ACADEMIC RATIONALE

Academic rationale



Academic Rationale

Two aspects which are critical for HRM to be successful are the presence of HRM practices and the effectiveness of HRM implementation. Line managers are responsible for HRM implementation in an organization since they have to execute the HRM practices on the work floor. Nevertheless, research has indicated that line managers find implementing HRM practices difficult because of several limitations they experience in implementing HRM. HRM practices can be developed properly, but if line managers fail to implement them successfully on the work floor they are still not effective.

The role of the line managers has changed over the last twenty years. There is a widespread drive to give line managers more responsibility for the management of their staff and to reduce the extent to which human resource departments control or restrict line management autonomy in this area (Brewster & Larsen, 2000). HR professionals no longer have sole responsibility for the management of people, but share this responsibility with line managers. There is evidence that HR responsibilities are increasingly decentralized and devolved to line managers (Whittaker & Marchington, 2003;Renwick, 2002; Cunningham & Hyman, 1995; Kulik & Bainbridge, 2006). Brewster and Larsen (1992, p.412) define devolvement as “the degree to which HRM practices involve and give responsibility toline managers rather than personnel specialists”.

The HR responsibilities of line managers include day to day operational HR activities like individualized pay awards, appraisal, training and development, motivating teams and on the job training (Cunningham & Hyman, 1995). With this development HR professionals focus more on strategic and long term aspects like HR-planning and industrial relations (Kulik & Bainbridge, 2006). Overlapping reasons of why line involvement in HRM is greater in recent years are indicated by Brewster and Larsen (2000). One of the reasons is that there is a need for a comprehensive approach to HRM. This approach is argued to be best achieved by unifying responsibilities under the manager with the day-to-day responsibility for employees since they are in constant contact with the employees. Another reason is the growing influence of the service industries.

The focus is more and more on fast responsiveness to the customer and delivery quality, time and flexibility. Human Resources are a critical factor in cost and efficiency of delivery and their decisions often have to be made literally in front of the customers. Therefore it is more logical to give management responsibility to the same manager who is responsible for the service to the customers. Furthermore, the fact that decisions are increasingly made in real time is a rationale for the line involvement in HRM. HR decisions like task allocation and competences are often hard to isolate from other decisions. Besides this, waiting for the decision of a HR professional will slow down the decision making process.

The development of cost-centre or profit-centre approaches in organizations is another reason for the growing HR responsibilities of line managers. These organisations do not want to exclude Human Resources as the most substantial part of operational cost from ...