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Human Resource Management Special Issue Call for Papers

  • 1.  Human Resource Management Special Issue Call for Papers

    Posted 02-23-2021 00:02
    Setting a new table, not just sitting at the table: HRM leading the transformation towards sustainability

    Guest Editors:

    Shuang Ren (Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia)

    Di Fan (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia)

    Günter K. Stahl (WU Vienna, Vienna, Austria)

    Andrew Timming (RMIT University, Australia), and

    Fang Lee Cooke (Monash University, Melbourne, Australia)

    Human Resource Management - Wiley Online Library  

    Rationale and objectives:

    The grand societal chal­lenges of our time, like those reflected in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure pros­perity for all, have gained increasing attention in the management literature as a critical dilemma that organizations face in the design of business models, management practices and employment relationships (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016). In an attempt to help address these challenges, HRM scholars have drawn attention to HRM systems, strategies and policies as a potential means towards the realization of organizations' sustainablity objectives (Stahl, Brewster, Collings, & Hajro, 2019; Taylor, Osland, & Egri, 2012). In this literature, the call to integrate HRM and sustainability has made positive advancements in the past decade, encouraging the emergence and rapid development of so-called 'green HRM', specifically targeting environmental sustainability (Jackson, Renwick, Jabbour & Muller-Camen, 2011; Renwick, 2018; Ren, Tang & Jackson, 2018), with the debate more recently extending to sustainable HRM that contributes to the triple bottom line of social, environmental, and economic  responsibility (i.e., people, planet, profits) (Ehnert, 2009; Aust, Matthews & Muller-Camen, 2019; Kramar, 2014).

    The role of HRM has since been advocated to aid organizations' proactive attempts to address environmental issues and/or corporate social responsibility while working hard not to sacrifice profitability (De Stefano, Bagdadli, & Camuffo, 2018). This includes the study of specific, disparite HRM practices, for instance environmental training (Teixeira, Jabbour, & Jabbour, 2012) and pay incentives (Merriman & Sen, 2012), as well as bundles of some 'best practices' as an integrated set of strategically-targeted HRM systems (DuBois & Dubois, 2012; Zoogah, 2018). Implicit in these investigations is a strategic HRM-derived assumption that well designed HRM practices elicit employee ability, motivation and opportunities that contribute to organizations' strategic objectives, in this case, sustainability (Ren & Jackson, 2019).

    However, the challenge associated with working towards a grand challenge like sustainability is that it requires transformation from the current market economic model to a new one in defining the purpose, value and legitimacy of organizational activities (Pfeffer, 2010). This transformation is essentially a process of institutional work where institutional logics, defined as organizing templates that guide the goals that organizations pursue and the means by which organizations pursue theirs goals (Reay & Hinings, 2009), are changed, established and institutionalized (Dahlmann & Grosvold, 2017). However, to the extent that the conventional strategic HRM paradigm evaluates business effectiveness using financial metrics primarily, the discussion of HRM's role that is built upon this paradigm is ineffective to achieve sustainability (Brewster, Gooderham, & Mayrhofer, 2016; Stahl et al., 2019).

    As part of the complexities involved in transformation towards sustainability, the HRM literature also reveals the importance of configuring well-functioning top management teams (TMT) to implement strategic changes. In most organizations, the top leader takes the final responsibility for firm performance and interacts with the TMT when dealing with complex strategic decisions, and such an interaction is termed as leader-TMT dynamics (Su, Fan & Rao-Nicholson, 2019; Heyden, Reimer, & Van Doorn, 2017). With the boundary-spanning nature of HRM systems and practices, the HRM professionals have the capacity and opportunities to interact, negotiate and coordinate the leader-TMT dynamics so as to foster an environment conducive to institutional work for sustainability. In this sense, the HRM change role is expanded beyond the influence on front line employees and line managers, but also to the intricacies embedded in the leader-TMT dynamics. Such an expansive interaction may serve as a starting point to understand complex resource configurations in explaining and implementing organizational transformation towards addressing sustainability challenges. It also raises important issues pertaining to leader integrity (Pfeffer, 2016), executive compensation (e.g., Deckop, Merriman, & Gupta, 2006), human resource development (e.g., Pless, Maak, & Stahl, 2012), corporate governance (e.g., Filatotchev & Stahl, 2015), talent management (e.g., Collings, 2014), and how to develop responsible leaders (e.g., Mirvis, 2012) that all have distinct HRM implications.

    Potential theoretical advancement and practical significance:

    In this direction, the HRM change role is needed to lead to institutional change towards articulating, designing and implementing a sustainability paradigm. For instance, Ren and Jackson (2019) draw from institutional theory and introduce the concept of HRM institutional entrepreneurship where HRM professionals act as individuals or as a group to leverage professional resources or HRM systems to change institutional logics. This change leadership role departs from the change agent role that is advocated by strategic HRM scholars. For the latter, positive development has been made to shift HRM from an administrative role to a business partner role that enables HRM to gain a seat in the strategic decision making table. However, the business partner role is the most difficult one out of a range of HRM roles that has been implemented (Lawler, 2011). Thus, instead of waiting to warm up the seat of the table built upon the market economic model, HRM should be proactive in 'building a new table and inviting a wide array of guests to join a new conversation' (Ren & Jackson, 2019). However, issues around how and under what conditions HRM enacts such a change leadership role remain to be explored.

    This proposed special issue therefore has the potential to advance the theorization of HRM's role in leading the change towards addressing 'grand challenges', which puts into perspective the paradigm shifts in assessing business models. It will help to clarify the conceptualization and measurement issues around this role and further integrate the literatures of HRM, institutional theory and leadership, which have so far remained largely independent (Leroy, Segers, van Dierendonck, & den Hartog, 2018; Lewis, Cardy & Huang, 2019). In the meantime the enriched understanding of the nature, characteristics, and function of HRM change role in sustainability has practical implications for organizations to design the desired HRM systems, develop HRM professionals equipped with the right mix of skills for the role, and orchestrate a range of organizational resources in the change process.

    In summary, HRM discussions have up until now focused on reacting to new challenges brought about by sustainability – such as whether green HRM influences firms' environmental performance (Ren et al., 2018), how to incentivise managers towards the triple bottom line (Merriman & Sen, 2012), what tensions to solve among organizations' stakeholders (Ehnert, 2009) – within the confines of the economic market model of organizations' purposes for existence and action. This line of institutional logics emphasizes HRM's contribution to the economic performance of organizations, not based on a triple bottom line paradigm (George et al., 2016). Due to this, we do not yet know enough about the efficacy, process, and scope of HRM-based change towards transforming organizations' institutional context and HRM's leadership role for institutional work towards sustainability. 

     

    Key themes/scope of focus

    In this regard, the aim of this special issue is to bring together theoretical and empirical advancements in relation to HRM change leadership role in understanding and addressing sustainability challenges. We seek both theoretical and empirical papers, as well as literature reviews and meta-analyses, including interdisciplinary and intersectoral research that may address, but are not limited to, the following list of potential research questions across our major themes:

    Theme 1: Interacting with Institutions

    • How can HRM institutional entrepreneurship be measured? This includes scale development and nomological validity. How does HRM institutional entrepreneurship differ from the HRM change agent role?
    • In light of the existence of competing institutional logics within organizations, what institutional work can HRM enact toward achieving sustainable development?
    • Under what conditions can HRM enact a change leadership role in which organizations' institutional logics are challenged and reformed to reflect the pursuit of sustainability?

     

    Theme 2: Strategic HRM

    • How do leaders utilize HRM policies and practices as a strategic tool to achieve sustainability-related strategic goals while balancing efficiency-orientated goals?
    • To what extent does an HRM change leadership role really matter for organizations with different organizational size, structure and industry classifications?
    • How do employees or teams perceive HRM related policies towards organizational sustainability? Does HR attribution play a role in the process? What are the performance consequences of the HR attribution process?

     

    Theme 3: Interacting with TMT, Middle-level and Line Managers

    • How do an organization's HRM professionals inspire others to contribute efforts and resources with a sense of purpose in addressing sustainability?
    • How can HRM facilitate the configuration of leader-TMT dynamics so as to form a well-functioning TMT that achieves sustainable development within the organization?
    • What new theoretical perspectives can be introduced to explain the interaction between HRM professionals, TMT, middle-level and line managers? For example, how can systems theory, paradox theory, or institutional entrepreneurship add nuances to the knowledge base of the HRM literature?

     

    Theme 4: Employee Consequences

    • What skill requirements are needed for HR professionals to enact an HRM change leadership role? In addressing organizations' sustainability challenges, what new requirements are needed for HR professionals' skill sets, for instance, including personality and ideological imprinting? What do these new skill requirements mean for their career trajectories?
    • How does employee voice affect the HRM change leadership role in addressing sustainability challenges?
    • To what extent does the HRM change leadership role affect employee performance outcomes (i.e., intention to leave, job burnout, subjective well-being, etc) during the process of achieving organizational sustainability?

     

    Submission Deadline: 31st July 2021

     

    Submission Process:

    Authors can submit their paper between July 1st -31st 2021 to HRM for review. Details on the manuscript submission process will be made available nearer to the submission period. Papers should be prepared and submitted according to the journal's guidelines: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/page/journal/1099050x/homepage/forauthors.html.  All papers will be subject to the same double-blind peer review process as regular issues of HRM.

     

    If you have questions about a potential submission, please contact: shuang.ren@deakin.edu.au.   

     

     

    References:

    Aust, I., Matthews, B., & Muller-Camen, M. (2019). Common good HRM: A paradigm shift in sustainable HRM? Human Resource Management Review, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2019.100705

    Brewster, C., Gooderham, P., & Mayrhofer, W. (2016) Human Resource Management: The promise, the performance, the consequences. Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, 3(2), 181–190.

    Collings, D.G. (2014). Toward mature talent management: Beyond shareholder value. Human Resource Development Quarterly25(3), 301–319.

    Dahlmann, F., & Grosvold, J. (2017). Environmental managers and institutional work: Reconciling tensions of competing institutional logics. Business Ethics Quarterly, 27(2), 263–291.

    Deckop, J. R., Merriman, K. K., & Gupta, S. (2006). The effects of CEO pay structure on corporate social performance. Journal of Management. 32(3): 329-342.

    DuBois, C. L. Z., & Dubois, D. A. (2012). Strategic HRM as social design for environmental sustainability in organization. Human Resource Management, 51(6), 799–826.

    Ehnert, I. (2009). Sustainable human resource management. A Conceptual and Exploratory Analysis from a Paradox Perspective, Heidelberg.

    Filatotchev, I., & Stahl, G.K. (2015). Towards transnational CSR. Corporate social responsi­bility approaches and governance solutions for multinational corporations. Organizational Dynamics, 44(2), 121–129.

    George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A., & Tihanyi, L. (2016). Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 1880–1895.

    Heyden, M. L., Reimer, M., & Van Doorn, S. (2017). Innovating beyond the horizon: CEO career horizon, top management composition, and R&D intensity. Human Resource Management, 56(2), 205–224.

    Jackson, S. E., Renwick, D. W. S., Jabbour, C. J. C., & Muller-Camen, M. (2011). State-of-the-art and future directions for green human resource management: Introduction to the special issue. German Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(2), 99–116.

    Kramar, R. (2014). Beyond strategic human resource management: is sustainable human resource management the next approach? The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 25(8), 1069–1089.

    Lawler, E. D. (2011). Celebrating 50 years: HR: Time for a reset? Human Resource Management, March/April, 171–173.

    Merriman, K. K., & Sen, S. (2012). Incenting managers toward the triple bottom line: An agency and social norm perspective. Human Resource Management, 51(6), 851–872.

    Mirvis, P. (2012). Employee engagement and CSR: Transactional, relational, and developmental approaches. California Management Review, 54(4), 93–117.

    Pless, N. M., Maak, T., & Stahl, G. K. (2012). Promoting corporate social responsibility and sustainable development through management development: What can be learned from international service learning programs? Human Resource Management, 51(6), 873– 903.

    Pfeffer, J. (2010). Building sustainable organizations: The human factor. The Academy of Management Perspectives, 24(1), 34–45.

    Pfeffer, J. (2016). Why the assholes are winning: money trumps all. Journal of Management Studies, 53(4), 663–669.

    Reay, T., & Hinings, C. R. (2009). Managing the rivalry of competing institutional logics. Organization Studies, 30(6), 629–652.

    Ren, S. & Jackson, S. (2019) HRM institutional entrepreneurship for sustainable business organizations. Human Resource Management Review https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2019.100691

    Ren, S., Tang, G. Y., & Jackson, S. E. (2018) Green human resource management research in emergence: A review and future directions. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 35(3), 769–803.

    Renwick, D. W. S. (2018). Contemporary developments in green human resource management research: Towards sustainability in action? London: Routledge.

    Stahl, G., Brewster, C., Collings, D., & Hajro, A. (2019). Enhancing the role of human resource management in corporate sustainabil­ity and social responsibility: A multi-stakeholder, multidimensional approach to HRM. Human Resource Management Review, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2019.100708

    De Stefano, F., Bagdadli, S., & Camuffo, A. (2018). The HR role in corporate social responsibility and sustainability: A boundary-shifting literature review. Human Resource Management, 57(2), 549–566.

    Su, Y., Fan, D., & Rao-Nicholson, R. (2019). Internationalization of Chinese banking and financial institutions: A fuzzy-set analysis of the leader-TMT dynamics. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 30(14), 2137–2165.

    Taylor, S., Osland, J., & Egri, C. P. (2012). Introduction to HRM's role in sustainability: Systems, strategies, and practices. Human Resource Management, 51(6), 789–798.

    Teixeira, A., Jabbour, C., & Jabbour, A. D. S. (2012). Relationship between green management and environmental training in companies located in Brazil: A theoretical framework and case studies. International Journal of Production Economics, 140, 318–329.

    Zoogah, D. B. (2018). High‐performance organizing, environmental management, and organizational performance: An evolutionary economics perspective. Human Resource Management, 57(1), 159–175.

     



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    Fang Lee Cooke
    Monash University
    Melbourne VIC
    0061 3 99034666
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