Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Why do we clutch at academic musings?

by Personnel Today 4 Jun 2002
by Personnel Today 4 Jun 2002

After more than 20 years as an HR practitioner, one thing that has always
struck me as odd is why we so often look to academics for new ideas. Our
profession is fundamentally a job of dealing with everyday issues, with real
people in real situations, so why do we look to HR academics and their research
as a means of legitimising our methodologies?

Rather than formulate new HR strategies in the crucible of the workplace –
where theoretical shortcomings and implementation problems are readily apparent
– we still seem to clutch at the musings of academics as a foundation for the
next big initiative.

Don’t get me wrong, HR academics have their place – but it is called a
university rather than a workplace. Beware of ever letting them loose in the
real world. After all, academic research was quite clearly to blame for the
plague of competence frameworks in the 1990s that infected so many HR
initiatives and rendered them ineffective.

One piece of beloved research by HR academics is the Sears-Roebuck employee
satisfaction/customer service/profit chain case study that everybody seems to
be quoting these days. It is popular because it appears to support what all
good HR people want to believe: good HR practices lead to good business.

One little-quoted aspect of this study is that Sears employed
econometricians to prove the correlation. Why? Is it not that obvious to the
naked eye? As an ‘economist’ myself I must say I have never felt such
techniques were designed or appropriate for the HR field.

Senior HR professionals who understand the real strategic issues have been
agreeing for some years now that there has to be a paradigm shift in HR
thinking. This is partly why the whole debate about harnessing human capital
has moved to the front of the new concept queue. Yet, if there has to be a
shift from existing models, what use is academic research based on existing
organisational HR practices?

When such HR professionals are asked which HR paradigm they want to move to
they invariably refer to Dave Ulrich’s change agent/business partner model. But
does this particular paradigm have a solid theoretical foundation. Has it been
proven? The ‘HR Scorecard’ (Becker, Huselid, Ulrich, Harvard Business School
Press, 2001) which tries to show HR how to align itself strategically appears
to be trying to move HR further down the road to complex answers based on
arcane regression analyses, rather than common sense solutions to difficult HR
issues.

Do we really need academics to tell us how to get the best out of people? If
that is their forte would they still be working as academics? Answers on a
postcard (failing that e-mail) please.

By Paul Kearns, Senior partner, Personnel Works

Avatar
Personnel Today

previous post
Distance no object
next post
Integrating a new executive

You may also like

The Search for Talent: Six Major Employer Pitfalls

24 May 2022

Grants scheme set up to support women’s health...

16 May 2022

How music can help to ease anxiety at...

9 May 2022

OH will be key to navigating ‘second pandemic’...

14 Apr 2022

OH urged to be aware of abortion consultations...

8 Apr 2022

How coached eCBT is returning the workplace to...

8 Apr 2022

Why now is the time to plug the...

7 Apr 2022

Two-thirds of shift workers feel health affected by...

18 Mar 2022

TUC warns of April Covid risk assessment ‘confusion’

14 Mar 2022

Consultation on new NHS cancer standards, as waits...

11 Mar 2022
  • The Search for Talent: Six Major Employer Pitfalls PROMOTED | The Great Resignation continues unabated...Read more
  • Navigating the widening “Skills Confidence Gap” in 2022, and beyond PROMOTED | Cornerstone OnDemand conducted a global study...Read more
  • Apprenticeships are the solution to your recruitment problems PROMOTED | Apprenticeships have the pulling power...Read more
  • What it really means to be mentally fit PROMOTED | What is mental fitness...Read more
  • How music can help to ease anxiety at work PROMOTED | A lot has happened since March 2020, hasn’t it?...Read more
  • Why now is the time to plug the unhealthy gap PROMOTED | We’ve all heard the term ‘health is wealth’...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2022

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2022 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+