, organizations could benefit from designing HR strategies that recognize and accommodate different subcultures within a firm. Consistent with this, Sackmann (1992), in her study of organization cultures and subcultures, concluded by suggesting: . . . if a more differentiated cultural perspective is applied, “strong cultures” could turn out to be less consistent, less strong, and less homogeneous than they appear to be (Sackmann, 1992, p. 156).

Lepak and Snell (1999, p. 45) also argue, “there may actually be no one best set of practices for every employee within the firm”. Likewise, Van Maanen and Barley (1984) suggest that multiple subcultures appear to be the rule in practice, and unitary cultures are an exception.

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In light of rising dissimilarity in employment modes, and the dwindling number of firms that steadfastly apply best practices such as high wages, job security and constant training to all workers across global markets, it will become increasingly difficult for companies to maintain these “strong” integrative cultures. Although most SHRM studies assume a direct main effect of a generalized culture on performance, growing changes in employment modes may make it increasingly unrealistic for researchers to measure and view culture as a uniform construct. We build on developments in the organization culture literature that emphasize a differentiation perspective on organization cultures. The differentiation approach emphasizes the existence of multiple subcultures in an organization, rather than a single integrated culture that everyone in the organization consistently shares. The differentiation approach (Martin, 1992) suggests that behavioral norms and practices vary across organizational subunits and are not necessarily shared by all constituencies. Cultural manifestations, like behavioral norms and practices across subgroups in organizations, are perceived as inconsistent and conflicting. The differentiation approach also recognizes that complex organizations reflect broader national cultures and possess components of hierarchical, occupational, ethnic, racial, and gender-based identifications (Van Maanen and Barley, 1984). This approach views clarity and consensus as something that exists within subcultures (Hofstede, 1998) and subcultures are depicted as coherent, consistent, and stable wholes (Hatch, 1997). According to Martin and Frost (1995) the differentiation perspective includes at least two research subdivisions that have developed in distinctive ways from differing intellectual traditions. One includes interpretive or pluralistic studies that link the notion of subcultures to change (Martin and Siehl, 1983), and the other involves a more critical approach to management theory in general (Van Maanen, 1991). Interpretivists focus on the ongoing processes of sensemaking and meaning creation, seeking to understand the construction of culture (Schultz and Hatch, 1996). Furthermore, within the interpretivist paradigm, culture has often been conceptualized as a worldview or webs of significance (Geertz, 1973). A third approach to culture is the fragmentation approach (Meyerson and Martin, 1987). According to this perspective, the relationships between the manifestations of culture are complex, containing elements of contradiction and confusion (Martin and Frost, 1995). Lack of consistency, lack of consensus, and ambiguity are the key characteristics of the fragmentation view of culture. Embedded in constantly changing organizations, environments, and group boundaries, individuals have fragmented and fluid self-concepts (Martin, 1992). At times, an employee may perceive themselves as belonging to one subculture such as the core workforce (Mintzberg, 1979), and within the same workday another subculture becomes salient (e.g. being the only black male at a managerial meeting). From this perspective, variety and complexity among

individuals and groups are characteristic features of organizational life and Subcultures and influence the effectiveness of HR practices. According to Martin (1992), the employment fragmentation perspective can be defined as a post-modern critique of the modes differentiation approach. The focus of the critique is on the manner in which the differentiation perspective identifies subcultures using dichotomous thinking. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss post-modernism at 297 length; however, it does present some interesting considerations with regard to organizational culture and subcultures. While post-modernism offers a multiplicity of contradictory interpretations of organizational phenomena (Townley, 1989), it could provide insights into the strategies that make cultural accounts more representational of multiple voices in an organization (Martin and Frost, 1995). Numerous HR strategy implementation questions also emerge from the differentiation and fragmentation paradigms. The differentiation approach would suggest that HR strategy implementation is likely to be incremental and localized at the group level of analysis. Incentives for fully operationalizing the HR strategies are also likely to be driven by external and internal catalysts rather than a single corporate leader, and the locus of change is the subculture itself (Meyerson and Martin, 1987). The fragmentation perspective, on the other hand, would suggest that change is in constant flux, rather than an intermittent interruption in an otherwise stable state (Martin and Frost, 1995). The effective implementation of HR strategies at this individual level of analysis would require cognitive openness to change as well as a tolerance for ambiguity. As Meyerson and Martin (1987) assert, this acceptance of ambiguity, ironically, both induces and obscures continual change, making it difficult to manage. To operationalize organizational culture in this paper, we build on the organization culture dimensions that have been empirically tested by Hofstede et al. (1990), and Yeung et al. (1991), and develop a typology of organizational subcultures that we integrate with our framework presented in Figure 1. The four types of subcultures include: (1) employee-centered; (2) profession-centered; (3) task-centered; (4) innovation-centered. Yeung et al. (1991), in their study of the relationship between organizational culture and firm performance, found evidence to support the existence of clusters of cultures within a single firm. The first culture type they identified was a “group culture” that emphasized high degrees of commitment, loyalty and tradition on the part of employees. This culture concurs with Hofstede et al.’s (1990) “employee-oriented” culture, where high levels of employee commitment and loyalty are generated by paying significant amounts of attention to employees’ well-being. We have termed this type of culture “employee-

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centered”. The second culture type Yeung et al. (1991) tested was a “hierarchical culture”, characterized by many formal professional rules and policies. This dimension concurred with Hofstede et al.’s (1990) professional-oriented culture, where commitment to professional rules is emphasized. We termed this type of culture “profession-centered”. A third culture type Yeung et al. (1991) tested was a “rational culture” that emphasized the accomplishment of tasks and goals. We called this culture “task-oriented”, where groups attach great importance to compliance with rules and procedures associated with the actual completion of tasks rather than the process of completion. This dimension also concurred with Hofstede et al.’s (1990) “results-oriented” dimension that emphasizes the degree to which the completion of tasks is valued more highly than the process whereby they are fulfilled. The fourth and final culture type Yeung et al. (1991) explored was a “developmental culture” that was characterized by a strong commitment to innovation and development. We have termed this type of culture “innovation-centered”. Although Hofstede et al. (1990) did identify and test several additional culture types (open system orientation, tight control, and normative orientation), for the sake of simplicity, we chose not to incorporate these within the scope of our model. The typology that we propose is not intended to be exhaustive but merely illustrative of important relationships between organizational subcultures, employment modes, and HR strategies. Thus, although Hofstede et al. (1990) proposed six dichotomous cultural dimensions and Yeung et al. (1991) proposed four cultural dimensions, for the sake of explication and simplicity, we selected four dimensions that related well to the configurations of HR strategies and employment modes described by Lepak and Snell (1999). While Hofstede et al. (1990) and Yeung et al. (1991) set out to measure organizational culture, both studies found evidence of the existence of subcultures or multiple cultural clusters in a single firm. Therefore, instead of generating a completely new set of potential subcultural types, we chose rather to build on the empirical findings of these studies. To operationalize employment modes, we drew from Lepak and Snell’s (1999) theory of HR allocation. Their theory posits that organizations adopt different employment modes associated with the value and uniqueness of human capital. The employment modes include: . internal development of employees; . acquisition of HR; . contracting employees; and . building alliances. Their theory suggests that the decisions to “make” versus “buy” human capital ultimately depends on the value-creating potential of employees, as well as their uniqueness to a particular firm. Jobs low in value and uniqueness will tend to be externalized via contingent work arrangements, unlike those

possessing high value and uniqueness that will be developed internally. Subcultures and According to Lepak and Snell (1999), commitment-based HR configurations are employment characterized by a pattern of HR practices that foster employee involvement, modes supporting a mode of employment mode that involves the internal development of employees (the “make” approach). Market-based HR configurations are associated with modes of employment that foster the acquisition of human 299 capital (the “buy” approach). Compliance HR configurations are characterized by contracting employment modes and have many rules and regulations to ensure conformance to preset standards. Collaborative HR configurations involve structural arrangements that encourage and reward cooperation, and information sharing, and are associated with mutual alliances and partnerships. We believe that within most contemporary organizations, multiple organizational subcultures and employment modes coexist and influence the degree to which HR strategies are enacted. Admittedly, in more traditional firms, HR practices and employment modes are relatively similar across all employee groups. In most modern organizations, however, there are significant differences in HR practices across employees performing core versus non-core tasks. The results of Yeung et al.’s (1991) empirical efforts also suggest that: . . . organizations are seldom characterized by one pure culture type. They always represent a combination of different types, either driven by several dominant types, one dominant type, or no specific type (Yeung et al., 1991, p. 69).

These subcultures may include, for example, permanent and temporary hires, or employees who work in teams as compared to individual contributors. In sum, we propose that different subcultures and modes of employment together influence the degree to which new HR strategies are accepted and used in practice. Table II serves to highlight the key distinctions between employment modes and subcultures, as well as exemplify the proposed bundles of HR strategy, subculture, and employment mode necessary for the effective translation of HR strategy into HR practice. 3. Proposed framework: linking HR strategies, subcultures, employment modes, and HR practices Yeung et al. (1991) called for much further theoretical work to identify and unravel the complex relationships between changing organizational cultures and HRM. Although models are inherently incomplete depictions of the empirical world, Figure 1 attempts to illustrate the conceptual linkages between organizational subcultures and employment modes (Lepak and Snell, 1999) and their role in moderating the translation of HR strategy into HR practice. These HR strategies may include: . making or creating human capital; . buying or developing human capital;

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. .

contracting human capital; and partnering and collaborating for human capital (Lepak and Snell, 1999).

These strategies, in turn, are enabled or constrained by different subcultures (employee-, profession-, task-, or innovation-centered) and employment modes (internal, acquisition, contracting, collaborating). Different HR practices then ultimately influence HR outcomes such as commitment and organizational citizenship behavior that are important, but beyond the scope of this paper. As reflected in our framework, we believe that networks of HR strategies, moderated by bundles of organizational subcultures and employment modes, impact HR practices, not a single HR strategy that is uniformly applied across a culturally monolithic corporation. We believe that, in addition to the existence of multiple subcultures in a single firm, organizations can use multiple HR strategies, and various modes of employment simultaneously. Hence, while we propose certain configurations of subcultures, employment modes, and HR strategies, it should not be assumed that an organization has only one of these culture types or implements only a single type of HR strategy corporate-wide. Rather, we assert that organizations need to recognize and accommodate multiple subcultures, carefully aligning them with a complementary HR strategy, and employment mode. Figure 1 is intended primarily as a heuristic to exemplify the role of subcultures in moderating the relationship between HR strategy and practice. However, we recognize that interrelationships between subcultures in organizations may influence the degree to which HR practices are fully operationalized. By identifying some potential configurations of HR strategies, organizational subcultures, and employment modes within an organization, and then exploring the degree to which they are complementary, we believe, may provide useful insights regarding the dynamic nature of HR strategy implementation. Configurations are, in essence, dynamic (Miller, 1996) and they have the advantage of displaying synergies and organizational parts that complement one another. 3.1 Employee-centered subculture for creating human capital We propose that where the HR strategy aims to create or “make” human capital, the modes of employment should embrace the internal development of human capital (Lepak and Snell, 1999), and the subcultures should be employee-centered for the effective realization of the HR strategies. Employeecentered cultures are characterized by strong employee commitment to the organization where loyalty and traditions are valued (Hofstede et al., 1990). For example, high performance work systems that are characterized by high employee orientation are essential for promoting commitment and creating long-term employment relationships. This makes sense in that jobs that are loosely defined allow for greater flexibility and encourage employee involvement, necessary for enhancing commitment.

Possessing more employee-centered subcultures also translates into HR Subcultures and practices that foster the development of existing employees. Training and employment socialization programs that promote individual fit and development within the modes firm become particularly important under these conditions. Additionally, given that the focus is on long-term employment and commitment and loyalty toward the firm, succession and career planning initiatives become crucial for 301 sustaining this type of HR configuration, as well as the norms and behaviors that reinforce it. Therefore, we propose: P1. Where the HR strategies aim to create or “make” human capital, the employment mode that focuses on internal development, and subcultures that are employee-centered will positively support the translation of HR strategies into HR practice. 3.2 Profession-centered subcultures for acquiring human capital Where the HR strategies are market-based and the modes of employment involve the “buying” or acquisition of human capital, the associated subcultures are likely to be more profession-centered. Drawing from Hofstede et al. (1990) organizational culture research, these professioncentered cultures are characterized by strong adherence to professional standards, regulations, and norms. Business tends to be formal and structured. Organizations high in professional orientation will tend to benefit from the valuable skills that have been developed externally, while retaining them internally for the duration of the employment relationship. An example of a market-based employment system involves higher education where the terms and conditions of employment, although tightly controlled, tend to get set by the external labor market. A dominant factor and organizing principle in the employment relationships in higher education, is the external labor market (Cappelli, 1999). The “publish or perish” maxim highlights the fact that performance is often based on scholarly work judged by people external to one’s institution. Additionally, given that employment relationship is symbiotic and limited to the extent either employer or employee provides benefit to the other, performance evaluations become a critical HR practice in these organizations. Therefore, we propose: P2. Where the HR strategies are market based and aimed at “buying” human capital, the employment mode that focuses on the acquisition of human capital, and the subcultures that are profession-centered will positively support the translation of HR strategies into HR practice. 3.3 Task-centered subcultures for contracting human capital Where the HR strategies emphasize compliance and the modes of employment involve the contracting of human capital, we are likely to find subcultures that are task-centered. Task-centered cultures are characterized by a strong emphasis on goal accomplishment. In addition, organizational norms tend to

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encourage results-oriented employees and behavior tends to be governed by tighter controls enforced through close supervision (Hofstede et al., 1990). Task-centered cultures appear to be best suited where the employment mode supports the contracting of human capital, as these employees possess skills that are not core to the business and are of limited uniqueness. The aim in these settings is for employees to comply with the requirements for accomplishing particular tasks. According to Hakanson (1995), high levels of documentation are indicative of tight controls where organizational units tend to be more oriented toward customer satisfaction. Temporary employees, outsourcing, and leasing arrangements, all fall within this category. To enforce compliance, organizational units in this category enforce rules and regulations, upholding specific provisions regarding work protocols, and ensuring conformance to preset standards (Lepak and Snell, 1999). This is intuitively indicative of organizational subcultures that emphasize tight control and a pragmatic orientation. Hence, whereas training and development may have been essential HR practices stemming from other HR strategies, rewards and incentives become critical HR practices to motivate employees to be productive under this scenario. Therefore, we propose: P3. Where HR strategies emphasize compliance, employment modes that are contractual, and subcultures that are task-centered will positively support the translation of HR strategy into HR practice 3.4 Innovation-centered subcultures for creating human capital alliances Where the HR strategies emphasize collaborative partnerships and the modes of employment involve alliances and networks of relationships, we are likely to find organizational subcultures that are innovation-centered. Innovationcentered cultures are characterized by loose controls and high creativity (Hofstede et al., 1990). Emphasis in these environments is on growth through the development of new ideas. The networks and partnerships so characteristic of these HR systems, are what drive the unique capability for innovation and flexibility in Silicon Valley firms, for example (Breslau, 2000; Cappelli, 1999). In addition, a logical extension of this mode of employment is the need for organizational subcultures that encourage creativity and flexibility. These subcultures should be high in process orientation and loose controls, given that flexible work systems are necessary to promote and enhance alliances and business partnerships. The HR practices that become critical under these conditions include training employees in process and networking skills, communication efforts, and organizational learning programs to promote the knowledge sharing. Therefore, we propose: P4. Where the HR strategy focus on collaboration, employment modes that foster alliances, and subcultures that are innovation-centered will positively support the translation of HR strategy into HR practice.

4. Conclusion and future research directions Subcultures and This paper provides ways to operationalize organizational subcultures and employment employment modes and their role in the translation of HR strategy into HR modes practice. The extant research pertaining to each of these constructs has tended to examine these issues separately, overlooking their interdependence. Although the level of change has focused on the mobilization and enactment 303 of strategic HR, our framework is unique in that it highlights the importance of organizational subsystems in the realization of HR strategies. We have argued that previous SHRM theorizing has tended to underestimate the role of organizational subsystems in constraining or enabling change within the HR domain. Not only do these organizational subgroups play a significant role in ensuring that HR strategies are effectively implemented, but they can potentially undermine HR change efforts altogether. For example, countercultures may inhibit mergers from achieving their intended ends, where subcultures within the merging organizations resist the new HR policies. Similarly, downsizings may call into question the legitimacy of past HR policies that foster long-term employment relationships. These organizational subcultural dynamics and ongoing changes in employment modes provide at least some explanation for the varied success in converting HR strategies into effective HR practices. We believe that the main difference between top performing and mediocre organizations is not so much that one has a “strong”, integrated culture supporting its strategic initiatives, but rather that their configurations of multiple organization subcultures and HR strategies are aligned in the optimal way. Future studies might investigate relationships suggested by our propositions, thereby testing and further exploring the links between constructs derived from Lepak and Snell’s (1999) theory of HR allocation and our discussion of organizational subcultures. Research, based on these propositions, will contribute to our knowledge of what the optimal configurations of HR strategy, subcultures, and employment modes should look like. This knowledge, in turn, would suggest practical approaches to dealing with the effective translation of HR strategy into practice. Recognizing the role of subcultures in organizations will also allow for greater validity of the conclusions drawn from empirical work that attempts to measure the effective implementation and diffusion of HR strategies. HR practitioners and change specialists would also be able to better understand why certain strategic HR initiatives are supported and effectively enacted in organizations and why others are simply resisted. Knowledge in this area would also help answer questions regarding the gaps between that which is espoused versus that which is truly operationalized in the HR function. What, for example, is the degree to which subcultures need to be aligned in order for HR strategies to be operationalized effectively? How do these subcultures influence the readiness of employee subgroups to accept the HR strategies? How compatible are the

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existing HR strategies, organizational subcultures, and employment modes? How are HR outcomes such as employee commitment, and organizational citizenship behavior associated with HR strategy translation and organizational subcultures? It is critical that scholars begin to test the combined effect of organizational subcultures and changing employment modes on the implementation of SHRM initiatives. It is too simplistic to think that one type of HR strategy and employment relationship will be appropriate for all employees. We believe that organizations do not manage all employee groups the same way and HR systems are rarely monolithic and uniformly applied. Rather, configurations of HR strategies, employment modes, and organizational subcultures influence the type and effectiveness of HR practices. Future empirical HRM studies need to reflect this reality. Having a set of divisive subcultures or countercultures, for example, could undermine the impact that a well-designed HR strategy may have on organizational change and performance. We believe researchers should also investigate how a firm’s multiple subcultures and employment modes enhance a firm’s overall ability to adjust and succeed in today’s global marketplace. Research is needed that helps us better understand how firms incorporate flexibility into their HR architecture to adapt to changing environments (Lepak and Snell, 1999). Could this be achieved through harnessing the resources of diverse subcultures within organizations? Essentially, this paper seeks to foster future empirical work that explores the influence of organizational subcultures and changing employment modes on the translation of HR strategies into practice. Ultimately, only through cumulative empirical evidence, based on sound theoretical research, will valid evidence regarding the role of organizational subcultures in facilitating or hindering systematic SHRM initiatives be brought to fruition. We trust that this paper will inspire others to join in the quest to replace statements about the importance of organizational subcultures and changing employment modes with more formal frameworks and empirical evidence. As Purcell (1999) notes, progress in SHRM theories will only be made when the rationality of the resource view is combined with the subjectivity of behavioral theories. References Arthur, J.B. (1994), “Effects of human resource systems on manufacturing performance and turnover”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 37, pp. 670-87. Barney, J. (1986), “Organizational culture: can it be a source of sustained competitive advantage?”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 11, pp. 656-65. Barney, J. (1991), “Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage”, Journal of Management, Vol. 17, pp. 99-120. Breslau, K. (2000),. “Silicon Valley: microcosm of the future”, Newsweek, 18 September, pp. 52-3. Cappelli, P. (1999), The New Deal at Work: Managing the Market-Driven Workforce, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.

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Lepak, D.P. and Snell, S.A. (1999), “The human resource architecture: toward a theory of human capital allocation and developments”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 24, pp. 31-48. MacDuffie, J.P. (1995), “Human resource bundles and manufacturing performance: organizational logic and flexible production systems in the world auto industry”, Industrial & Labor Relations Review, Vol. 48, pp. 197-221. Martin, J. (1992), Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives, Oxford University Press, New York, NY. Martin, J. and Frost, P. (1995), “The organizational culture war games: a struggle for intellectual dominance”, Handbook of Organizational Studies, pp. 599-621. Martin, J. and Siehl, C. (1983), “Organizational culture and counterculture: an uneasy symbiosis”, Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 12, pp. 52-64. Meyer, A.D., Tsui, A.S. and Hinings, C.R. (1993), “Configurational approaches to organizational analysis”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 36, pp. 1175-95. Meyerson, D. and Martin, J. (1987), “Cultural change: an integration of three different views”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 24, pp. 623-47. Miller, D. (1996), “Configurations revisited”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 17, pp. 505-12. Mintzberg, H. (1979), The Structuring of Organizations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Osterman, P. (1994), “How common is workplace transformation and how can we explain who adopts it? Results from a national survey”, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 47, pp. 173-88. Pfeffer, J. (1994), Competitive Edvantage through People: Unleashing the Power of the Work Force, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Pfeffer, J. and Baron, J.N. (1988), “Taking the workers back out: recent trends in the structuring of employment”, Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 10, pp. 257-303. Purcell, J. (1999), “High commitment management and the link with contingent workers: implications for strategic human resource management”, Research in Personnel and Human Resource Management Supplement, Vol. 4, pp. 239-57. Rousseau, D. (1995), Psychological Contracts in Organizations: Understanding Written and Unwritten Agreements, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Sackmann, S.A. (1992), “Culture and subcultures: an analysis of organizational knowledge”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 37, pp. 140-61. Saffold, G.S. (1988), “Culture traits, strength, and organizational performance: moving beyond ‘strong’ culture”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 13, pp. 546-58. Schein, E.H. (1985), Organizational Culture and Leadership, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Schein, E.H. (1996), “Culture: the missing link in organizational studies”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 41, pp. 229-40. Schneider, B. (1990), Organizational Climate and Culture, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Schultz, M. and Hatch, M.J. (1996), “Living with multiple paradigms: the case of paradigm interplay in organizational culture studies”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 21, pp. 529-57. Smircich, S.L. (1983), “Concepts of culture and organizational analysis”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 28, pp. 339-58. Snell, S.A., Youndt, M.A. and Wright, P.M. (1996), “Establishing a framework for research in strategic human resource management: merging resource theory and organizational learning”, in Ferris, G.R. (Ed.), Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 61-90.

Townley, B. (1989), “Selection and appraisal: reconstituting ‘social relations’?”, in Storey, J. (Ed.), New Perspectives on Human Resource Management, Routledge, London, pp. 92-108. Trice, H.M. and Beyer, J.M. (1984), “Studying organizational cultures through rites and ceremonies”, Academy of Management Review, pp. 653-69. Trice, H. and Beyer, J. (1993), The Cultures of Work Organizations, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Tsui, A.S., Pearce, J.L., Porter, L.W. and Hite, J.P. (1995), “Choice of employee-organization relationship: influence of external and internal organization factors”, in Ferris, G.R. (Ed.), Research in Personnel And Human Resource Management, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, pp. 117-51. Tsui, A.S., Pearce, J.L., Porter, L.W. and Tripoli, A.M. (1997), “Alternative approaches to the employee-organization relationship: does investment in employees pay off?”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 40, pp. 1089-121. Van Maanen, J. (1991), “The smile factory: work at Disneyland”, in Frost, P., Moore, L., Louis, M., Lundberg, C. and Martin, J. (Eds), Organizational Culture, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA. Van Maanen, J. and Barley, S. (1984), “Occupational communities”, in Staw, B. and Cummings, L.L. (Eds), Research in Organizational Behavior, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, Vol. 6, pp. 287-365. Van Maanen, J. and Barley, S. (1985), “Cultural organization: fragments of a theory”, in Frost, P., Moore, L., Louis, M., Lundberg, C. and Martin, J. (Eds), Organizational Culture, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA. Weick, K. (1985), “The significance of corporate culture”, in Frost, P., Moore, L., Louis, M., Lundberg, C. and Martin, J. (Eds), Organizational Culture, Sage, Beverly Hills, CA. Whittington, R., Pettigrew, A., Peck, S., Fenton, E. and Conyon, M. (1999), “Change and complementarities in the new competitive landscape: a European panel study 1992-1996”, Organizational Science, Vol. 10 No. 5, pp. 583-600. Whyte, W.F. (1956), The Organization Man, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY. Wright, P. and Snell, S.A. (1998), “Toward a unifying framework for exploring fit and flexibility in strategic human resource management”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 23, pp. 756-72. Yeung, A.K.O., Brockbank, J.W. and Ulrich, D.O. (1991), “Organizational culture and human resource practices: an empirical assessment”, in Research in Organizational Change and Development, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, Vol. 5, pp. 59-81.

Further reading Becker, B. and Gerhart, B. (1996), “The impact of human resource management on organizational performance: progress and prospects”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 39, pp. 799-801. Coovert, M.D. (1995), “Technological changes in office jobs: what we know and what we can expect”, in Howard, A. (Ed.), The Changing Nature of Work, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp. 175-208. Davis, D. (1995), “Technology and the organization of work”, in Howard, A. (Ed.), The Changing Nature of Work, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp. 112-38. Davis-Blake, A. and Uzzi, B. (1993), “Determinants of employment externalization: a study of temporary workers and independent contractors”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 38, pp. 195-223. Dennison, D. (1990), Corporate Culture and Organizational Effectiveness, Wiley, New York, NY.

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Hackman, R. (1994), “Doing research that makes a difference”, Technical Report, Yale University, New Haven, CT. Howard, A. (1995), “Rethinking the psychology of work”, in Howard, A. (Ed.), The Changing Nature of Work, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, pp. 513-55. Kinnie, N. and Purcell, J. (2000) “Employment regimes for ‘factories of the future’: Human resource management in telephone call centres”, paper presented at National Academy of Management meetings, Toronto. Lautsch, B. (2000), paper presented at the Industrial Relations Research Association National Meetings, Boston, MA. Martinez, P.G., Pearce, J., Porter, L., Tsui, A. (2000), “Organization-level measures and their consequences: strategic investment in human resources management”, paper presented at National Academy of Management Meetings Symposium, Toronto. Peters, T.J. and Waterman, R.H. (1982), In Search of Excellence, Harper & Row, New York, NY. Pfeffer, J. (1998), The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Pfeffer, J. and Salancik, G.R. (1978), The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective, Harper & Row, New York, NY. Prahalad, C.K. and Hamel, G. (1990), “The core competence of the corporation”, Harvard Business Review, May-June. Rousseau, D. (1990), “Assessing organization culture: the case for multiple methods”, in Schneider, B. (Ed.), Organizational Climate and Culture, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Snell, S.A. and Youndt, M.A. (1995), “Human resource management and firm performance: testing a contingency model of executive controls”, Journal of Management, Vol. 21, pp. 711-37. Sparrow, P., Schuler, R. and Jackson, S. (1994), “Convergence of divergence: human resource practices and policies for competitive advantage worldwide”, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 267-99. Tsui, A. (1990), “A multiple-constituency model of effectiveness: an empirical examination at the human resource subunit level”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 35, pp. 458-83. Tsui, A. and Milkovich, G. (1987), “Personnel department activities: constituency perspectives and preferences”, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 40, pp. 519-37. Ulrich, D. and Lake, D. (1990), Organizational Capability: Competing from the Inside out, Wiley, New York, NY. Van Dyne, L. and Ang, S. (2000), “Human resource architecture for coping with severe labor shortages: strategies for embracing foreign workers in organizations”, paper presented at National Academy of Management Meetings, August, Toronto. Wright, P. and McMahan, G. (1992), “Theoretical perspectives for strategic human resource management”, Journal of Management, Vol. 18, pp. 295-320. Youndt, M.A., Snell, S.A., Dean, J. and Lepak, D.P. (1996), “Human resource management, manufacturing strategy, and firm performance”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 39, pp. 836-66.

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HRM and the beginnings of organizational change Helen Francis Napier University, Edinburgh, UK Keywords Human resource management, Organizational change, Communication, Teamworking

HRM and organizational change 309 Received March 2002 Revised September 2002 Accepted December 2002

Abstract This paper presents a discourse-analytic approach to the study of human resource management (HRM) and organisational change, which is more sensitive than conventional research designs to the dynamic role of language in shaping processes of change. The prevailing positivism within business and management research is noted, in which language is treated as unproblematic; it simply mirrors or represents an objective “reality” that can be measured in some way. In contrast, discourse-based studies accept that language is not simply reflective of reality, but is significant in constituting reality. The paper moves on to examine the potential of discoursebased studies to offer fresh insights into the role of HRM in producing change. Drawing on the work of Ford and Ford, change is treated as a “shift in conversation” and case-study evidence is presented of the surfacing of a change initiative within a large UK manufacturing firm.

1. Introduction A common theme within the human resource management (HRM) literature in recent years has been the take-up of “new style” HRM practices designed to achieve high levels of employee performance, flexibility and commitment. Here, human resource (HR) practices are placed in a much more direct relationship with organisational policy making and performance issues than traditional approaches to personnel management (Bach and Sisson, 2000). Within this context there has been much debate about the alleged strategic contribution of HRM to actual change processes. This is dominated by positivist accounts that treat the organisation as a concrete entity and HRM practices as being relatively easily definable and measurable (for example, Delaney and Huselid, 1996; Patterson et al., 1997; Guest, 1997, 2001). I eschew such a realist view of the organisational world and in this article present a social constructionist stance that allows for a richer understanding of the role of HRM and centrality of language in constituting organisational change. On doing so, I will draw on discourse theory to reveal the part played by the HRM function in producing shifts in language use during the start-up of a planned change effort aimed at introducing teamworking within a UK manufacturing firm given the synonym SutCo. 2. Human resource management and organisational change At the centre of the debate about the distinctiveness of HRM in relation to traditional personnel management practice is the belief that managing human

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resources is of “strategic” importance and the concept of the HR professional as change agent (Caldwell, 2001; Storey, 1992, 1995, 2001; Guest, 1987, 1990; Hall and Torrington, 1998). The emerging significance of the “changemaker” role among HR professionals is well documented, and linked with this increasing attention has been drawn by analysts to the pivotal position of the HRM function in reinterpreting symbols and changing meanings for employees (for instance, Storey, 1992; Tyson, 1995; Caldwell, 2001; Ulrich, 1997). Recent work by Tyson (1995, 1997), for example, demonstrates the central importance of HRM processes to strategic change and emergence of shared definitions at the workplace. He explains that the “strategic value” of HRM lies in its potential to provide a “meaning structure” that allow managers from different disciplines and different levels of strategic decision making to develop a common language of change. While qualitative research of this kind usefully draws attention to the special role of HRM in meaning creation, it typically fails to provide much scope for in-depth analysis of how and why HRM acts in this way, especially how shifts in language-use shape our constructions of organisational “reality” (Butcher and Atkinson, 2001). A growing number of analysts are calling for empirical work which is more sensitive to the role of discourse in creation and re-creation of the “reality” of HRM practice and organisation life (for instance, Keenoy, 1997, 1999; Watson, 1994; Francis, 2002; Morgan and Sturdy, 2000). Keenoy (1997, 1999), for example, treats HRM as a powerful discourse that comprises a range of new (and fluid) linguistic categories; for instance excellence, customer-care and empowerment, that have the potential to provide a “conceptual re-envisioning of work relations in which ‘nothing has changed’ but everything will be perceived differently” (Keenoy, 1997, p. 836). Here, discourse is based on the idea that language is essentially social and dynamic and viewed as a practice, not just of representing the world, but constituting and constructing the world in meaning (Fairclough, 1992, p. 64). From this social constructionist perspective, organisational members are seen to structure their own realities and language is central to these processes of construction. Implicit in this approach is an action-oriented view of language, in which it is accepted that talk and action cannot be easily separated (Fairclough, 1992, 1995; Watson, 1994). In other words, people talk their way to solutions, talk themselves into working agreements and so on (Boden, 1994, cited by Hamilton, 2001, p. 443). The action component of “talk” (written and spoken) has important social and political implications for organisational change, illustrated in recent discourse analyses of the introduction of new management practices at the workplace. Examples include Watson’s (1994) ethnographic study of managerial work within a telecommunications factory, Knights and McCabe’s (1999) analysis of total quality management in a UK retail bank, and Francis’ (2002) account of change within a large manufacturing plant. Francis’ (2002) work draws specific attention to the role of rhetoric in shaping

organisational change and points to the need for further exploratory work into the “power effects” of HRM and the need for more reflective practice in language management of this kind. Rhetoric in this sense is defined as a form of “wordcraft” used as a means of persuasion by senior managers to construct and legitimise a particular “world view” of the employment relationship (McCloskey, 1994, cited by Francis, 2002, p. 2). Francis (2002) explains that meanings and positions created by change leaders through alterations in language-use are always open to re-articulation as organisational participants struggle to compete for power and status (see, for example, Knights and McCabe, 1999, 2002; Kelemen, 2000; Watson, 1994). New analytic metaphors that have been introduced by discourse theorists to encapsulate this dynamic include those that cast the organisation as “text”, “intertext” or “conversation” (Taylor, 1999; Putnam et al., 1999; Ford, 1999; Clegg et al.; 1999). Here, communication no longer mirrors or reflects reality, rather “it is formative in that it creates and represents the process of organising” (Putnam et al., 1999, p. 146). This notion of communication is central to Ford and Ford’s (1995) conceptualisation of organisational change as “shifting conversations” in which conversations are treated as both an expression and outcome of social construction, and include a mix of spoken, visual and written interactions (Ford, 1999; Ford and Ford, 1995). Their framework provides a useful lens for investigating how shifts in language use (conversation) produce change. Importantly, it shows how existing networks of conversation and the “orders of discourse” in which these evolve both act to constrain and facilitate new conversations of change[1]. In this context, the job of change leaders is to bring into existence a new “conversational reality” that frames the context within which subordinates develop new interpretive frames and behaviours at the workplace; a process similar to what Weick (1979, 1995) describes as the “bracketing” of experience or events into meaningful form. Ford and Ford (1995) argue that since the bracketing process is part of ongoing processes of social construction among organisational participants, there can be no singular beginning point to a planned change initiative. Nevertheless, they reason that conversations in the organisation arise at some point following a claim and/or declaration and describe these as “initiative conversations”. These are deliberately introduced by managers and likened to the “identification stage of organisational decision making”, in which managers attempt to get other managers to pay attention to what they are saying. The authors identify a total of four conversations for analysis: (1) initiative conversations; (2) conversations for understanding; (3) conversations for performance; and (4) conversations for closure.

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Each type plays a different role in producing organisational change as noted in Table I. “Conversational management” is described by Ford (1999, p. 8) as a mix of complex and uncertain processes unfolding “like experimental theatre in that the script is being written while the play is being performed”. This four-phased process of shifting conversations is consistent with notions of processual change introduced within the organisational development (OD) literature, in that it challenges the programmatic approach typical of traditional conceptualisations of OD, and emphasises the open-ended nature of change which is treated as a continuous process of learning based more on subjective and interpersonal meanings (Burnes, 1996; Grieves and Redman, 1999)[2]. Like Pettigrew (1985) and other well-known processualists, Ford and Ford recognise that the processes by which organisational members generate shared meaning are always in process of negotiation and/or conflict (for example, Pettigrew, 1985; Dawson, 1994; Doz and Prahalad, 1988). What remains under-researched in processual studies is the role of language and discursive practices in social construction of change processes and the “reality” of change (Knights and McCabe, 2002); points which are raised for discussion by Ford’s (1999) conception of change as shifting conversations. Building on these arguments, the aim of this paper is to draw on Ford and Ford’s (1995) work to reveal the role of HRM discourse in conversations for change within the SutCo case study. In doing so I aim to provide fresh insights into how organisational “reality” is socially constructed in, through, and by “conversations”. 3. Methodology and introduction to the case study The research reported here is drawn from findings from the first 18 months of a four-year longitudinal study of organisational change in SutCo, undertaken during the mid-1990s. Following Ford and Ford (1995), change is treated not as a single entity but a series of conversational episodes organised around particular themes which, in this case, involved the introduction of cellular manufacturing and teamwork. Findings are presented of a discourse analysis of company documents (including memos, briefing packs, letters and reports) and multiple taperecorded ethnographic interviews using key informant and snowball sampling techniques (Jankowicz, 2000). Interviews were held with three members of the management board, two departmental heads (resourcing and management development), three middle/junior line managers and two team leaders who were responsible for implementing the change. In addition, two group interviews were held with shopfloor employees and their “leading hands” and these were complemented by informal discussions with organisational participants held in canteens and offices, and attendance at briefing sessions between managers and staff. Building on a Faircloughian perspective (Fairclough, 1992, 1995, 2001a, b) discourse is viewed not only as a form of language use (text) or discursive

Initiative conversations:

Conversations for understanding:

Signal the beginnings of change and rely on assertions, directives, promises, and declarations to focus attention on what could or should be done. For example, a claim regarding some market imperative coupled with a request or promise and a declaration of a new future can be used to launch a new project.

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Characterised by assertions and “expressives” (the latter are expressions of an affective state such as one of apology or desire). Used to determine cause-effect relationships, these provide an opportunity to examine assumptions (and implications) that underlie thinking, develop a common language among change participants and create a shared context in which people learn how to talk to each other. Key “by-products” include specifications that define the intended end point of change, and involvement and support on the part of those engaged in the change.

Conversations for performance: Getting into Combinations of requests and promises action spoken that focus on generating action and intended results (expressives or assertions are considered “noise” at this stage). Performance conversations are necessary for co-ordinated action, required to move the change forward. Conversations for closure: Completing the change

Source: Ford and Ford (1995)

Characterised by assertions, expressives and declarations to bring about an end to the change process, these involve summaries, justifications for termination, expressions of positive sentiments, and discussions of continuity in which things are related to a larger context that is not ending.

Table I. Four conversations of change

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practice, but also regarded as a form of social practice – the arena within which social life is produced, be it economic, political, cultural, or everyday life. From this position the task of discourse analysis is to study discourse as texts and talk in social practices – what people do with language in specific social settings (Alvesson and Karreman, 2000, p. 1127). Data analysis and gathering procedures took place simultaneously, enabling me to cycle back and forth between thinking about existing material and generating strategies for collecting and coding new material. A start list of codes was drawn up after the first few interviews and collection of archival material which reflected initial themes guiding the research and some more specific codes closer to respondents’ categories. Coded material was summarised and placed into sets of “partially-ordered” matrix displays arranged in time-order and also according to the role occupancy of respondents. Matrices imposed minimal conceptual structure on the material displayed and, following Miles and Huberman (1994), included a mixture of direct quotes and summary phrases. Careful to avoid destroying the meaning of material through intensive coding, case summaries were also developed that became central to my methods of analysis and gaining insight into the flow and connection of events and issues emerging from the case. The final case study write-up was subsequently drawn from a synthesis of matrices (archival and interview data), case summaries, and continual referral to source material[3]. At the time of the research, SutCo employed approximately 1,500 people, of whom about 1,200 were production workers (operators). Traditional management practice within the organisation was embedded in an organisational culture in which jobs were highly specialised, and decision making firmly rested with management. A supervisor and their “leading hand” managed each department in which work performance was strictly controlled through an individual output-based incentive bonus system, and the development of operators was restricted to job training in one particular skill. In contrast to these control-centred practices, there was also a strong welfare orientation built into personnel practices that sought to engender worker loyalty and a family atmosphere at the plant. Launched under the label of “continuous flow manufacture” (CFM), the stated aim of the change programme was to move away from batch to cellular manufacturing of products and the development of self-directed production “cells” supported by the introduction of group as opposed to individual incentive arrangements. An incremental approach was adopted that rested on the establishment of a “pilot cell”, followed by the staged creation of new cells over a period of five years. As cells were established, supervisors became known as “team leaders” and the positions of “cell group leader” and “CFM manager” were established which included responsibility for managing the day-to-day implementation of change.

The calls for change were first made by the operations director, who created a steering group and various sub-committees responsible for devising a topdown strategy for change. There was no representation from shopfloor workers or their immediate line managers on these committees. Subsequent management communications about the pilot cell included recruitment bulletins posted on notice boards, articles in the company (monthly) magazine and large-scale briefing sessions held on the shopfloor by department heads and/or operations/personnel directors. Communications were framed by a new rhetoric introduced by change leaders, characterised by metaphors commonly associated with “new style” HRM practices; for example, “market” and “team” (Keenoy, 1997, 1999; Francis, 2002), and these are examined in the following case analysis. 4. Case analysis The case analysis is divided into two sections. The first examines the role of the HR function in the beginnings of change, illustrating the use of metaphor to create successful initiative conversations and favourable images of the need for change. The second section shows how conversations for understanding failed to progress to conversations for performance and closure that Ford and Ford (1995) suggest must happen if change is to be successful. 4.1 Role of HRM in the creation of initiative conversations for change Characteristic of “initiative conversations” (Ford and Ford, 1995), early communications to organisational members about CFM promised greater employee autonomy and more varied work, legitimised by a range of assertions, claims and declarations about the need for organisational change. Couched by “ontological” metaphors; that is, ways of viewing organisational events and activities as discrete entities (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980, p. 25), these conversations provided a critical means of conveying a congruence of interests between management and workers. For instance, recruitment notices for the pilot cell drew on claims about the danger of “market forces” and “increased competition” and talked of the “necessity” (of cell working) created by our “customers’ needs”, and the need to compete effectively in “the marketplace”. Rhetorical attempts to relate the move to cell working to inevitable wider economic and social forces dominated ongoing messages about claims for the need for change. These placed responsibility on employees as well as managers on bringing in “sufficient orders for the future employment of us all” (recruitment notice). Recruitment notices also drew on the metaphor of “team”, designed to create positive images of CFM that focused on “more challenging and rewarding work” and which downplayed the less palatable aspects of teamworking; the potential loss of earnings, loss of status and removal of differentials between skilled and semi-skilled operators. They were characterised by promises of a

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new operational reality that centred on introduction of an “innovative work structure” based on notions of employee autonomy and teamworking. All members were to be paid a common basic salary plus a group incentive calculated over a period of a fortnight. One personnel manager explained that these arrangements were to provide an important catalyst to a shift in emphasis from an individualistic and instrumental approach to work, to one based on employee commitment and teamwork. These initiative conversations appeared to have a strong initial impact on their target audience, reflected in a high number of applications for transfer into the “pilot cell” (this comprised a total of 31 staff across two shifts). In practice, however, respondents remarked that the new recruits found their initial experience of cell working was little different to traditional assembly line work and that their immediate line managers continued to display a “command and control” style of management. For example, the head of resourcing described the operation of the pilot cell as a “a mini production department” in which operators worked on specialist tasks very much as before, with little or no job rotation, but became responsible for their own quality inspection of products. He explained that a traditional “engineering culture” prevailed among operational line managers which emphasised the control of costs and plant reliability, and this placed severe restrictions on the extent to which cell members were allowed to become multi-skilled, and in the development of “soft” team development skills. His remarks suggested that line managers were stuck in “past conversational patterns” (Ford, 1999) about organising, monitoring and control of work systems that provided little scope for the kind of employee development and empowerment expressed in recent recruitment bulletins/briefing statements to people on the shopfloor. These past conversational patterns appeared to be dominated by an accountancy discourse described by the personnel director as an “accountancy logic”. He explained that line management activities were framed by an awareness that their performance was “censured by negative variances”, and because of this, production and work-study managers spent a lot of time “chasing the origins of the nature of negative variances” as required by longstanding cost accounting procedures. One cell member voiced the impact of this dynamic: If they [management] want it to be a cell and work according to the theory of how a cell should work, then they have got to allow for this. The accounting system doesn’t help. There are people saying no, we can’t have them doing that, we have got to put them on direct time or whatever, related to output and targets (“leading hand”, pilot cell).

The dominance of the “accountancy logic” over the emergent HRM discourse was further represented in the establishment of new monitoring procedures for the pilot cell devised by the CFM manager, outlined in the memorandum, “Benefits associated with CFM”. Here, measures of effective “teamworking” and/or employee involvement were absent and attention given to measures

more consistent with traditional cost accounting conventions; reduction in indirect labour and service department costs (quality assurance), and a reduction in inventory holding costs. Within this context, moving the CFM project beyond the pilot stage required a shift in conversation in which line and personnel managers could reach agreement about the legitimacy of a high investment in HRM practices and conditions of satisfaction for change. The personnel director assumed a significant role in re-creating initiative conversations in this regard, and was author of a change strategy titled “CFM cells – people strategy” that presented a more positive image of CFM predicated on bringing line managers “on board” to the principles of employee involvement (personnel director). The document was circulated among senior managers and formed the basis of a briefing of all future manufacturing management by the personnel and operations directors. It focused on the need to create common values and interests across different levels and functions of management, and recognised the politics arising from this: [. . .] We must also be certain that all manufacturing line management, from supervisors upwards, are as truly committed as their senior management to the full company strategy of cell working and all that this means. For despite assurances, it has to be said that a significant element of middle and junior line management are clinging, perhaps understandably, to a belief that yesterday’s thinking will prevail – that multi-skilling will not actually take place – that employee empowerment will never happen – that the role of line management will remain unassailably dictatorial. We must strike this iron while it’s hot. The “iron” of employee attitude towards cells is currently malleable and glowing red. If we delay, attitude will cool and harden again, and there may be those with vested interests in the status quo who would pour cold water for this very purpose. If we strike fast but crudely, attitude will assume that overall shape forever. On the other hand, if we move professionally, sensitively and quickly, we can ensure a flexible, mobile, cellular workforce of world-class calibre.

Through a mix of metaphors this narrative presented forceful arguments for initiating a change in line management attitudes, thinking and behaviour and hence a “conversational shift” (Ford, 1999). “Clinging” in conjunction with “yesterday thinking”, emphasised relations of contestation and struggle between the traditional command and control style of management and the emergent discourse of HRM that espoused employee autonomy and development. “Striking while the iron is hot” and “glowing red” expressed a sense of urgency for change, reinforced by images of “pouring cold water” and “hardening of attitudes” if change agents failed to act quickly and in unison. On this basis, emphasis was placed on declarations of “an urgent need to take observable action on communications, recruitment, training, development and payment”. HRM practices were, in Ford and Ford’s (1995) terms, regarded as important mechanisms for producing “initiative conversations” and a move towards “conversations for understanding”. The personnel director explained that

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acceptance of change was seen to “rely heavily on early, clear awareness communication”, aimed at creating a readiness for the need for change as well as gaining ownership of the change. His strategy document also pointed to how he saw HR practices facilitate a move towards conversations of understanding, in which people work to, not only make sense of the issue or opportunity but to move the matter forward (Ford and Ford, 1995). For instance, communications and training programmes were viewed as critical levers in achieving “clarification of short-term and long (two-year) objectives and, importantly, an early sense of management purpose and direction” (CFM strategy document). The following sections examine the role of such HR interventions in conversations of change and how these failed to progress beyond conversations of understanding. 4.2 Moves towards conversations for understanding on the shopfloor: the role of factory briefings and new recruitment procedures Communications to manufacturing managers about the “CFM people strategy” was followed by a briefing to all manufacturing employees by personnel/operations directors. This was structured to generate support for the creation of new cells, articulated in a document “CFM briefing strategy programme” (circulated to the CFM steering group). It included a written set of questions and answers characterised by assertions and expressives about the importance of CFM, coupled with promises about employee development and multi-skilling, exemplified in the following excerpts: Q. What is the main benefit to the company of CFM? A. The main benefit to the company is the reduction of manufacturing lead times (the time taken to produce the product). This enables a quicker reaction to the needs of our customers (assertion). Q. How is this benefit achieved? A. This benefit is achieved by adding value rather than cost to the product, by reducing the costs associated with: – counting it, moving it, storing it, expediting it, searching for it, transferring it, accumulating it, inspecting it (assertion). Q. Will I get any other training? A. Yes. You’ll be given special training in team-building, in how to best solve your own problems as a group, how to enjoy putting into practice some of the team’s ideas. Also, to give you more variety in your daily work – and to bring flexibility to the team – you’ll be trained in other tasks for which you are suited (promise).

Employees were also advised of new recruitment procedures for cell working, which included the introduction of a telephone-screening instrument and which stressed the importance of “working as a team”, “team training” and the need to develop “team player attitudes” (Internal Report presented by head of resourcing). These procedures promised a vision of work which appealed to a high number of applications for internal transfer into cells: There was a very positive response from traditional workers to advertisement of vacancies within cellular manufacturing [. . .] They were very fired up about the idea of multi-skilling and getting the opportunity for a bit more variety, a bit more training in their work (Training and development manager).

The narrative suggests that recruitment practices evoked a positive response from the shopfloor about cell working, making them receptive to managementled conversations about how to move the change forward. 4.3 Moves towards conversations for understanding among supervisory/line staff: the role of CFM awareness training Moves to engage line managers in conversations for understanding centred round “CFM awareness seminars”, run with the help of external consultants. Notice of these workshops was given to staff in a memorandum, which claimed that: CFM is perhaps one of the most important strategic initiatives we have been involved in. To date it has generally been viewed as an operational issue, but the opportunities and implications of CFM are, in fact, much wider. CFM is an organisational issue (Memorandum: “Management development, CFM awareness seminars”).

Workshops included a seminar on “Why CFM?” and a practical exercise called the “JIT game”, aimed at creating a shift in awareness and understanding about the change effort and conditions of satisfaction for the change. [. . .] managers should leave the seminar with a clear understanding of the critical benefits obtainable from CFM and an appreciation of the fundamental differences between CFM and conventional manufacturing techniques (Memorandum: “Management development, CFM awareness seminars”).

Characterised by assertions and expressives, workshops provided an opportunity to develop a common language among change participants in order to create a particular “world view” of CFM and a shift towards conversations for understanding. The following quotes are excerpts from a training manual titled “CFM training programme: awareness sessions”: The impact that successful implementation can have on a company is phenomenal. Toyota’s manufacturing costs are 30 percent lower than Western car companies. [. . .] Companies in many industries, with products ranging from forged metal components to complex electronic assemblies, have been equally successful in achieving outstanding results (assertions). The addition of employee contributions to the business goals of best quality and delivery with lowest manufacturing costs is not just a nod to employee involvement. In the CFM production system, employees are given much broader responsibility and authority, are trained in many technical disciplines necessary to the effective exercise of such responsibility and authority, and are kept informed on the performance of their operators (promises). Much of the success of the system comes from employee efforts to improve this performance. The sense of contribution is earned and deserved (expressive).

Ford and Ford (1995) explain that shifts towards conversations for understanding do not necessarily mean that any agreement for undertaking a change has been made, only that the initiative issues raised have been accepted for subsequent discussion (Ford and Ford, 1999, p. 553, emphasis

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added). If successful, the process would create a shared context in which people construct a common language and understandings about conditions of satisfaction for the change. At SutCo, there was evidence that CFM workshops had had some success in re-creating initiative conversations and a shift towards generating agreement and understanding about the concept of CFM. However, respondents’ accounts suggested that the process did not go far enough in producing shared understandings about the degree of involvement, participation and support required of supervisory staff/line managers engaged in the change. In the opinion of two (of the younger serving) team leaders: They [trainers] talked about the usual stuff you hear about CFM, i.e. to develop employees within the cell, and to allow them to realise their potential. I was very excited about it all and very enthusiastic. They gave you a good insight into CFM or just-in-time, and showed you videos of other firms who had taken it on board. Yes, we thought CFM would be a great opportunity for operators; that they would learn more skills, do some supervisory work, clerical work. And they were all for it. Expectations were high. Operators moving into cells were looking forward to multi-skilling not only on the production assembly side, but also in clerical duties (control of absence, holidays).

Longer serving employees, notably those among the ranks of supervisor and middle manager, were less likely to “buy into” the ideal of CFM according to respondents interviewed. The head of resourcing explained that most supervisors had been promoted to their position because of their technical competence, and he felt that they lacked competence in the softer peopleoriented skills. Younger supervisors, recently transferred to the position of cell team leader, expressed similar sentiments: If you get someone who has been a supervisor for a long time – being this strong domineering type – it is very difficult for them to break away from that, and try to think that they are there to facilitate, and make sure that their teams are working as they should be.

Some respondents suggested that the risk of technical expertise being lost to lower levels instilled a fear among team leaders of relinquishing their status, and of becoming redundant. A more common theme was that training sessions had paid inadequate attention to the development of people management skills or to the contribution of team leaders to decision-making processes about the management of change. Consistent with the view that skills are constituted in conversation (Hardy et al., 1998), respondents referred to “a lack of time”, “a lack of guidance”, and a “lack of discussion” about the role of the team leader and leading hand during training sessions. For these participants, workshops failed to provide a critical forum within which collective understandings of the kind of people skills required to manage cells could be developed: They gave you a good insight into CFM [. . .]. But the training did not go far enough. There wasn’t enough discussion about managing a cell. We needed to learn how to make the transition from supervisor to facilitator, how to encourage people rather than being the dominant supervisor.

Yes, expectations were high [. . .] I would agree with Stan though, that we were not given enough guidance about how to manage people in cells.

Problems in generating conversations for understanding among line managers were exacerbated by conventions about the role of front line/middle managers in organisational decision making. Consistent with the tradition to confine higher level decision making to senior managers, top management had not involved supervisors in the initial design stage of change, or in the development of HRM practices in support of CFM. These actions were likely to influence their ability and/or interest in becoming involved in conversations for understanding about the new lexicon of change and how to administer some sort of employee involvement within cells. This problem might have been alleviated by the establishment of “horizontal coalitions”, allowing for team leaders/leading hands to interpret their own local tactics from an integrated perspective (Westley, 1990, p. 343). However, respondents talked of their relative isolation compared to traditional arrangements, under the new management regime, which excluded them from initiative conversations and conversations for understanding about the philosophy and practice of CFM. In the words of one team leader: Before, if something came up you would always have a foreman you could bounce ideas off and get his feelings, and see what was there. That has been taken away in the new manufacturing areas. We as team leaders are now left more or less without anyone between ourselves and senior management. In the traditional areas where there is something going on, you can have two, three or four supervisors working in that area, all working together, but when you go into a cell you are in there on your own; and some have continued very much as they did before.

Similar experiences were described by leading hands from other cells who described the emergence of an array of local meanings as leading hands and their team leaders created their own interpretations of CFM in the absence of pre-defined job descriptions, competencies, and conversations among peers: No one actually gave it [extra responsibility] to you, you just took it on board. In my instance I was given more or less a free reign on the day shift and I don’t think that anybody had defined what a leading hand should do in a cell. It just developed from there. Everyone is more or less getting on with it as they think fit, some cells enjoy a degree of autonomy; others are managed in the traditional way.

These statements highlight the significance of conversation (across different levels and functions of managers) as a medium in the continuous process of learning and negotiation of meanings at the workplace. Importantly, the lack of supervisor involvement in initiative conversations with their seniors and with their peers acted as a significant barrier to generating the level of understanding and momentum for change that had been created by change leaders among shopfloor workers.

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Case-study findings presented here are consistent with Ford’s (1999) suggestion that when change is understood as a “shift in conversation” resistance emerges not as an individual phenomenon but a function of current and past conversational patterns/orders of discourse (Ford, 1999; Fairclough, 1992; Knights and McCabe, 2002). As Ford (1999, p. 9) explains: While managers may believe they are engaged in explaining the need for change, they cannot ignore that they are also engaged in social interaction or with how what is being proposed relates to what has been proposed before. Indeed, it may well be that when managers profess they experience resistance, what they are experiencing is a response to a poor idea, a strained relation, or missing coherence, all of which are contained within the conversations they are having.

Supervisors’ resistance to change at SutCo can thus be seen in terms of a function of past and current conversational patterns that reflected particular management interests about who should be involved in managerial decision making, and preferred approaches to HRM (cost-centred versus more peopleoriented). In this context, CFM awareness sessions failed to provide sufficient impetus towards the creation of conversations of performance that were critical to the development of CFM along the lines promoted by change leaders.

5. Conclusion Drawing on Ford and Ford’s (1995) conceptual framework, the contribution of this case has been to illustrate the role of HRM in producing conversations of change as part of a planned change programme. Analysis of this dynamic exposed the operation of power relations embedded in organisational discourse, showing how dominant coalitions had resources at their disposal to place some control over the production of initiative conversations during the beginnings of the change initiative. In this context it appeared relatively easy for change agents to position themselves as “reality makers” and to create a positive view of CFM among “volunteers” joining the new pilot cell. Management briefings and recruitment bulletins played a critical role in this process, drawing on metaphors of “market” and “team” to present compelling images of the need and benefits of change. As the pilot stage unfolded, however, the case revealed the difficulties inherent in the notion of managing meanings and creating univocal images of change. The particular image of CFM introduced by change leaders became increasingly difficult to sustain as conversations for understanding failed to materialise. Cell supervisor/managers remained wedded to a technicallyoriented and cost-centred approach to management practice that offered little room for development of a team-working regime. It meant their vocabularies for change continued to be dominated by an accountancy discourse that placed severe restrictions on their preparedness to allow operators to engage in development/involvement practices.

Consistent with the discourse-analytic position adopted by Ford (1999) and others, these findings indicate that any fundamental shift in organisational routines and behaviours must be rooted in a shift in the orders of discourse and attempts at political influence to inform conversations for change (Marshak, 1998; Ford, 1999; Fairclough, 1992, 1995; Watson, 1994). Under these conditions, communication is not neutral but made up of competing discourses that can be manipulated by participants in pursuit of their own self-interests and “world views” of change. In this context the personnel director played a key role in re-creating a vision and strategy for moving the change forward beyond the pilot stage. Focusing on generation of new mediums for communicating and legitimising the emergent discourse of HRM, his actions were consistent with the notion of providing a “meaning structure” that could allow managers from different levels and disciplines to develop a common language for change (Tyson, 1995). CFM awareness training was one example of this attempt to create a new language for change and order of discourse, and helped re-produce initiative conversations in which CFM was positioned as being of “strategic” importance to the organisation. Training seminars also typified a move towards conversations for understanding, in that they provided opportunities for dialogue, allowing participants to examine assumptions and implications of CFM. Nevertheless, these conversations failed in that they did not generate clear understandings about the kind of people skills/actions required to manage cells, nor of the specific level of involvement and support required on the part of those engaged in the change. This failure in conversations for understanding was inextricably linked to the wider network of current and past conversational patterns at SutCo, where dominance of an accountancy discourse and a “command and control” management style effectively excluded junior staff involvement in the design stage of CFM and creation of implementation strategies. It led to the emergence of an increasing multiplicity of beliefs and understandings among different groups of managers and this created difficulties for the next stage of conversation, “conversation for performance”, in which specific actions to create empowered work teams could become a reality (Ford and Ford, 1995). The above findings are consistent with recent analyses of organisational discourse which highlights the heterogeneity of management, and more specific work on the role of line managers in effecting HRM-based change, which remains under-researched (for instance, Kelemen, 2000; Francis, 2002; Knights and McCabe, 1999, 2002; Cunningham and Hyman, 1995, 1999; Denham et al., 1997; Storey, 1992; Watson, 1994). Current HRM research continues to be dominated by an objectivist stance, treating people and events as “givens” and thus failing to take sufficient account of the dynamic and socially complex nature of HRM and change management activities (Keenoy, 1999).

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Alternative discourse-analytic designs allow for in-depth examination of managers’ personal experiences of change, revealing ways in which the discourse of HRM may be used to actively manage “conversations” according to their own particular orientations, interests, and organisational context. A clearer appreciation of this dynamic would assist in the development of a more comprehensive understanding of the process role of HRM in conversations for change; notably, ways in which this might shape how operational managers interpret espoused policies and their role in “translating” these into practice. It would also help reveal more about their pivotal position in the linking of “conversations” across different functions and levels of management, and beyond, to the shopfloor, and which conversational sequences might be more effective than others. Ford and Ford’s (1995) framework suggests the need for sequential movement across the four types of conversation, albeit in an iterative fashion. Further research in this area could usefully inform current debate about the primacy of “hard” or “soft” change mechanisms required to achieve organisational change and the sequencing of these (Mabey and Mallory, 1992; Beer et al., 1990; McHugh et al., 1999). Whether, for example, “soft” interventions that target individual and group perceptions through education and training should come before “hard” structural changes in organisational systems and procedures. Notes 1. Lewin’s (1958) three stages of change (unfreeze, change, refreeze) reflect the essence of the conventional approach to OD and is typically denoted by a programmatic approach which assumes that change management can be conceptualised in the form of relatively easy discreet steps (see Burnes, 1996, and Grieves and Redman, 1999, for further discussion of this point). For a fuller discussion about processual analyses, see Pettigrew, 1985, Pettigrew and Whipp, 1993, Dawson, 1994; Knights and McCabe, 2002). 2. The order of discourse refers to a set of underlying patterns and conventions, which embody the processes by which discourse and practices occur (Ford and Ford, 1995; Ford, 1999; see, also, Fairclough 1992, 2001a, b). 3. The use of case summaries and partially-ordered matrix displays enabled me to adopt a more holistic approach to research rather than the more traditional focus on only a few variables, and to contemplate how seemingly discrete data may be linked in previously unrecognised ways (see Wolcott (1990), for further discussion about the analysis and writeup of qualitative research). References Alvesson, M. and Karreman, D. (2000), “Varieties of discourse: on the study of organizations through discourse analysis”, Human Relations, Vol. 53 No. 9, pp. 1125-50. Bach, S. and Sisson, K. (2000), “Personnel management in perspective”, in Bach, S. and Sisson, K. (Eds), Personnel Management, A Comprehensive Guide to Theory and Practice, 3rd ed., Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 3-42. Beer, M., Eisenstat, R.A. and Spector, B. (1990), The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.

Boden, D. (1994), The Business of Talk, Blackwell, Cambridge. Burnes, B. (1996), Managing Change, A Strategic Approach to Organisational Dynamics, 2nd ed., Pitman Publishing, London. Butcher, D. and Atkinson, S. (2001), “Stealth, secrecy and subversion: the language of change”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 14 No. 6, pp. 1-11. Caldwell, R. (2001), “Champions, adapters, consultants and synergists: the new change agents in HRM”, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 11 No. 3, pp. 39-52. Clegg, S., Hardy, C. and Nord, W.R. (1999), “Introduction: organizational issues”, in Clegg, S., Hardy, C. and Nord, W.R. (Eds), Managing Organisations: Current Issues, Sage, London, pp. 1-10. Cunningham, I. and Hyman, J. (1995), “Transforming the HRM vision into reality”, Employee Relations, Vol. 17 No. 8, pp. 5-20. Cunningham, I. and Hyman, J. (1999), “Devolving human resource responsibilities to the line, beginning of the end or a new beginning for personnel?”, Personnel Review, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp. 1-13, available at: www.emerald-library.com Dawson, P. (1994), Organisational Change, A Processual Approach, Paul Chapman, London. Delaney, J.T. and Huselid, M.A. (1996), “The impact of human resource management practices on perceptions of organisational performance”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 949-69. Denham, N., Ackers, P. and Travers, C. (1997), “Doing yourself out of a job? How middle managers cope with empowerment”, Employee Relations, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 147-59. Doz, Y.L. and Prahalad, C.K. (1988), “A process model of strategic redirection in large complex firms: the case of multinational corporations”, in Pettigrew, A.M. (Ed.), The Management of Strategic Change, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 63-83. Fairclough, N. (1992), Discourse and Social Change, Polity Press, Cambridge. Fairclough, N. (1995), Critical Discourse Analysis: Papers in the Critical Study of Language, Longman, London. Fairclough, N. (2001a), Language and Power, 2nd ed., Pearson Education Limited, Harlow. Fairclough, N. (2001b), “The discourse of New Labour: critical discourse analysis”, in Wetherell, M., Taylor, S. and Yates, S.J. (Eds), Discourse as Data: A Guide for Analysis, Sage Publications, London. Ford, J. (1999), “Organizational change as shifting conversations”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 12 No. 6, pp. 1-14, available at: www.emerald-library.com/brev/ 12312fb1.htm Ford, J. and Ford, L. (1995), “The role of conversations in producing intentional change in organizations”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 541-71. Francis, H. (2002), “A bias for talk, HRM and the reconstruction of employee relations”, Personnel Review, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 432-48. Grieves, J. and Redman, T. (1999), “Living in the shadow of OD:HRD and the search for identity”, Human Resource Development International, Vol. 2 No. 2, pp. 81-102. Guest, D.E. (1987), “Human resource management and industrial relations”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 24 No. 5, pp. 503-21. Guest, D.E. (1990), “Human resource management and the American dream”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 27 No. 4, pp. 377-97. Guest, D.E. (1997), “Human resource management and performance: a review and research agenda”, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 263-76.

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Guest, G. (2001), “Human resource management: when research confronts theory”, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 12 No. 7, pp. 1092-106. Hall, L. and Torrington, D. (1998), The Human Resource Function, the Dynamics of Change and Development, Financial Times/Pitman Publishing, London. Hamilton, P.M. (2001), “Rhetoric and employment relations”, British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 39, September, pp. 433-49. Hardy, C., Lawrence, T.B. and Phillips, N. (1998), “Talk and action: conversations and narrative in organizational collaboration”, in Grant, D., Keenoy, T. and Oswick, C. (Eds), Discourse and Organization, Sage, London, pp. 65-83. Jankowicz, A.D. (2000), Business Research Projects, 3rd ed., Thomson Learning, Boston, MA. Keenoy, T. (1997), “Review article: HRMism and the languages of re-presentation”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 34 No. 5, pp. 825-41. Keenoy, T. (1999), “HRM as hologram: a polemic”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 1-23. Kelemen, M. (2000), “Too much or too little ambiguity: the language of total quality management”, Journal of Management Studies, Vol. 37 No. 4, pp. 484-97. Knights, D. and McCabe, D. (1999), “Are there no limits to authority? TQM and organizational power”, Organization Studies, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 197-224. Knights, D. and McCabe, D. (2002), “A road less travelled, beyond managerialist, critical and processual approaches to total quality management”, Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 235-54. Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M. (1980), Metaphors We Live By, University of Chicago Press, London. Lewin, K. (1958), “Group decisions and social change”, in Swanson, G., Newcombe, T. and Hartley, E. (Eds), Readings in Social Psychology, Holt, Rhinehart and Winston, New York, NY. McCloskey, D.M. (1994), Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics, University Press, Cambridge. McHugh, M., O’Brien, G. and Ramondt, J. (1999), “Organizational metamorphosis led by front line staff”, Employee Relations, Vol. 21 No. 6, pp. 556-76. Mabey, C. and Mallory, G. (1992), “Structure and culture change in two UK organisations: a comparison of assumptions, approaches and outcomes”, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 5 No. 2, pp. 29-45. Marshak, R. (1998), “A discourse on discourse: redeeming the meaning of talk”, in Grant, D., Keenoy, T. and Oswick, C. (Eds), Discourse and Organization, Sage, London, pp. 15-30. Miles, B.M. and Huberman, A.M. (1994), Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Source Book, Sage, London. Morgan, G. and Sturdy, A. (2000), Beyond Organizational Change Structure, Discourse and Power in UK Financial Services, Macmillan, Basingstoke. Patterson, M., West, M., Lawthom, R. and Nickell, S. (1997), “Issues in people management No 22, impact of people management practices on business performance”, Institute of Personnel and Development, London. Pettigrew, A.M. (1985), The Awakening Giant, Continuity and Change at ICI, Basil Blackwell, Oxford. Pettigrew, A. and Whipp, R. (1993), “Understanding the environment”, in Mabey, B. and MayonWhite, C. (Eds), Managing Change, 2nd ed., Open University, London, pp. 5-19.

Putnam, L., Phillips, N. and Chapman, P. (1999), “Metaphors of communication and organization”, in Clegg, S., Hardy, C. and Nord, W. (Eds), Managing Organisations, Current Issues, Sage, London, pp. 125-58. Storey, J. (1992), Developments in the Management of Human Resources, Blackwell Business, Oxford. Storey, J. (1995), “HRM, still marching on, or marching”, in Storey, J. (Ed.), Human Resource Management, A Critical Text, Routledge, London, pp. 3-32. Storey, J. (2001), “Human resource management today: an assessment”, in Storey, J. (Ed.), Human Resource Management, A Critical Text, 2nd ed., Thomson Learning, London, pp. 3-20. Taylor, B. (1999), “Browsing the culture: membership and intertextuality at a Mormon bookstore”, Studies in Cultures, Organizations and Societies, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 61-95. Tyson, S. (1995), Human Resource Strategy, Towards a General Theory of Human Resource Management, Pitman Publishing, London. Tyson, S. (1997), “Human resource strategy: a process for managing the contribution of HRM to organisational performance”, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 276-90. Ulrich, D. (1997), Human Resource Champions, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Watson, T.J. (1994), In Search of Management, Routledge, London. Weick, K. (1979), The Social Psychology of Organizing, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA. Weick, K. (1995), Sensemaking in Organizations, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Westley, F.R. (1990), “Middle managers and strategy, microdynamics of inclusion”, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 11, pp. 337-51. Wolcott, H. (1990), Writing up Qualitative Research Qualitative Research Methods Series, Sage, London. Further reading Gennard, J. and Kelly, J. (1997), “The unimportance of labels: the diffusion of the personnel/HRM function”, Industrial Relations Journal, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 27-42. Watson, T.J. (1995a), “In search of HRM: beyond the rhetoric and reality distinction or the case of the dog that didn’t bark”, Personnel Review, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 6-17. Watson, T.J. (1995b), “Rhetoric, discourse and argument in organizational sensemaking: a reflexive tale”, Organization Studies, Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 805-21.

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Increasing diversity as an HRM change strategy Ellen Ernst Kossek Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA

Karen S. Markel Received 15 March 2002 Revised 26 September 2002 Accepted 5 December 2002

Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan, USA, and

Patrick P. McHugh The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA Keywords Human resource management, Diversity, Change management Abstract In order to manage strategic demographic change in economic and labor markets, a common human resource (HR) change strategy is to increase the diversity of the workforce through hiring over time. This study examined department level consensus and valence regarding an organizational HR strategy to shift demography toward greater diversity in race and sex composition over an eight-year period. Though the organization had experienced significant change in organizational demography: an increase in the overall representation of white women (36 percent) and minorities (41 percent) over time; work group members in units with the greatest change did not necessarily agree nor hold positive perceptions regarding these HR changes. The results show that HR strategies that focus on structural change without working to develop supportive group norms and positive climate may be inadequate change strategies.

Managing growth in workforce diversity and increasing the representation of women and minorities throughout the organization is a critical strategic human resource (HR) management issue for most organizations (Thomas and Ely, 1996). In order to manage demographic change in economic and labor markets, a common HR change strategy is to increase the diversity of the work force through hiring over time. Though most HR strategies to manage diversity are conceived at the firm level, they are often socially and practically enacted at the work group level of analysis (Larkey, 1996). Since employees are typically hired (and expected to assimilate) into departments, it is important to understand how demographic changes are experienced in this context. Departmental groups are the receptacles of organizational dispersion of HR strategies to manage diversity. Individuals are embedded in departmental work groups, which provide a context shaping the social meaning of HR strategies to shift organizational demography. Research is mixed on whether HR strategies to increase minority representation results Journal of Organizational Change Management Vol. 16 No. 3, 2003 pp. 328-352 q MCB UP Limited 0953-4814 DOI 10.1108/09534810310475532

This research was partially funded by a doctoral assistantship provided by the School of Labor and Industrial Relations at Michigan State University. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology International Meetings, Toronto, Canada.

in positive or negative group processes, depending on whether one takes a social contact (Allport, 1954) or resource competition view (Blalock, 1967). We designed this study to develop and assess climate constructs grounded in these prevailing literature themes: consensus, the degree to which group members held common perceptions of diversity climate, and valence, the direction of those perceptions. The study also was designed to explore the well grounded, but mixed, theoretical stances in the literature, and to consider how the magnitude of organizational diversity change strategies may be diluted at the work group level. The perceived magnitude of change at the group level is important to consider, because organizational demographic shifts are likely to trickle down in a fashion that dilutes saliency and increases variance in the interpretation of organizational change at the group level of analysis. Positive social climate may not necessarily occur when organizational changes are diluted in enactment within work groups. Rationale for the view that group climate may not necessarily be improved by minor demographic shifts is provided by Kanter’s (1977) work on tokenism and tipping points within groups. She argued that depending on proportional representation levels, members experience others as dominant, token, tilted, or balanced. She held that negative social psychological processes such as subtle discrimination is minimized where minority representation reaches a critical mass, referred to as tipping point. Such negative dynamics may occur in groups where there are tokens, defined as15 percent or less, and are not likely to significantly lessen in exaggerated impact until groups are tilted, where minorities comprise at least 35 percent. If demographic shifts are not enough to alter tipping points in specific work groups, then increased consensus and valence regarding the social climate for diversity may not necessarily occur. Despite the significance of conducting analysis of group level reactions to diversity change, little research has been conducted on this issue. 1. Research objectives This study examined department level consensus and valence regarding an organizational HR strategy to shift demography toward greater diversity in race and sex composition over an eight-year period. Our first research objective was to identify and develop new measures of constructs reflecting a positive social construction of change in diversity at the department level. Our second objective was to examine the question: “Do work groups with higher demographic shifts tend to have more positive climates?”; that is, higher consensus and valence toward diversity change for both organizational and group level change referents? Our third objective was to examine the question: “Does increasing the proportion of senior women and minorities at the department level positively relate to group valence and consensus?”.

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1.1 Developing group level measures of the social construction of change in diversity Addressing our first objective, we develop theory and measures for understanding the social construction of change in diversity at the work group level. These constructs include: work group demographic shift, group climate (i.e. consensus and valence), and group and organizational change referents. First, it is important to examine structural progress, which we call “work group demographic shift”. This is defined as a work group’s increase in the proportion of women and racial minorities over time occurring through change in member composition. If an organization has been successful in hiring strategies, it will increase the number of women and minorities within an organization as a whole. These hiring increases typically create demographic shifts that are cascaded down to the work group level and impact the social climate for diversity. The study of work group demographic shift raises issues not ordinarily addressed in cross-sectional HR management research on diversity (McGrath et al., 1995). Members of two groups with the same composition might not necessarily share current perceptions about the climate for diversity – whether it is a favorable or unfavorable climate. The reasons for this difference may include, but not be limited to, historical differences in heterogeneity, the degree to which diversity is seen as valuable for achieving strategic goals, and the quality of interpersonal relations and resource allocation between members of different backgrounds. As Kanter (1977) argued, relative (rather than absolute) numbers or proportional representation shape and tip minority and majority group dynamics surrounding organizational change. Work group demographic shift reflects contextual and relative experience with a firm’s overall or absolute demographic hiring practices. The second set of constructs we use to understand demographic change is “group level climate”, the social construction of the demographic shift. Climate, or prevailing member beliefs about “the way things are around here” is increasingly being studied less in terms of “the climate” and more in terms of “the climate for something” – a specific referent (Schneider and Reichers, 1983). Using cross-sectional data, Kossek and Zonia (1993) examined how current demographic composition related to individual perceptions of diversity climate. We build on this previous research by measuring climate at the group level to assess shared member perceptions of the effects of a demographic shift over a significant time period. Our approach is grounded in the suggestion that by definition, climate may be best measured as a group phenomenon (Reichers and Schneider, 1990). Climate is partly a function of structural aspects of the work context (Payne and Pugh, 1976). Work group members observe structural features such as small or large work group demographic shifts, interpret them in order to make meaning of organizational change. The greater the work

group shift, the greater the implementation of the change strategy, which could lead to a more positive climate, since these members experienced the most change. We contend group climate may be operationalized by the constructs of consensus, increased agreement in member perceptions, and valence, the direction of agreement. Consensus, reflects what Harrison et al. (1998) refer to as deep level similarity in attitudes and values. Consensus identifies the extent to which there is commonality among the perceptions of unit members (Brown et al., 1996). The issue here is variability within a work group. Work groups with low variability (high consensus) would share common perceptions regarding the social climate for diversity and similar understanding of social reality (Festinger, 1954). In high consensus groups, we would anticipate that members would experience higher behavioral and attitudinal predictability regarding how to enact change in response to an organizationally-driven demographic shift. This would shape shared basic assumptions (Schein, 1988) regarding appropriate behaviors in response to organizational change (Forsyth, 1990). High attitudinal and behavioral predictability reduces strain on interpersonal relations within groups (Zander, 1994), and allows for greater ease of communication and less friction regarding how to enact change (Bleise and Halverson, 1998), resulting in a more similarly construed group climate. In order to have a positive climate, members must not only agree on the climate, they must also see the climate as favorable. Valence measures the direction of group members’ perceptions, akin to what Lindell and Brandt (2000) identify as climate quality. The focus here is on group members’ typical, average, or median response. Following work group demographic shifts, those groups with high valence would have a positive construction of the change. Members would be expected to perceive that it is important to achieve organizational goals through implementing diversity activities. In contrast, low valence groups would have negative climates grounded in perceptions of discrimination and harassment toward minority members, as well as less than enthusiastic unit response to strategic diversity initiatives (James et al., 1994; Schneider et al., 2000). The last set of constructs we identified as important for understanding diversity change are “group and organizational referents of change”. Like most HR organizational change strategies, diversity change initiatives are enacted at the group and organizational levels, and therefore should have referents at both levels. It is critical to assess group perceptions of organizational level phenomenon, as groups can vary in the degree to which they perceive organizational strategic initiatives as supporting unit objectives. Based on a review of the literature, we identified two organizational referents: favorable agreement that top management is committed to diversity, and the belief that

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the employer should promote diversity initiatives as a strategic organizational goal. Many studies conclude that the success of diversity initiatives is correlated with member perceptions that management is highly committed to the active pursuit of diversity policies as an organizational strategic objective (Cox, 1993; Kossek and Lobel, 1996; Thomas and Ely, 1996). Since the group level of analysis is more proximal to interpersonal social outcomes, we developed specific group indicators for the social construction of diversity change that were distinctive from those at the organizational level. Most individuals are sophisticated enough today to know that it is socially desirable to state that managing diversity is an important organizational goal, as such contentions have become a truism in the management literature. However, at the group level, members’ attitudes are more likely to reflect how they see shifting demography affecting them personally in their immediate work group context. The assumptions that a work group is viewed as having women and minorities who mix well with white men, and that resources are equitably allocated across groups are key in operationalizing diversity paradigms (Kossek and Zonia, 1993; Thomas and Ely, 1996). Thus, group referents include favorable agreement that women and minorities are seen as mixing well with group members, and that work group resources are allocated with equal access to women and men, and whites and non-whites. These perceptions would suggest that the work group has become more multicultural in a positive way. 1.2 Do work groups with higher demographic shifts have a more positive group climate? Our second objective was to address the question: “Do groups with higher demographic shifts have higher consensus and valence toward diversity change for both organizational and group referents?”. Competing arguments could be made that higher demographic shifts could lead to either negative or positive climates depending on whether one takes a social contact or intergroup theoretical perspective. Under the social contact view, work group demographic shift to increase the proportion of women and minorities enables higher cross-group interaction and mixing, which is necessary to improve perceptions of intergroup relations and social integration and reduce prejudice (Allport, 1954; Triandis et al., 1994). Because groups with a higher demographic shift would have more social contact, there would be higher consensus in a positive direction about the change. Unfortunately, the social contact theory may only apply if the demographic shifts are great enough to reduce negative tokenism dynamics (Kanter, 1977). More likely, in groups where the demographic shifts are not large enough to create a critical mass and tip the demographics to reduce tokenism, the alternative perspective grounded in intergroup resource competition theory

prevails. Here, the argument is made that the diversity change is not large enough to lead to greater consensus and valence. The redistribution of intergroup power through resource reallocation to reduce inequality (Alderfer and Smith, 1982) is likely to be experienced negatively by both majority and minority group members. In groups where demographic shifts are diluted, minority members may still experience negative psychological processes and discrimination. Majority members may see the slight demographic shifts as changing the status quo to negatively impact them, as they would see this as losing power. H1. Work groups with higher demographic shifts may not necessarily have more positive climates; that is, higher consensus and valence toward diversity change, for organizational and group level change referents 1.3 Is there a positive senior women and minority proportional effect on change? We turn to our third objective that investigates: “Does increasing the proportion of senior women and minorities at the department level positively relate to favorable group valence and high consensus?”. Growing evidence suggests that the interaction of demography with hierarchical level is critical to understanding organizational change processes. The manner in which HR strategies to promote demographic change shifts group demography across status levels within groups can lead to differing group climates. Thus, the current race and gender composition of two groups can be identical in collective race and sex composition, but have markedly different social reactions to dynamics due to the saliency of members’ multiple identities in relation to other key employee backgrounds such as hierarchical level. By examining the interaction of level (i.e. status) with race and sex demography, we are able to investigate the theory that it is not just the change in overall proportional demographic representation that effects climate, but the combination of demographic and non-demographic attributes that might influence the group social construction of diversity strategies in a multiplicative manner (Ely, 1995). Demographic variables such as race and gender usually assume greater importance when associated with the differences in status (Tsui et al., 1992). For example, higher status members may be more likely to withdraw when groups are first integrated by lower status members (Harrison et al., 1998). Research on how status relates to group proportional representation suggests that HR strategies to simply increase the overall proportion of a minority group do not necessarily result in improved organizational effectiveness and increased inclusion of under-represented groups (Ely, 1994, 1995). In order to have favorable climate, the minority group also must be well represented in senior positions. Yet the dilution of organizational strategies across group hierarchies again may hamper the achievement of positive change in the status of

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groups. When organizational diversity objectives to increase the upward mobility of women and minorities are first enacted across work groups, studies show that most organizations are likely to increase the number of senior women and racial minorities by only a few in each group (Tsui and Gutek, 1999). Again, relying on Kanter’s (1977) theory of tipping points, a slight gradual increase may not be strong enough to improve climate compared to work groups that experienced no change or a decrease in hierarchical representation. Recent work by Lau and Murnighan (1998) builds on Kanter’s (1977) work and suggests that groups have fault lines or ways to align demographic characteristics across level, gender, and race. Increasing gender and racial diversity through diversity hiring strategies can alter the demographic strength and alignment, or fault lines of internal subgroups (e.g. senior and junior management, tenured and junior faculty). If these alignments are weak, and work groups do not experience “earthquakes” like the notion of a shift to a critical mass, a slight shift work group demographic may be even more diluted at the senior levels. The dilution of change may result in senior groups being still largely seen as white male, having little change impact on diversity climate. Weak demographic shifts create weak group fault lines and, consequently, may do little to change or coalesce the social construction of group climate. Under such conditions, intergroup resource competition theories are again likely to be apt explanations of group processes. As a minority group gains stature, and starts to become larger and more of a realistic competitor for scarce resources, the majority is more likely to discriminate (Blalock, 1967). Gradual proportionate increases in the representation of women and minorities at senior levels might lead to greater hostility by majority members because of resource control issues. This would lead to more strained intergroup relations and reduced social interaction among members, resulting in greater variation of the climate for diversity (i.e. reduced consensus) and more negative perceptions of climate. H2. Increasing the proportion of senior women and minorities at the department level may not necessarily positively relate to group valence and consensus 2. Method 2.1 Organizational setting The data collection period for this study was designed to mirror the time period of implementation of an organizational change strategy to manage diversity at a large public sector university in the USA. Over eight years, the administration had been actively engaged in HR strategies to foster organizational change in diversity. These included active recruitment of a diverse workforce and wide dissemination of a document affirming the

university’s commitment to diversity. National consulting firms had been contracted to provide advice on managing diversity. The administration made funds readily available (sometimes over the initial salary posting) to hire quality minorities and women, even for units in which new tenure stream positions had not been approved. Training to promote diversity sensitivity among administrators was initiated. Small cash achievement awards were distributed to recognize department activities that promoted multiculturalism. Using the human information system, the researchers collected faculty demographic data by department from records in the HR information system at two points over an eight-year period to measure change in demography by department. We used a stratified sample of tenure stream faculty with full selection of the population of women and minorities and random sampling of white males. At the end of the eight years, a survey was developed to examine the success of the change efforts. The archival data on proportional change in demography by group were used to form the independent variables (change from year 1 to year 8) and the survey data collected at the end of the eight years were used to form the group climate dependent variables. The survey to assess the success of these change strategies was developed with expert and faculty input. 2.2 Measures Group dependent variables: climate for diversity (consensus and valence). Five group dependent variables were developed to assess the climate for diversity. Exploratory factor analysis ensured that each of these measures developed for the study tapped into unique constructs. Each of these measures utilized the same five-point scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Below we first describe the five dependent variables and then we discuss how we aggregated them to create group level consensus and valence measures. Diversity as an organizational goal. We used Kossek and Zonia’s (1993) sixitem scale (alpha 0.89) to assess the perceptions of the extent to which members believed that organizational excellence and effective functioning were related to the recruitment and retention of faculty who are female or minority. Sample item: “If organization X is to remain an excellent institution, it must recruit and retain more minority faculty”. Commitment of management to diversity. We developed a five-item scale (alpha 0.85) to assess the administration’s commitment to diversity through its support of efforts to increase faculty diversity through hiring and related policies. Sample item: “The Dean of my college is strongly committed to recruiting more minority faculty”. Perceived work-group mix. We developed a five-item scale (alpha 0.72) to assess the degree to which the department had a mix where women and

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minorities had good representation. Sample item: “My department has a good mix of men and women faculty members”. Equality of department support of women. We used Kossek and Zonia’s (1993) three-item scale (alpha 0.71) to assess the degree to which faculty women had the same opportunity to have graduate assistants, teaching release, and above average merit increases compared to males. Equality of department support of racial minorities. We used Kossek and Zonia’s (1993) three-item scale (alpha 0.77) to assess the degree to which minority faculty had the same opportunity to have graduate assistants, teaching release, and above average merit increases compared to nonminorities. Group consensus about climate for diversity. These scales measured group agreement for each of the five dependent variables assessing climate. We utilized procedures outlined by Bleise and Halverson (1998) to ensure the valid aggregation of individual data. Group consensus was computed by: (1) determining the mean variance for each scale item per department; (2) calculating the sum of each scale’s mean item variance; (3) dividing the sum (from step 2) by the number of items to obtain the average mean item variance for each scale; (4) multiplying the result from step 3 by –1 to capture the level agreement. The closer the score is to 0 the higher the consensus. Group valence about the climate for diversity. This scale assessed the median score (a robust measure of central tendency) to assess the favorability of the group climate for the five dependent variables. Groups whose scores were at, or above, the median, have a more favorable climate for diversity than those whose scores were below the median. Group independent variables. All of the independent variables were drawn from the university’s HR information systems. These included measures of size, race, gender, and tenure (level) distribution by department at time 1 and time 2, eight years later. Variables were created to assess proportional demographic change for each group comparing the two points in time. For example, a group’s proportion of women at time 1 was subtracted from the proportion of women at time 2 to measure proportional change. Change in department size was entered as a control variable, since the degree to which a department is growing may influence member climate perceptions. Drawing on Allport’s (1954) theory of social contact, the more opportunity an individual has to interact with members of other social groups, the more likely they are to disconfirm individually held stereotypes. However, with increasing department size, members may migrate toward others with familiar characteristics.

3. Results 3.1 Organizational structural demographic change The data show considerable success in increasing organizational diversity over the eight-year hiring period. At the organizational level, the university experienced a 36 percent increase in female faculty from 437 at time 1 (baseline) to 644 at time 2. Similarly, there was a 41 percent increase in the number of racial minority faculty (from 211 at time 1 to 298 at time 2). Overall, there were 2,511 total faculty at time 1 and 2,684 at time 2. The net change was from 19 percent at baseline to 24 percent eight years later for women, and from 8 percent to 11 percent for minorities. Upward mobility was also improving. At baseline, the data show 9 percent women and 5 percent minority tenured faculty, which increased to 11 percent (women) and 6 percent (minority) at time 2. We took these data and transferred them into the measures described above. 3.2 Survey response rate A total of 1,529 individuals received the survey distributed at time 2, and 775 were returned – a 51 percent response rate. For those surveys in which demographic identification was provided, analysis showed that response rates were 47 percent for white men, 46 percent for racial minority women, 51 percent for white women, and 43 percent for racial minority men. Of the 81 departments in the original sample, 74 had at least three departmental respondents complete the diversity survey, which were included in the final analysis. Analyses were done to ensure the respondents from the seven omitted departments did not statistically differ from the 74 included. Only tenure stream faculty were included in the final dataset, since there were relatively few non-tenure stream faculty. 3.3 Group level descriptive measures of diversity change Means, standard deviations, and correlations of measures are shown in Table I. In support of our first research objective, Table I shows the descriptive statistics for our new group level measures of diversity change. These included: . work group demographic shift; . group climate (i.e. consensus and valence); and . group and organizational change referents. As the change variables show, the average work group shift to increase in women was 1 percent with a standard deviation of 7 percent. The average work group increase in minorities was 1 percent with a standard deviation of 3 percent. The group climate variables for the group referents (e.g. mix well, equality of department support of women, equality of department support of minorities) and organizational referents (diversity is an organizational goal, commitment of management to diversity) are shown in Table I. There was the greatest consensus that departments had equal

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Mean 25.52 29.06 0.90 0.81 0.19 0.43 0.81 0.84 0.34 0.39 24.75 0.01 0.01 0.01 2 1.00 2 0.99 2 1.25 2 0.24 2 0.25 3.90 3.53 3.14 2.45 3.93 3.61 3.24 2.50 2.00 1.92

1. Department size Time 1 2. Department size Time 2 3. Proportion of whites Time 1 4. Proportion of whites Time 2 5. Proportion of women Time 1 6. Proportion of women Time 2 7. Proportion with tenure Time 1 8. Proportion with Tenure Time 2 9. Proportion of white tenured males Time 1 10. Proportion of white tenured males Time 2 11. Change in department size Time 1-Time 2 12. Change in tenure time 1-Time 2 13. Change in gender Time 1-Time 2 14. Change in whites Time 1-Time 2 15. Diversity as organizational goal – Consensus 16. Commitment of management to diversity – Consensus 17. Perceived work-group mix – Consensus 18. Equality of department support of women – Consensus 19. Equality of department support of minorities – Consensus 20. Diversity as organizational goal – Mean 21. Commitment of management to diversity – Mean 22. Perceived work-group mix – Mean 23. Equality of department support of women – Mean 24. Equality of department support of minorities – Mean 25. Diversity as organizational goal – Median 26. Commitment of management to diversity – Median 27. Perceived work-group mix – Median 28. Equality of department support of women – Median 29. Equality of department support of minorities – Median

Table I. Means, standards deviations, and correlations of variables

Variable – 0.89* 0.21 0.07 0.05 0.06 0.10 0.04 2 0.04 2 0.09 0.62* 2 0.15 0.04 2 0.09 0.01 0.07 0.01 0.07 0.06 2 0.03 2 0.10 2 0.21 2 0.09 2 0.01 2 0.03 2 0.09 2 0.09 2 0.06 2 0.18

1 – 0.21 0.12 0.02 0.06 0.10 0.03 2 0.09 2 0.10 0.59* 2 0.13 2 0.02 2 0.16 0.01 0.14 0.11 0.07 0.11 2 0.05 0.01 2 0.21 2 0.03 0.02 0.01 2 0.03 2 0.11 0.02 2 0.02

2

– 0.47* 0.01 0.17 20.15 20.08 20.10 20.39* 20.09 20.28* 0.09 20.59* 20.19 20.03 0.02 0.15 20.05 20.23* 20.22 20.11 20.17 0.07 20.18 20.24* 20.03 20.13 0.07

3

4

– 0.17 0.35* 20.05 20.18 0.00 20.13 20.13 20.12 0.10 20.05* 20.15 20.06 20.06 0.09 0.14 20.07 20.07 20.17 20.31* 20.10 20.05 0.01 0.00 20.24 0.06

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16.04 17.66 0.01 0.18 0.21 0.27 0.15 0.11 0.19 0.18 50.40 0.01 0.07 0.03 0.57 0.48 0.47 0.16 0.21 0.38 0.40 0.48 0.29 0.50 0.49 0.57 0.37 0.14 0.15

SD

– 0.58* 2 0.09 2 0.12 0.76* 0.65* 0.09 0.06 0.76* 2 0.08 0.24* 0.08 0.12 0.01 2 0.06 0.39* 0.29 0.30 0.02 2 0.16 0.20 0.14 0.27* 2 0.08 2 0.10 (continued)

5

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1. Department size Time 1 2. Department size Time 2 3. Proportion of whites Time 1 4. Proportion of whites Time 2 5. Proportion of women Time 1 6. Proportion of women Time 2 7. Proportion with tenure Time 1 8. Proportion with tenure Time 2 9. Proportion of white tenured males Time 1 10. Proportion of white tenured males Time 2 11. Change in department size Time 1-Time 2 12. Change in tenure Time 1-Time 2 13. Change in gender Time 1-Time 2 14. Change in whites Time 1-Time 2 15. Diversity as organizational goal – Consensus 16. Commitment of management to diversity – Consensus 17. Perceived work-group mix – Consensus 18. Equality of department support of women – Consensus 19. Equality of department support of minorities – Consensus 20. Diversity as organizational goal – Mean 21. Commitment of management to diversity – Mean 22. Perceived work-group mix – Mean 23. Equality of department support of women – Mean 24. Equality of department support of minorities – Mean 25. Diversity as organizational goal – Median 26. Commitment of management to diversity – Median 27. Perceived work-group mix – Median 28. Equality of department support of women – Median 29. Equality of department support of minorities – Median

Variable

– 20.20 20.19 0.54* 0.48* 0.04 20.06 0.32* 20.18 0.01 20.13 20.08 20.05 20.11 0.57* 0.03 0.07 20.13 20.33* 0.48* 20.11 0.05 20.09 20.26*

6

– 0.31 20.58* 20.18 0.09 20.16 20.19 0.23 0.02 0.01 20.17 20.16 0.11 20.02 0.18 20.04 0.01 20.05 0.02 0.14 0.03 20.04 20.18

7

– 2 0.29* 2 0.32* 0.12 0.22 2 0.13 0.14 0.08 0.00 0.07 2 0.09 0.08 2 0.14 2 0.01 0.05 0.12 2 0.07 2 0.04 0.01 0.19 0.22 2 0.10

8

– 0.73* 0.06 0.14 0.68* 0.01 0.14 0.09 0.17 0.07 2 0.10 0.36* 0.16 0.32* 0.08 2 0.07 0.20 0.03 0.21 2 0.01 2 0.07

9

– 0.03 0.06 0.55* 0.34* 0.11 0.03 0.09 2 0.08 2 0.23 0.48* 0.26* 0.30* 0.11 2 0.12 0.27* 0.17 0.15 2 0.02 2 0.16

10

– 0.08 0.05 0.13 0.08 0.07 20.11 0.15 0.04 0.14 0.01 0.04 0.05 20.02 0.16 20.03 0.06 0.04 20.24 (continued)

11

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Table I.

Table I. – 0.01 0.16 0.15 2 0.13 0.15 0.13 0.00 0.00 2 0.20 0.10 0.02 0.01 0.05 2 0.27* 0.07 0.10 0.02

12

– 20.07 0.11 0.21 0.13 0.18 0.04 0.05 0.22 0.11 20.09 0.07 20.06 0.09 0.04 20.19 20.02

13

– 0.14 0.06 0.06 20.01 0.04 0.15 0.22 0.18 0.15 0.11 0.10 0.21 0.12 0.10 0.09

14

– 20.07 0.38* 20.11 20.11 0.34* 0.22 0.17 20.09 20.06 0.08 0.24 0.23 20.03 0.00

15

16

– 0.34* 0.45* 0.42* 20.32* 0.23 0.10 0.06 20.19 0.01 20.03 20.03 20.14 0.01

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1. Department size Time 1 2. Department size Time 2 3. Proportion of whites Time 1 4. Proportion of whites Time 2 5. Proportion of women Time 1 6. Proportion of women Time 2 7. Proportion with tenure Time 1 8. Proportion with tenure Time 2 9. Proportion of white tenured males Time 1 10. Proportion of white tenured males Time 2 11. Change in department size Time 1-Time 2 12. Change in tenure Time 1-Time 2 13. Change in gender Time 1-Time 2 14. Change in whites Time 1-Time 2 15. Diversity as organizational goal – Consensus 16. Commitment of management to diversity – Consensus 17. Perceived work-group mix – Consensus 18. Equality of department support of women – Consensus 19. Equality of department support of minorities – Consensus 20. Diversity as organizational goal – Mean 21. Commitment of management to diversity – Mean 22. Perceived work-group mix – Mean 23. Equality of department support of women – Mean 24. Equality of department support of minorities – Mean 25. Diversity as organizational goal – Median 26. Commitment of management to diversity – Median 27. Perceived work-group mix – Median 28. Equality of department support of women – Median 29. Equality of department support of minorities – Median

Variable

– 0.08 0.00 2 0.07 0.02 0.16 2 0.07 0.07 2 0.10 0.02 0.13 2 0.14 0.20 (continued)

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1. Department size Time 1 2. Department size Time 2 3. Proportion of whites Time 1 4. Proportion of whites Time 2 5. Proportion of women Time 1 6. Proportion of women Time 2 7. Proportion with tenure Time 1 8. Proportion with tenure Time 2 9. Proportion of white tenured males Time 1 10. Proportion of white tenured males Time 2 11. Change in department size Time 1-Time 2 12. Change in tenure Time 1-Time 2 13. Change in gender Time 1-Time 2 14. Change in whites Time 1-Time 2 15. Diversity as organizational goal – Consensus 16. Commitment of management to diversity – Consensus 17. Perceived work-group mix – Consensus 18. Equality of department support of women – Consensus 19. Equality of department support of minorities – Consensus 20. Diversity as organizational goal – Mean 21. Commitment of management to diversity – Mean 22. Perceived work-group mix – Mean 23. Equality of department support of women – Mean 24. Equality of department support of minorities – Mean 25. Diversity as organizational goal – Median 26. Commitment of management to diversity – Median 27. Perceived work-group mix – Median 28. Equality of department support of women – Median 29. Equality of department support of minorities – Median

Variable

– 0.57* 20.35* 0.18 0.10 0.01 0.30* 20.22 20.07 20.02 20.05 0.14

18

– 2 0.27* 0.18 2 0.05 0.00 0.34* 2 0.13 0.02 2 0.04 2 0.09 0.31*

19

– 0.08 0.15 2 0.08 2 0.26* 0.83* 0.15 0.14 2 0.02 2 0.21

20

– 0.27* 0.08 0.26* 0.04 0.79* 0.12 0.02 0.10

21

– 0.14 0.19 0.08 0.18 0.84* 20.04 0.04

22

– 2 0.21 2 0.07 0.00 0.12 0.86* 2 0.08 (continued)

23

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Table I.

Table I.

Note: *p  0.01 or greater

1. Department size Time 1 2. Department size Time 2 3. Proportion of whites Time 1 4. Proportion of whites Time 2 5. Proportion of women Time 1 6. Proportion of women Time 2 7. Proportion with tenure Time 1 8. Proportion with tenure Time 2 9. Proportion of white tenured males Time 1 10. Proportion of white tenured males Time 2 11. Change in department size Time 1-Time 2 12. Change in tenure Time 1-Time 2 13. Change in gender Time 1-Time 2 14. Change in whites Time 1-Time 2 15. Diversity as organizational goal – Consensus 16. Commitment of management to diversity – Consensus 17. Perceived work-group mix – Consensus 18. Equality of department support of women – Consensus 19. Equality of department support of minorities – Consensus 20. Diversity as organizational goal – Mean 21. Commitment of management to diversity – Mean 22. Perceived work-group mix – Mean 23. Equality of department support of women – Mean 24. Equality of department support of minorities – Mean 25. Diversity as organizational goal – Median 26. Commitment of management to diversity – Median 27. Perceived work-group mix – Median 28. Equality of department support of women – Median 29. Equality of department support of minorities – Median

Variable

– 2 0.20 0.25 0.08 2 0.32* 0.58*

24

– 0.02 0.01 0.00 2 0.24

25

– 0.19 2 0.01 0.18

26

– 0.05 0.13

27

– 2 0.03

28

–

29

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support of resources for women and men, and whites and non-whites as these measures hovered at – 0.24 and 20.25 or close to 0, which would be total consensus. There was the least consensus that minorities and majorities mixed well (– 1.25) with slightly more consensus that diversity should be pursued as organizational ( – 1.0). The most positive valence was the perception of equality of department support for minorities (3.93) and that diversity should be pursued as a goal (3.9). 3.4 Regression results on demographic shift and climate To address our second research objective, which was to examine whether work groups with higher demographic shifts had more positive group climates, for each of the five dependent variables, separate hierarchical regressions were run to examine the relation between group demographic change and group consensus (see Table II) or valence (see Table III). In the first step of all regressions, proportional change in size was entered as a control. For the consensus regressions, the current mean of each dependent variable was also entered as a control. In step 2, the group proportional change in women, and the group proportional change in minorities were entered. (In early analyses, for the second step of each regression, interaction terms, change in gender or race by tenure, were included following Aiken and West’s (1993) procedures. No significant interactions were found.) Using standardized beta weights, as seen in step 2 of Tables II and III, our hypothesis that work groups with higher demographic shifts may have higher consensus and valence toward diversity change received partial support. Group referents of diversity climate were unchanged by demographic shifts reflecting possible dilution of HR strategies. Organizational referents of valence were effected, but consensus was reduced in terms of whether the organization should pursue diversity as an organizational goal. Departments with higher shifts in the proportion of women had lower consensus on whether the organization should pursue diversity as an organizational goal. Both regressions with organizational referents as dependent variables were significant. Groups with higher increases in the proportion of women over time tended to have more favorable valence regarding the desirability of promoting diversity as an organizational goal, but were less sure of management’s commitment, as they had more experience with the reality of implementing the organizational change. 3.5 Regression results on positive senior women and minority effect on climate Our third research objective was to examine whether increasing the proportion of senior women and minorities at the department level positively relates to group valence and consensus. In our data analysis, the proportional change in overall tenured faculty was entered in step 2, and then the proportional change

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Table II. Regression predicting consensus on climate for diversity

D R2 Total R2

0.14

0.14

0.09

0.23**

0.22 0.08

0.10

0.03 0.03

0.09 0.11*

2 0.03

0.05 0.00

2 0.05

2 0.02

2 0.18

0.06

0.18 0.17 0.06

2 0.12 0.01

2 0.17

2 0.35**

0.06

0.12**

2 0.09 0.01 D R2 Total R2 0.24** Note: *p  0.05 or greater; **p  0.01 or greater

Step 3. White tenured males Time 2-Time 1

Step 2. Women Time 2Time 1 Whites Time 2Time 1 Tenure Time 2Time 1

D R2 Total R2

0.08 0.22 0.06

0.02 0.35** 0.12**

Perceived work-group mix

0.05

2 0.30 0.04

0.01

0.10 0.01

0.04

2 0.07

0.00

0.00 0.02 0.00

Equality of department support of women

Department

0.18

2 0.31 0.05

0.13

0.00 0.04

0.21

2 0.02

0.09

0.06 0.29* 0.09

Equality of department support of minorities

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Step 1 Dept size Time 2Time 1 Mean of DV

Organization Diversity as Commitment of organizational management to goal diversity

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D R2 Total R2

D R2 Total R2

0.06

0.06

0.20**

0.19**

0.17**

0.12 0.06

0.00 0.00

2 0.13 0.17**

2 0.07 0.16**

0.08

2 0.21*

0.00

2 0.06 0.00

Perceived work-group mix

0.11 0.01

0.19

2 0.07

2 0.38**

0.02

0.01 0.40**

0.15 0.02

0.08 0.01

0.05 0.00 D R2 Total R2 0.17** Note: *p  0.05 or greater; **p  0.01 or greater

Step 3 White tenured males Time 2-Time 1

Step 2 Women Time 2Time 1 Whites Time 2Time 1 Tenure Time 2Time 1

Step 1 Dept size Time 2Time 1

Organization Diversity as Commitment of organizational management to goal diversity

0.11

0.07 0.00

0.11*

0.16 0.07

2 0.17

2 0.06

0.04*

0.21* 0.04*

Equality of department support of women

Department

0.09

0.35* 0.04*

0.05

0.19 0.05

2 0.01

2 0.13

0.00

0.05 0.00

Equality of department support of minorities

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Table III. Regression predicting valence of climate for diversity

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in tenured white males was entered in step 3. The results are that the third block was not statistically significant in the regressions, showing that small increases in the group proportions of senior women and minorities did not increase group consensus or valence regarding climate for change.

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4. Discussion This study explored links between actual change in organizational structure, organizational demography and work group interpretation of this change. Our results showed that HR strategies that focus on structural change without working to develop supportive group norms and positive climate are inadequate change strategies. Current employer efforts to increase diversity as an isolated HR strategy may not necessarily lead to increased member agreement that change is favorable. Most change efforts, like the diversity change effort we studied, are focused at the organizational or individual intervention levels and under-emphasize the work group level and the importance of group tipping points. Our study highlights a disconnect between organizational level diversity practice which often assumes that hiring more minorities and women will improve climate, and what our research found at the group level: a climate that was mixed and ambivalent at best, and sometimes negative. 4.1 Group level measures of demographic change: consensus and valence on diversity climate The first objective of this study was to develop new theory and measures of group level change in diversity. We provided new ways to measure and group social construction of change. These included: consensus, the degree to which members held common perceptions of diversity climate, and valence, the direction of those perceptions. Our measures identify group and organizational level referents of HR strategies to increase demographic diversity. Group level referents of diversity change were: how well members perceived their work group mix, and the perceived equality of resource allocation across demographic groups. Organizational referents were: management commitment to change and whether diversity should be an organizational strategy assessed general support for change. Our study highlights how important it is for research and practice to not only examine how change in demography relates to differences in individual attitudes, but also to group member shared perceptions about the direction of the climate for change. Understanding linkages between HR changes (in this case group demography which raises unique psychological processes related to social identity) and positive consensus is important because it is relevant to cooperation, work experiences, interpersonal conflict, stress, and norms in groups striving to manage change.

4.2 Greater work group demographic shift does not necessarily result in favorable climate Our second objective was to assess whether work groups with higher demographic shifts tend to have more positive climates; that is, higher consensus and valence toward diversity change for both organizational and group level change referents. Our results only partially supported this belief that greater structural demographic shift would positively relate to a more favorable climate for diversity. Although at the organizational level, the university had experienced significant change in organizational demography: an increase in the overall representation of white women (36 percent) and minorities (41 percent) over time; work group members in units with the greatest change did not have higher consensus or more favorable valence. We found more favorable results for organizational than group level referents of change. Members may find it easier to agree with organizational referents and more difficult to agree on group level referents due to their greater psychological proximity to group processes that affect how they personally experience conflict and wellbeing from change in their daily work. Work groups with more demographic change had higher valence but lower consensus on whether the organization should pursue diversity as a strategic goal. When organizational change strategies to increase diversity are enacted at the work group level, the group demographic shift may be diluted across the organization to only slightly increase the representation of women and minorities within actual groups. Due to this dilution effect, group members’ social construction of the HR strategies may lack consensus or positive valence regarding the organizational diversity change strategies. If the change is not large enough to create a critical mass to tip representation of minorities to at least 35 percent, according to Kanter (1977) negative intergroup dynamics such as increased resource competition and tokenism may still occur. 4.3 Diluting diversity: gradually increasing the proportion of senior women minorities does not necessarily improve group climate Our third objective was to investigate whether increasing the proportion of senior women and minorities at the department level positively relates to group valence and consensus. There was no relation between increasing the proportion of senior women and minorities and group valence and consensus. Due to diluted saliency of organizational HR change strategies to increase diversity at the work group level, slight demographic shifts to proportionally increase the representation of senior women and minorities did not relate to higher group valence or consensus. This increase did little to improve group climate and may have even hurt the climate in the short run.

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5. Implications for future research and practice 5.1 Incremental structural change not sufficient to improve climate We hope this study will encourage researchers and practitioners interested in diversity change strategies to augment individual and organizational levels of intervention to focus on work group climates supporting change. Our results highlight some disparities between the underlying assumptions of HR strategies to manage organizational change (increasing structural diversity will be positive for climate) and reality at the department level (incremental increases did not improve climate). Organizational strategists implementing diversity recruitment initiatives typically assume that change strategies (in this case hiring diversity) would improve the group social climate due to a positive change in member attitudes based on increased group diversity and positive social contact. Yet our study does not support this view. Although the organization we studied had had significant success in enacting the formal HR strategy – increasing the representation of women and minorities at the organizational level – our research shows that gradually shifting the demography of work groups may not necessarily lead to increased consensus or valence about the social climate within work groups. For example, it did not lead to improved climate regarding the perceived fairness of resource allocation, or good mixing in social interaction. In fact the incremental increase in the proportion of minority groups lowered consensus and agreement in the short term as subgroups sorted out shifting and socially ambiguous power relationships within work units. These results suggest the importance of measuring change initiatives impacts at the group level and having group level interventions such as team-building and group-focused resource allocation to support organizational level diversity strategies. 5.2 Focus change strategies on tipping points within targeted work units Future research should consider how HR strategies to manage organizational demographic change are socially constructed and enacted at the work group level. It is especially important to identify what constitutes a group level tipping point or critical mass across hierarchical levels and different demographic groups to enable positive consensus supporting change. Practice might find it more fruitful to focus future HR strategies to increase diversity through hiring to alter tipping points within targeted work groups. This will dramatically alter the saliency of strategic organizational demographic change and intervene to shape the climate of specific units. Our study suggests that organizations may need demographic earthquakes within work groups to effect group consensus and valence on the climate regarding the HR change (i.e. managing diversity). Dilution of change at the group level may ameliorate intended positive effects unless certain group level tipping points, such as at least 35 percent of the work group, are effected in each unit by

the HR strategy. After eight years of hiring new faculty, in our sample, women hovered at about 15 percent in 89 percent of groups and minorities had a maximum representation of 25 percent. The demographic shifts, while increasing, were not dramatic enough to create imbalances that markedly increased the salience and power of new demographic subgroups created by the HR strategies. Instead of being balanced, many of our groups were still largely white male and remain tilted or skewed over time, which Kanter (1977) notes perpetuates stereotypical negative dynamics. 5.3 Avoiding backlash: weaving tipping points across the hierarchy Recent work at MIT by Bailyn (2000) suggests that backlash and resistance to organizational change may be occurring among senior white male faculty in response to HR diversity strategies. Initially, women and minorities now enter departments with relatively equal resources to white men as supported by the HR system design. However, by the time women and minorities reach the associate and full professor levels, subtle discrimination processes occur in how HR policies are applied, such as lower access to resources, promotions, and poor climate. Despite the increase in upward mobility, the representation of women and minorities at the top is still relatively low. Ely (1994) found that if women are under-represented at higher organizational levels, relations between women at lower levels might be of lower quality due to increased competition and negative gender dynamics in the larger social system. If HR change strategies that alter the distribution of existing resources across organizational and demographic groups are to be successful, they must take into account how, not only tipping points in terms of overall departmental representation, but, more importantly, how tipping points are distributed in demographies across the hierarchies of work groups or departments. HR diversity change strategies that bring in many new hires of different backgrounds may have negative ramifications for social functioning in groups, particularly if new members are not supported by additional HR strategies that allow them to enter work groups on an equal footing or if their work groups do not have leadership that mirror their demographic identities. As Kanter (1983) found, identity groups must be equal in their access to power resources if contact is to produce improvement in attitudes. There must also be time for the new members to be socialized and integrated into the culture. Harrison et al. (1998) found that the longer the length of time that members worked together, the greater the effects of deep level attitude similarity. Organizations are increasing surface (demographic) and deep level (attitudinal) diversity simultaneously, which is likely to have negative short-term ramifications for the consensus and direction of climate. We argue HR strategies must not only focus on the surface level – reflecting structural and demographic attributes – but also simultaneously to deep level characteristics reflecting values within

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the context of specific groups at all organizational levels. In sum, HR strategists and change agents should focus on how HR change strategies relate to the joint alignment of group member’s multiple characteristics (e.g. demographic, hierarchical status, task) in work groups – that is, to examine group contextual influences (Wharton, 1992). 5.4 Limitations Our study, while making contributions to organizational research, is not without limitations. Though large in individual respondents, by utilizing the group as the level of analysis, our sample size includes only 74 groups. This could reduce the level of statistical power of our findings. Additionally, because the sample was based on one organization, it is important to replicate this analysis across multiple organizations to substantiate our results. Although changes in department heterogeneity across an eight-year period were included, this is not a longitudinal design. Future research should employ repeated measures over a length of time across all variables measuring demographic change in heterogeneity as well as consensus and valence. Our study points to some of the challenges in measuring “success in increasing diversity”, as we did not look at annual turnover or the effects of the glass ceiling at the group level in this study, which is a gap we hope future researchers will be motivated to study, spurred by our research. Since little published work has been done on group consensus regarding the effects of HR policies to increase diversity through demographic change, we extend many social science literatures ranging from organizational development to demography, and HR. Future research on diversity and organizational change also should strive to be interdisciplinary, as the literature on HR strategy and change has been largely developed in the HR literature, separate from other social science disciplines reducing theoretical integration. Without such integration and increased scholarly and practitioner attention to climate and consensus, many organizations may fail to support group members’ explicit use of their cultural experiences to advance organizational learning from enacted diversity change strategies, despite the group and intergroup social tensions that will inevitably occur (Thomas and Ely, 1996). References Aiken, L.A. and West, S.G. (1993), Multiple Regression: Testing and Interpreting Interactions, Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA. Alderfer, C.P. and Smith, K.K. (1982), “Studying embedded intergroup relations in organizations”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 27, pp. 35-65. Allport, G. (1954), The Nature of Prejudice, Addison Wesley, Cambridge, MA. Bailyn, L. (2000), “Gender and diversity in organizations preconference presentation”, paper presented at the National Academy of Management meeting, Toronto.

Blalock, H.M. (1967), Toward a Theory of Minority Group Relations, Wiley, New York, NY. Bleise, P.D. and Halverson, R.R. (1998), “Group consensus and psychological well-being: a large field study”, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 28, pp. 563-80. Brown, K.G., Kozlowski, S.W.J. and Hattrup, K. (1996), Theory, Issues, and Recommendations in Conceptualizing Agreement as a Construct in Organizational Research: The Search for Consensus Regarding Consensus, National Academy of Management, Cincinnati, OH. Cox, T. Jr (1993), Cultural Diversity in Organizations, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA. Ely, R. (1994), “The effects of organizational demographics and social identity on relationships among professional women”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 39, pp. 203-38. Ely, R. (1995), “The power in demography: women’s social constructions of gender identity at work”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 38, pp. 589-634. Festinger, L. (1954), “A theory of social comparison processes”, Human Relations, Vol. 7, pp. 117-40. Forsyth, D.R. (1990), Group Dynamics, Brooks/Cole Publishing, Pacific Grove, CA. Harrison, D.A., Price, K.H. and Bell, M.P. (1998), “Beyond relational demography: time and the effects of surface and deep-level diversity on work group cohesion”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 41, pp. 96-107. James, K., Lovato, C. and Khoo, G. (1994), “Social identity correlates of minority workers’ health”, Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 37, p. 383+. Kanter, R. (1977), “Some effects of proportions on group life: skewed sex ratios and reactions to token women”, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 82, pp. 965-90. Kanter, R. (1983), Men and Women of the Corporation, Basic Books, New York, NY. Kossek, E.E. and Lobel, S.A. (1996), “Introduction: transforming human resource systems to manage diversity”, in Managing Diversity: Human Resource Strategies for Transforming the Workplace, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 1-19. Kossek, E.E. and Zonia, S.C. (1993), “Assessing diversity climate: a field study of reactions to employer efforts to promote diversity”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 14, pp. 61-81. Larkey, L.K. (1996), “Toward a theory of communicative interactions in culturally diverse workgroups”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 21, pp. 463-91. Lau, D.C. and Murnighan, J.K. (1998), “Demographic diversity and faultlines: the compositional dynamics of organizational groups”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 29, pp. 325-40. Lindell, M.K. and Brandt, C.J. (2000), “Climate quality and climate consensus as mediators of the relationship between organizational antecedents and outcomes”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 85, pp. 331-48. McGrath, J.E., Berdahl, J.L. and Arrow, H. (1995), “Traits, expectations, culture, and clout: the dynamics of diversity in work groups”, in Jackson, S.E. and Ruderman, M.N. (Eds), Diversity in Work Teams: Research Paradigms for a Changing Workplace, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC. Payne, R.L. and Pugh, D.S. (1976), “Organizational structure and climate”, in Dunnette, M.D. (Ed.), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Rand McNally, Chicago, IL, pp. 1125-73. Reichers, A. and Schneider, B. (1990), “Climate and culture: an evolution of constructs”, in Schneider, B. (Ed.), Organizational Climate and Culture, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.

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Schein, E. (1988), Process Consultation, Addison-Wesley, Boston, MA. Schneider, B. and Reichers, A.E. (1983), “On the etiology of climates”, Personnel Psychology, Vol. 36, pp. 19-39. Schneider, K.T., Hitlan, R.T. and Radhakrishnan, P. (2000), “An examination of the nature and correlates of ethnic harassment experiences in multiple contexts”, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 85, pp. 3-12. Thomas, D.A. and Ely, R.J. (1996), “Making differences matter: a new paradigm for managing diversity”, Harvard Business Review, pp. 79-90. Triandis, H.C., Krowski, L.L. and Gelfand, M.J. (1994), “Workplace diversity”, in Triandis, H.C. and Dunnette, M.D. (Eds), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Consulting Psychologist’s Press, Palo Alto, CA, Vol. 4, pp. 769-827. Tsui, A.S., Egan, T.D. and O’Reilly, C.A. (1992), “Being different: relational demography and organizational attachment”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 37, pp. 547-79. Tsui, A. and Gutek, B. (1999), Demographic Differences in Organizations: Current Research & Future Directions, Lexington Books, New York, NY. Wharton, A. (1992), “The social construction of gender and race in organizations: a social identity and group mobilization perspective”, in Tolbert, P.T. and Bacharach, S.B. (Eds), Research in the Sociology of Organizations, JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, Vol. 10, pp. 55-84. Zander, A. (1994), Making Groups Effective, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Further reading Kossek, E.E., Zonia, S. and Young, W. (1996), “The limitations of organizational demography: can diversity climate be enhanced in the absence of teamwork?”, in Ruderman, H., HughesJames, M.W. and Jackson, S. (Eds), Selected Research on Work Team Diversity, American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, pp. 121-54.

Book review Understanding Behaviors for Effective Leadership Jon P. Howell and Dan L. Costley Prentice-Hall Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 2001 ISBN: 0130284033 US $73.33 Keywords Leadership, Substitutes for leadership, Contingency theory Understanding Behaviors for Effective Leadership differentiates itself from the plethora of business books on the topic of leadership by presenting the results of empirical research in a manner that is imminently accessible to students of all types. Over ten years in development, this book, and its “leadership process model”, frames and represents author Jon Howell’s current synthesis of the extant research on contingency approaches to leadership. The “leadership process model” facilitates the integration of prior research findings within a complex substitutes-for-leadership framework that is easily understandable to those unfamiliar with leadership theory and research. The model includes leader behaviors, situational factors that increase leader effectiveness, situational factors that replace the need for leadership, situational factors that decrease leader effectiveness, follower/group psychological reactions, and behavioral outcomes. The strength of this textbook lies in its emphasis on leader behaviors, its clear presentation of complex interactions among situations and leader behaviors, and its basis in the results of rigorous empirical leadership research. Unsurprisingly, the positivist assumptions on which the theory and research are founded beget the primary critique of the text. As an integration of logical positivist empiricism, the text is implicitly founded in a realist ontology and epistemology. Research in this tradition attempts to discover a priori facts about leadership in a quest to discover the real nature of leadership. The text aggregates these discovered facts as a representation of accumulated scientific knowledge about leadership. From this philosophical perspective, the text effectively frames and communicates insights into the nature of leadership. While the contribution of the text to our understanding of leadership is demonstrable, this progress is achieved at a price. The majority of the price paid is the omission of leadership research based in different philosophical assumptions (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). Interpretive, critical, and post-modern approaches to leadership are not addressed in the text, effectively

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marginalizing these schools of thought, implicitly subordinating them to the dominant hegemony of functionalist leadership research. A brief analysis of one of the implicit objectivist assumptions about leadership may provide a useful illustration. In the research that underpins the text, leadership and followership are viewed as discovered facts, as are measurable individual differences and relationships among these facts. These facts are assumed to exist, without regard to their specific sociocultural history. In contrast, a social constructionist perspective would view leadership as an aspect of social reality that has attained validity through objectivation, institutionalization, and legitimation (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Since social facticities are created and modified by particular historical circumstances, social research is “essentially engaged in a systematic account of contemporary affairs” rather than the accumulation of knowledge (Gergen, 1973). The Howell and Costley text (Alvesson and Deetz, 1996) naturalizes the discovered social order, abstracting it from the dynamics of its historical social construction. Thus, the text presents an excellent snapshot of quantified leadership relationships in the contemporary USA, but frames the picture in a disciplinary manner that privileges functionalism and performativity (Lyotard, 1984). The naturalization critique articulated above stimulated a lively and thoughtful student discussion when used during a classroom session. When paradigmatically framed, the text provided a logical focus for exploring assumptions of historicity in the social construction of leadership and a helpful empirical picture of some current socially legitimated “unwritten rules” of leadership. Once students entertained the idea that reality is constructed and that multiple realities are possible, they began to realize that leaders influence the creation of those realities. This book provides a useful roadmap to orient students to behaviors for effective leadership in organizations today. In addition to its value in the classroom, this book may also be useful for leadership training in organizations. Unlike some of the popular leadership training programs being used in organizations, the leadership process model is based on a valid stream of leadership research. Since the model is easily learned and remembered, it can provide managers with an accessible and valid way to think through leadership situations. An initial three-box model identifies the key leadership tasks as diagnosis, providing appropriate leader behaviors, and modifying the situation. In organizations, the routine use of this simple threebox model could significantly improve organizational performance. The third key leadership task, modifying the situation, is an especially powerful aspect of leadership in organizations. Modifying management systems to enhance the effectiveness of a leader’s behavior or to replace the need for a leader’s attention to particular situations are underutilized strategies in organizations today. In summary, Understanding Behaviors for Effective Leadership is an excellent synthesis of the extant research on contingency approaches to leadership. It is well accepted by students and is a useful index to the empirical

leadership literature in the positivist tradition. This book is worthy of being in the library of those who study, teach, or research in the area of leadership. Jim Paul Department of Health Policy and Management, University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas, USA References Alvesson, M. and Deetz, S. (1996), “Critical theory and postmodernism approaches to organizational studies”, in Clegg, S.R., Hardy, C. and Nord, W.R. (Eds), Handbook of Organization Studies, Sage, London, pp. 191-217. Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1966), The Social Construction of Reality: a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Anchor Books, New York, NY. Burrell, G. and Morgan, G. (1979), Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis, Ashgate Publishing, Brookfield, VT. Gergen, K.J. (1973), “Social psychology as history”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 309-20. Lyotard, J.F. (1984), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (trans. Bennington, G. and Massumi, B.), University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN.

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Conference announcement 13th IIRA World Congress ‘‘Beyond traditional employment. Industrial relations in the network economy’’ 8-12 September 2003, Berlin, Germany For the second time, Germany has the honour and the privilege to host a World Congress of the International Industrial Relations Association (IIRA). The congress is scheduled to be held from 8-12 September 2003, on the campus of the Free University Berlin (FU Berlin). The general theme of the Congress is ‘‘Beyond traditional employment. Industrial relations in the network economy’’. Traditional employment relations are changing, calling established regulations and practices into question. While developing countries have often not succeeded in attaining such standards, these are in a process of erosion in industrialised countries, especially as they move towards a service and knowledge economy. As seen from today’s perspective, this economy will put an even greater emphasis on networks among organisations and people. Network technologies, such as the Internet, are often an integral part of this development. Whether moving beyond

traditional employment to a network economy will compensate for a loss of labour regulations and established employment practices is a vital issue to be addressed. There are five thematic tracks: 1 Enterprise reorganisation: negotiated, consultative or unilateral? 2 Changing contours of the employment relationship and new modes of labour regulation. 3 Industrial relations and global labour standards. 4 Collective actors in industrial relations: what future? 5 European integration: convergence or diversity? Further detailed information and registration forms can be found on the Internet under www.fu-berlin.de/iira2003