Meeting the Challenge of Human Resource Management

A Communication Perspective

Vernon D. Miller, Michael E. Gordon, Vernon D. Miller, Michael E. Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781136224966
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

While communicating is a vital skill for managers at all organizational levels and in all functional areas, human resource managers are expected to be especially adept communicators, given the important interpersonal component of their roles. Practitioners and scholars alike stand to benefit from incorporating an updated and more nuanced view of communication theory and practice into standard human resource management practices.

This book compiles readings by thought leaders in human resource management and communication, exploring the intersection of interests, theories, and perspectives from the two fields to highlight new opportunities for research and practice. In addition to covering the foundations of strategic human resource management, the book:

• offers a critical review of the research literature on topics including recruitment, selection, performance management, compensation, and development
• uses a communication perspective to analyze the impact of corporate strategy on human resource systems
• investigates the key human resource management topic of the relationship between a company's human capital and its effectiveness
• directly discusses the implications of communication literature for human resource management practice

Written at the cross-section of two established and critcally linked fields, this book is a must-have for graduate human resource management and organizational communication students, as well as for high-level human resource management practitioners.

PART I

INTRODUCTION

1

COMMUNICATION AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

Historic Ties and New Relationships

Michael E. Gordon and Vernon D. Miller

It is a truism that communication is the bedrock of organizations. Consequently, communicating is a vital skill for managers serving at all organizational levels and in all functional areas. Managers must possess the communication skills that make it possible for them to successfully listen, receive and give instructions, fashion introductions, and ask questions. Because the interpersonal component of their jobs is important, human resource management (HRM) professionals are expected to be especially adept communicators. For example, presenting, interviewing, mediating, teaching, and serving as a liaison are only a few of the necessary communication tasks that human resource managers must display to succeed in their positions.

Above and beyond the communication skills required of individual human resource managers, the HRM function plays a vital communication-centric role in organizations. The performance of the HRM function is highly dependent upon its ability to communicate with its internal (e.g., line managers) and external (e.g., business partners) clients. Although this perspective is seldom emphasized when discussing the field, HRM professionals are expected to support, supervise, or, in some cases, perform significant communication functions in organizations. For example, relaying vital information to employees regarding their benefits and organizational offerings represents one obvious and important communication responsibility of human resource managers. Further, implicitly and, from time to time, explicitly, HRM professionals serve as partners in employee development, organizational change efforts, and the management of information systems. Therefore, HRM professionals not only help to fulfill the informational needs of employees, but their actions influence and assist the functioning of organizations as coordinated, meaning-centered systems. Recent research supports this view that “high quality communication may help to effectively bring across the desired employee behaviors that are motivated and rewarded through HR practices, which then feeds into unit performance” (Den Hartog, Boon, Verburg, & Croon, 2013, p. 1657).

It follows from the innate relationship between the two fields that formal and specific consideration of communication in the development and delivery of HRM practices should result in benefits for organizations and their members. To this end, communication and HRM scholars have, from time to time, exhibited interest in the overlap between their disciplines. For instance, researchers using an assimilation framework have examined the communication processes surrounding individuals’ transition through recruitment and selection, socialization, role development, job transfer, and exit ( Jablin, 2001). Other researchers have examined how particular interviewing tasks associated with HRM might be improved by considering principles of communication (e.g., Gordon, 2011; Gordon & Miller, 2012; Gordon & Stewart, 2009). This literature is scattered across the leading journals in different academic disciplines and, unfortunately, has yet to develop a clear scholarly identity. Further, it is fair to say that considerable communication research focuses on issues that are not presently recognized to be of substantial importance by HRM professionals. Deadrick and Gibson (2007) spoke of the divergence of interests that characterizes the “research-practice gap in HR” (p. 131).

It is our thesis and that of our fellow contributors that the effectiveness of HRM is dependent on recognizing and incorporating appropriate communication practices. We hope that our work will help communication and HRM scholars recognize the viability of this hybrid intersection of interests, theories, and perspectives and that it will lead to the development of useful new, concerted streams of research. This book is intended to encourage the development of a potentially symbiotic relationship that can nourish both fields. HRM scholars and practitioners could profit from consideration of an updated and nuanced view of communication theory and practice. In turn, formal consideration of the interactive requirements of HRM professionals and the organizational practices for which they are responsible could invigorate communication scholars to contribute further to the HRM discipline.

History of Human Resource Management

Discussions of the evolution of HRM from its roots in personnel management have quietly acknowledged the importance of communication. From its beginning, implicit in the tasks to which personnel managers were assigned is an important responsibility for wide-ranging communication activities. For example, personnel managers came into being as “welfare secretaries” who were responsible for dealing with worker complaints stemming from the harsh working conditions brought on by the factory system around the turn of the 20th century. Scott and Clothier (1925), authors of what is generally regarded to be the first comprehensive textbook dealing with personnel management, defined the goal of the emerging field as “establishing wholesome relationships between management and men” (p. iv). This remains the primary responsibility of HRM as noted by Croucher and Rizov (2012), who state that “forms of HRM all emphasize alignment of employer and employee interests” (p. 633). Throughout the ages, therefore, HRM has viewed itself as an engine for promoting the establishment of sound interpersonal relationships. “As employers began to understand the need for professionals who could play a middle role between employees and employers, the personnel manager’s role emerged” (Losey, 1998, p. 42).

The nature and scope of HRM has been enlarged since its inception to reflect the ideas about work and workers espoused by a succession of schools of management thought, employment laws, and people’s prevailing attitudes about work. Personnel managers originally performed transactional services in establishing and maintaining records on a firm’s employees and administering pay and benefit programs. The field expanded when companies began to implement the ideas of Frederick W. Taylor (1911) and his disciples in the school of scientific management. In the decade after 1910, there was widespread acceptance of their principles, which required identifying workers with appropriate skills to perform each job, teaching them to perform their jobs in the “one best practice” (p. 8), and directly linking workers’ pay to their output. The success of these practices depended on the clear transmission of information about how jobs should be performed. “Taylor even recommended that managers prepare job cards that gave workers precise instructions for their tasks; in this way, there could be no misunderstandings or ambiguities about the nature of the work” (Mumby, 2013, p. 65). Personnel managers soon assumed jurisdiction over employee selection, training, and compensation along with the responsibility for communicating clearly about these matters.

The seeds of the human relations school were sown in 1924 with the onset of studies conducted at the Hawthorne Works of Western Electric Company that flowered with the publication of Roethlisberger and Dickson (1939). The studies offered evidence that workers need to be understood in order to be satisfied and productive, as well as required management to promote better employee communication, cooperation, and involvement.¹ Whereas formal, downward communication was the focus of scientific management, the importance of upward and informal communication was recognized by the human relations school. For example, during this time personnel managers acquired a valuable tool for promoting upward channels of organizational communication with the publication of the first survey of employee attitudes, which was conducted by Kornhauser and Sharp (1932) at the Badger-Globe mill of Kimberly-Clark.

In many ways, the work initially performed by the founding researchers of this school still provides the touchstone for many of the central questions that present-day organizational communication and management scholars are asking themselves—questions having to do with the social dimensions of organizational life. (Mumby, 2013, p. 81, italics in the original)

World War II was the stimulus for the expansion of personnel management. With the exodus of male workers from business organizations to armed services duty, companies were compelled to meet wartime production goals by hiring a more diverse workforce that included women (e.g., Rosie the Riveter) and people of color, who formerly were denied access to many industrial jobs. The role of the personnel manager now encompassed recruiting, testing, training, mediating, and monitoring employee morale and job performance with, for that time, nontraditional workers, and these practices introduced special communication challenges.

A period of labor unrest followed the war and ushered in important federal legislation to deal with organized labor. Personnel managers were expected to apprise organizations about compliance with a maze of new regulations, executive orders, and court decisions (Losey, 1998). Unlike their responsibilities for promoting conformity with an overarching legal environment that dealt with employment rights, personnel managers also began introducing ideas about creating internal organizational environments that promoted worker satisfaction and motivation as suggested by Douglas McGregor’s Theory Y (1960) and Rensis Likert’s Four Systems of Management (1961). These theories drew attention to the importance of informal communication. For example, McGregor called for a transformation of supervisor control over subordinates by means of formal authority to a state of interdependence based on the development of a mutual understanding of role requirements (1960, chap. 2). Further, McGregor (1972) expressed unease about the incompatible communication roles of judge and counselor that supervisors were expected to enact in the traditional performance appraisal.

During the 1970s, traditional personnel activities were increasingly oriented toward the planning needs of top management. Recognition that successful organizational performance is dependent on the amalgamation of financial, technological, and people resources required HRM to function as an integral component of the business as opposed to an employee support system. Today, it is clear that HRM departments are judged in terms of their ability to provide human capital that enables the enterprise to operate effectively and competitively and to implement its business strategies successfully. Indeed, many now refer to the field as strategic HRM.

Obviously, ensuring that its practices support the strategic goals of the organization requires substantial attention to communication with HRM’s internal and external clients. Effective HRM is consistent with General Electric’s ideas about the “boundaryless” organization (Ashkenas, Ulrich, Jick, & Kerr, 1995) in which communication regularly occurs both within the confines of its own department as well as in collaboration with outsiders. Traditional HRM work is now conducted jointly with line managers (e.g., integrated or cross-functional work teams) as well as staff from other functional areas (e.g., HRM and finance department personnel may join forces to offer programs on personal investment to other business units). Further, the leverage afforded by supply chain management has instilled recognition of the benefits of involving both upstream and downstream business partners in the design and delivery of HRM practices.

Finally, today’s global economy obliged HRM to deal with a host of new employment issues. A variety of different organizational forms emerged (e.g., modular organizations and virtual teams) as a result of powerful new computer and telecommunication technology. The nature of employment also has changed. Lifetime service with a single employer appears to be a thing of the past, replaced by a changing array of employment relationships (e.g., contingent, part-time, and temporary labor). Shifting work assignments (e.g., work teams of various types, projects) have rapidly replaced the concept of a “job.” Clearly, the global economy has brought in its wake many challenges for HRM that require its practitioners to find the right words to establish “wholesome relationships between management and men” (Scott & Clothier, 1925, p. iv).

The Structure of HRM

The increasingly rapid pace of change in the workplace has made identifying the boundaries of HRM and defining its most distinguishing characteristics a difficult task. Over the years HRM has gradually encompassed more practices and expanded its influence on organizational decision making. This growth led scholars to propose various groupings of its practices. Beginning with the work of Mark Huselid, it was argued that coherent sets of practices were the appropriate unit of analysis when investigating the impact of HRM on firm performance (Becker & Huselid, 1998; Huselid, 1995).

Acceptance of the “coherent sets of practices” approach sparked a debate over the appropriate contents of those bundles. Pfeffer (1994) proposed a universalistic doctrine that all organizations should adopt a set of 16 high performance work practices (e.g., incentive pay, employment security, and training and development) that affect relevant outcomes (e.g., productivity and profitability). Other researchers adopted a contingency approach that recommended bundling specific HRM practices to conform to various characteristics of the organizational context (e.g., Delery & Doty, 1996). Different alignments of practices result from reliance on different contingency factors. For example, Snell (1992) organized HRM practices based on their linkage to three types of organizational control: behavior control (e.g., practices that regulate the actions of employees on the job); output control (e.g., practices that tie rewards to performance of the job); and input control (e.g., staffing, training, and development practices). Lepak and Snell (2002) focused on HRM practices suited for different employment modes (e.g., knowledge work, job-based employment, contract work, and alliance/partnerships), whereas Verburg, Den Hartog, and Koopman (2007) found support for four configurations of HRM practices (bureaucratic, professional, market, and flexibility) that were appropriate for different organizational structures. Finally, Posthuma, Campion, Masimova, and Campion (2013) created a nine-category taxonomy of high performance work practices by analyzing two decades of peer-reviewed articles. The taxonomy, based in part on previously published systems of types, groups, or categories of these practices, contains familiar categories of HRM programs, including compensation and benefits, training and development, recruiting and selection, and performance management and appraisal.

The organizational role is the systematizing principle we have chosen to identify as “coherent sets of practices.” Organizational role is a concept that is familiar to HRM practitioners, and role theory has provided a valuable and oft-used theoretical framework for research on the behavior of individuals in organizations. “In their pure or organizational form, roles are standardized patterns of behavior required of all persons playing a part in a given functional relationship” (Katz & Kahn, 1978, p. 43). With an eye toward the responsibility of HRM in helping mold a sustainable social order in the organization, roles afford a useful perspective because organizational members are linked by the functional interdependence of the roles they are expected to play.

Role expectations for any position evolve in the minds of members of its role-set (i.e., occupants of other interdependent organizational roles), who communicate their presumptions about behavior to the incumbent. Role sending occurs by means of the communicative acts of the members of the role-set that provide information that varies in terms of prescriptiveness and specificity and that embody influence attempts intended to elicit behavior that conforms to role expectations. “In most organizations, role behavior is largely dependent on role sending” (Katz & Kahn, 1978, p. 193).

Consistent with this description, we present an overview of HRM that emphasizes the part that it plays in staffing practices (i.e., those intended to manage employee role changes), developing practices (i.e., those intended to prepare employees to assume a current or future role in the organization), and conserving practices (i.e., the various steps taken to assure the availability of employees to perform their organizational roles). When viewed through the prism of organizational roles, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Staffing
• Part III Developing
• Part IV Conserving
• Part V Epilogue
• Contributors
• Index