Search

This article investigates how meso-level actors (MeLAs) contribute to HR practice transfer in diffusion and adaptation processes, drawing on the System-Society-Dominance-Corporate Effects (SSDC) framework to interpret the role of MeLAs in the transfer of the Japanese management model to the Indonesian automotive industry. We focus on two issues: i) the way Japanese MeLAs' training regimes in Japan affect the diffusion of the model and ii) the coordinated Japanese and Indonesian MeLAs strategy in seeking procedural influence through knowledge-sharing and in facilitating transfer activities over how the Japanese model is adapted in Indonesia. Our research adds to our limited understanding of the significance of MeLAs in processes of diffusion-adaptation in emerging market economies characterized by weak regulatory regimes and asymmetric socioeconomic power relations. Drawing on interviews with 75 key informants across Japan and Indonesia, we explore the significance of MeLAs from corporate and labor spheres alongside those of non-corporate MeLAs. Theoretically, this study extends the SSDC framework by highlighting MeLAs' influence in both diffusing conceptions of dominant management 'best practice' (dominance effects) and their role – and that of dominance effects – in shaping societal effects that inform how the model is adapted. We theorize the complex processes through which the effects identified in the SSDC framework are experienced by local actors, showing that they are neither monolithic nor mechanical in nature and thereby elaborating the inter-relationship in how dominance effects inform societal effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses developments in Japanese human resource management (HRM) practices and employment relations since the country's ‘post-bubble’ economic decline and in particular following the global financial downturn of 2008. Our research findings are broadly consistent with others that have provided a mixed picture of continuity, change and diversification but the most recent financial crisis has made the negotiated nature of workplace relations more apparent. These characteristics are not readily explained by conventional understandings of Japanese HRM as a culturally or institutionally determined phenomenon. We present new empirical evidence of developments in eight automotive plants and interpret these through the application of a conceptual framework that distinguishes between the actors' orientations to action and social relations in specific exchange relations. This framing allows a better assessment of the agency involved in the emergence of a more differentiated articulation and manifestation of ‘Japanese HRM’. We explain these dynamics through reference to strategic choice and the negotiations both between local and corporate managers, and between managers and trade unions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The development of mainstream human resource management (HRM) theory has long been concerned with how people management can enhance performance outcomes. It is only very recently that interest has been shown in the parallel stream of research on the link between employee engagement and performance, bringing the two together to suggest that engagement may constitute the mechanism through which HRM practices impact individual and organisational performance. However, engagement has emerged as a contested construct, whose meaning is susceptible to ‘fixing, shrinking, stretching and bending’. It has furthermore not yet been scrutinised from a critical HRM perspective, nor have the societal and contextual implications of engagement within the domain of HRM been considered. We review the contribution of the seven articles in this special issue to the advancement of theory and evidence on employee engagement, and highlight areas where further research is needed to answer important questions in the emergent field that links HRM and engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper reports different managerial approaches to engaging employees in two contrasting organizations. We categorize these approaches to employee engagement as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, and examine how these reflect the different external contexts in which management operate and, in particular, their influence on management's ability to promote a supportive internal context. The paper extends the existing literature on the antecedents of engagement by illustrating the importance of combining practitioner concerns about the role and practice of managers with the insights derived from the psychological literature relating to job features. We build from these two approaches to include important features of organizational context to examine the tensions and constraints management encounter in promoting engagement. Our analysis draws on the critical organizational and HRM literature to make a contribution to understanding different applications of employee engagement within organizations. In so doing, we outline a situated and critical reading of organizations to better appreciate that management practices are complex, contested, emergent, locally enacted and context specific, and thereby provide new insights into the inherent challenges of delivering engaged employees. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A call for papers on employee engagement to be featured in a special issue of "The International Journal of Human Resource Management" is presented.