Chapter 2: SHRM and Context Flashcards
Which 2 notions are important in SHRM?
Fit and alignment
What does ‘best-fit school’ advocates?
HRM is more effective when its aligned with its internal and external context
What does ‘best-practice school’ advocates?
universalistic perspective: all firms will be better off if they identify and adopt ‘best practice’ in the way the manage people
What are Pfeffer’s 7 HR practices for building profits by putting people first?
- Selective recruitment and selection
- Extensive training
- Performance-related pay (PRP)
- Teamworking - a way to break through the hierarchical model
- Information sharing and communication
- Reduction of status differences
- Employement security - in most countires its embedded through legislation
Pfeffer is part of which school?
Best-practice school
What is the best-practice proposition criticized for?
lack of attention to contectual factors
What are the strenghts of B-P model?
Simplicity and clarity
What is the B-P proposition?
specific HR practices are universally applicable and successful when used
What is the B-F proposition?
Success can be reached only through appropriate fit between HRM and its context
What is context?
The set of facts or circumstances that surrounds the organization
What is internal context?
Org’s unique history, administrative heritage, and org culture
What is external context?
the outside mechanisms that effect the og or even interact with it
2 general: market mechanism and insitutional mechanism
What is strategy?
org’s intention to achieve certain goals through planned alignment(fit) between the org and its environment
Where an we find the strategy?
In the strategic plan or documents such as annual report and the president’s letter
What is alignment and fit?
the principle of matching elements: context and org
Who made the distinction between general environment and population environment?
Deephouse
What is general env?
all the market and institutional mechanisms that affect all org in a country
What is population env?
the external context of an org that is dire
What is strategic / vertical fit?
necessary alignment of the overall business strategy and the HR strategy; 4 linkages:
- administrative - lowest level
- one-way linkage - HR is affected by BS
- two-way linkage
- intergative linkage - full aligment
What is the internal / horizontal fit?
The link between individual HR practicies .
HR system approaches build upon this fit
Who warns us about the deadly combinations of HR practises?
Delery
What is the organizational fit?
The alignment between HRM and other org systems and configuration
What is the environmental or institutional fit?
The link between HR strategy and the institutional environment of an organization
What are the 3 types of institutional mechanisms according to DiMaggio and Powell?
- Coercive - legislation and procedures
- Normative - professional norms and routines
- Mimetic - result of uncertainty or fashion
What is strategic choice according to Child?
the defree of leeway in strategic decision making.
2 extremes:
hyper-determinism (no leeway) and hyper-voluntarism (maximum leeway)
When there is larger room to manoeuvre (Paauwe)?
- market growth
- limited number of relevent stakeholders
- limited laws etc
- capital-intesive org context
- large financial buffers
- monopolist org
What are the 6 components of the strategy scan?
- external general market context - macroeconomic situation and labor market conditions
- external population market context - competition, etc
- external general institutional context - country legislation, etc
- External population institutional context - nature of CBAs, influence of social partners
- Internal organization context - history, culture,technology
- HR strategy
What are the trends in European labor market?
- increased attention to flexicurity
- aging population
- need for increasing the woman labour through flexible arrangements
On which 5 high performance work practices, does HR strategy scan focus on?
- Recruitment and selection
- Training and development
- Appraisal and Performance management
- Compensation
- Employee participation
What distinction do Baron and Kreps make?
between single employee consistency, among employee consistency and temporal consistency
What is consistency among employees?
the extent to which the HR policies and practices are equally distributed among employees who have similar tasks and jobs in the organization.
Inconsistency may occur when 2 people with the same tasks recieve different payment
What is temporal consistency?
the degree to which HR policies and practicies remain relatively stable over time.
What is the adaptation fit?
The degree to which an org is capable of changing its HR strategy and policies to changes in the internal and external context
What is organizational field?
a community of organisations that partakes of a common meaning system and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors outside the field
What is the value of the 6 component model?
- Instrument for context analysis
- evaluation of Fit of Current HRM-Strategy
- Determine the Need to Develop a New HRM-Strategy, Policy and Practices
- Analyse and Explain Differences in HRM-Policies of Organisations
- Understand Similarities and Differences in the Adoption Responses Between Multiple Stakeholders in a Case Organization.
- Decting Tensions due to Contradicting Trends (e.g., market and institutional trends).
