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The social innovation of devolving HRM responsibilities to line managers results in many debates about how well they implement HRM practices. The implementation constraints line managers perceive in their HRM role are researched by taking organisational contingencies into consideration.

We present four case studies in which our findings are based on quantitative and qualitative data from the cases. The qualitative data allow us to explain some of our quantitative results in terms of organisational differences.

The HRM implementation effectiveness as perceived by line managers depends on the line managers’ span of control, his/her education level and experience and his/her hierarchical position in the organisation. Each HRM implementation constraint knows additional organisational contingencies.

We did not consider possible influences of one organisational characteristic on another, and the effect of this combined effect on the HRM implementation factors. In order to overcome this limitation, we would suggest using a structural equation model (SEM) in future research.

This chapter offers HR professionals solutions on how to structure the organisation and design the HRM role of line managers in order to implement HRM practices effectively.

We see many differences on how HRM implementation is managed in organisations. This chapter offers solutions to policy makers on how to equalise the HRM role of line managers.

The focus of this chapter is on the line manager (instead of HR managers) as implementer of HRM and the impact of organisational contingencies on HRM implementation.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice have focused primarily on individuals’ characteristics and behaviors as a means to understand “who” is influential in organizations, with substantially less attention paid to social networks. To reinvigorate a focus on network structures to explain interpersonal influence, the authors present a comprehensive account of how network structures enable and constrain influence within organizations. The authors begin by describing how power and status, two key determinants of individual influence in organizations, operate through different mechanisms, and delineate a range of network positions that yield power, reflect status, and/or capture realized influence. Then, the authors extend initial structural views of influence beyond the positions of individuals to consider how network structures within and between groups – capturing group social capital and/or shared leadership – enable and constrain groups’ ability to influence group members, other groups, and the broader organizational system. The authors also discuss how HRM may leverage these insights to facilitate interpersonal influence in ways that support individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.

This paper aims to explore the strategic and evolving role of human resource management (HRM) directors within the context of underdeveloped institutional arrangements. The study focuses on India and conducts a comparative analysis of the roles of HRM directors in both multinational enterprises (MNEs) and domestic firms.

Survey-based data from the HRM directors of 252 enterprises were gathered for the comparative analysis, including both multinational and domestic enterprises.

HRM directors in MNEs lack the proficiency required to effectively fulfil their strategic role. In addition, there has been a notable shift in the responsibilities of HRM directors in MNEs, with increased emphasis on labour movements and trade union negotiations, as opposed to traditional human resource (HR) activities. This shift suggests that the role of HRM in MNEs operating in India has been influenced by local isomorphic forces, rather than following a “pendulum swing” between home and host country institutional pressures. The prevalence of informality in the Indian institutional arrangements may act as a strong counterforce to integrating the strategic agency of MNEs' home country HRM directors into the organizational structure. Despite facing resistance from the local institutional context, HRM directors in MNEs are responding with a pushback, prioritizing labour movements and trade union negotiations over core HRM activities.

The study highlights the broader implications for theory and practice, shedding light on the challenges faced by HRM directors in navigating incoherent institutional arrangements. It emphasizes the need for a deeper understanding of local forces in shaping HRM practices within multinational settings.

We contribute to the comparative HRM literature by elaborating on power struggles that HRM directors face amid the dichotomies of formal power and authority that are encoded in the organizational structure versus culturally contingent power that can be accrued from engaging in informality. We also highlight their engagement in prolonged institutional mediation and change, which serves as a compensatory mechanism for the institutional shortfalls they encounter within the context of emerging markets.

Organizational behavior scholars have long recognized the importance of a variety of emotion-related phenomena in everyday work life. Indeed, after three decades, the span of research on emotions in the workplace encompasses a wide variety of affective variables such as emotional climate, emotional labor, emotion regulation, positive and negative affect, empathy, and more recently, specific emotions. Emotions operate in complex ways across multiple levels of analysis (i.e., within-person, between-person, interpersonal, group, and organizational) to exert influence on work behavior and outcomes, but their linkages to human resource management (HRM) policies and practices have not always been explicit or well understood. This chapter offers a review and integration of the bourgeoning research on discrete positive and negative emotions, offering insights about why these emotions are relevant to HRM policies and practices. We review some of the dominant theories that have emerged out of functionalist perspectives on emotions, connecting these to a strategic HRM framework. We then define and describe four discrete positive and negative emotions (fear, pride, guilt, and interest) highlighting how they relate to five HRM practices: (1) selection, (2) training/learning, (3) performance management, (4) incentives/rewards, and (5) employee voice. Following this, we discuss the emotion perception and regulation implications of these and other discrete emotions for leaders and HRM managers. We conclude with some challenges associated with understanding discrete emotions in organizations as well as some opportunities and future directions for improving our appreciation and understanding of the role of discrete emotional experiences in HRM.

HRM climate is the intervening variable that relates implemented HRM practices to individual reactions. The purpose of the study is to contribute to the understanding of HRM climate construct, through the study of the role of HRM climate in employees' attitudes.

Based on the literature review a model is proposed that links HRM climate perceptions to job satisfaction, job involvement and perceived organisational performance. The model was tested on a sample of 574 Slovenian employees from the manufacturing sector. The model of HRM‐attitudes relationship was tested with partial least squares approach to structural equation modelling.

Two HRM climate dimensions (collaboration and structure) have an indirect (through job satisfaction and job involvement) and direct effect on perceived organisational performance, although dimension “collaboration” has a much stronger effect on employees' job satisfaction, and perceived organisational performance factor, than the “structure” dimension.

The HRM climate as a construct has not been studied intensively, although perceptions of HRM practices have been at the centre of attention since the beginning of the study of HRM‐performance relations. The study shows that the meaning assigned to the experienced HRM practices, has a strong effect on employees' reactions toward the job and work environment, and so offers a new approach to the understanding of the individual's role in HRM‐performance relation.

The purpose of this empirical study is to develop an understanding of how human resource (HR) managers employed by organizations with an explicit sustainability agenda view employees as stakeholders, and to explore how such views are operationalized in HR policies and practices.

An interpretive approach using data from 35 semi-structured interviews was adopted for this study. Data were transcribed and analyzed using the Gioia methodology.

Comparison of approaches to sustainable human resource management (HRM) revealed three distinctive conceptualizations of employees with respect to the sustainability agenda – employees as a driving force for sustainability, employees as consumers of HR practices and employees as members of a community. Strong levels of integration between the HRM and sustainability agendas were only evidenced in those organizations where an attempt had been made to address all three roles simultaneously. Findings suggest that engagement with a sustainability agenda widens the remit of the HRM function, underscoring the importance of employees' roles as consumers of HR practices and as members of wider communities.

By addressing the integration of HRM with a sustainability agenda, this article helps practitioners recognize diversity among employees' roles and the varying associated needs. Examples of policy and practice initiatives that effectively address these needs are provided.

HRM has been widely criticized for overemphasizing shareholder value, thereby lacking in attention to the needs of other stakeholders, including employees. Findings from this study suggest the holistic approach advocated by a sustainability agenda can effectively quell these concerns.

Creativity and innovation have been buzzwords of managerial discourse over the last few decades as they contribute to the long-term survival and competitiveness of firms. Given the non-linear, causally ambiguous, and intangible nature of all innovation-related phenomena, management scholars have been trying to uncover factors that contribute to creativity and innovation from multiple lenses ranging from organizational behavior at the micro-level to strategic management at the macro-level. Along with important and insightful developments in these research streams that evolved independently from one another, human resource management (HRM) research – especially from a strategic perspective – has only recently started to contribute to a better understanding of both creativity and innovation. The goal of this chapter is to review the contributions of strategic HRM research to an improved understanding of creativity at the individual-level and innovation at the firm-level. In organizing this review, the authors rely on the open innovation funnel as a metaphor to review research on both HRM practices and HRM systems that contribute to creativity and innovation. In the last section, the authors focus on more recent developments in HRM research that focus on ambidexterity – as a way for HRM to simultaneously facilitate exploration and exploitation. This chapter concludes with a discussion of future research directions.