Strategic HRM: An International Perspective

Dear Colleagues,

From its humble beginning as personnel management where the job of HR managers was concerned with mainly routine tasks, human resource management (HRM) has now travelled a long path reflecting rather a strategic role in the field (Darwish, Singh, and Mohamed, 2013; Darwish, Wood, Singh, and Singh, 2019). Notably, the modern field of strategic human resource management (SHRM) has been attracting considerable attention from HR scholars given its potential association with the overall functioning of organisations across all sectors. Although no consensus is yet reached, scholars are consistently examining the interplay between HRM and organisational performance in an attempt to fully understand what is the best set of HR practices that could lead to enhanced organisational performance, how performance may best be measured, and the mechanism or the nature of the link between the two (see Guest, 1997, Darwish, Singh and Wood, 2015). Whilst there is a considerable work in relation to the impact of HRM on performance, the bulk of the work in this area has been conducted in mature markets, leaving us knowing far less about the HRM–performance link in emerging markets. It is held that, within emerging markets, the efficacy of HR practices and the way they work hinge on national institutional setting and local realities (Peng and Delios, 2006; Carney, Gedajlovic, and Yang, 2009), and HR bundles tend to be poorly integrated (Darwish et al. 2019). The latter would also mean that complementary sets of people management practices might be hard to maintain within emerging markets where institutional arrangements remain fluid and underdeveloped (see Wood and Frynas, 2006; Wood et al. 2019). Hence, HR complementarities found in matured markets are less likely to emerge in emerging market settings (Hall and Soskice, 2001; 2003), and this would also have different performance implications from those encountered in developed nations. It is therefore still unclear how HRM does impact on organisational performance in less mature markets where institutional features and supports are rather weak and less developed. More work is needed to fully understand the impact of local institutional features on HR practices, organisational performance, and the link between the two.

We invite submissions of empirical and conceptual papers to this Special Issue that extend and advance our understanding in areas that include but are not limited to:

• Adding to the HRM performance debate by exploring whether or not and how HRM practices impact on organizational performance in emerging market setting;
• Exploring what mixture of HR practices may be considered most appropriate in the context of an emerging market setting;
• Identifying the impacts of local institutional arrangements (social, political, economic, and legal) on the relationship between HRM and performance within emerging markets and drawing out the broader implications for theory and practice;
• Organisational performance, which remains one of the most ill-defined concepts in the literature; papers which contribute to issues in relation to organisational performance measurement in emerging markets are also sought;
• Key challenges facing HR managers and professionals in emerging markets, and the potential impacts of such challenges on HR practices and the overall performance of organisations.

References

Carney, M., Gedajlovic, E., & Yang, X. (2009). Varieties of Asian capitalism: Toward an institutional theory of Asian enterprise. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 26(3), 361-380.

Darwish, T., Singh, S. and Mohamed, AF. (2013). The role of strategic HR practices in organisational effectiveness: An investigation in the country of Jordan. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 24(17): 3343-3362.

Darwish, T. K., Singh, S., & Wood, G. (2016). The impact of human resource practices on actual and perceived organizational performance in a Middle Eastern emerging market. Human Resource Management, 55(2), 261-281.

Darwish, T., Wood, G., Singh, S. and Singh, R. (2019). Human Resource Management in India: Performance and Complementarity. European Management Review. ISSN 1740-4754 (In Press)

Hall, P. and Soskice, D. (2001). An introduction to the varieties of capitalism. In P. Hall and D. Soskice (eds.), Varieties of capitalism: The institutional basis of competitive advantage, pp. 1-68. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Hall, P. A., & Soskice, D. (2003). Varieties of capitalism and institutional change: A response to three critics. Comparative European Politics, 1(2): 241-250.

Guest, D. E. (1997). Human resource management and performance: A review and research agenda. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 8: 263-276.

Peng, M. W., & Delios, A. (2006). What determines the scope of the firm over time and around the world? An Asia Pacific perspective. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, 23(4): 385-405.

Wood, G. and Frynas, G. (2006). The institutional basis of economic failure: Anatomy of the segmented business system, Socio-Economic Review, 4(2): 239-277.

Wood, G. Darwish, T. Alanezi, A and Singh, S. (2019). Indigenization of staffing in MNEs: The case of Saudi Arabia. Asia Pacific Journal of Management, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10490-019-09661-5

Dr. Tamer Darwish
Guest Editor

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• HRM
• organizational performance
• institutions
• emerging markets