Critically explore the view that HR Resourcing represents a collection of

practices for the control of individual employees in organisations

Introduction

The question of whether HR resourcing use ‘control strategy’ or ‘commitment strategy’ to

manage people in neo-market provokes a range of response. Before exploring this question, the

definition of HR practices or HR resourcing should be clear. As Alan notes, resourcing is the

‘movement of human resources through an organization’ (Chap. 13). Walton (1985) in his paper

claims that, ‘control’ means ‘a division of work into small, fixed tasks for which individuals can

be held accountable’. Essentially, its objective is to ‘establish order’, ‘reduce labour costs’,

‘work to rule’, which could also be called ‘compliance’ (Walton, 1985; Verheul, 2007; Legge,

2005). Commitment in HRM is portrayed as ‘facilitating’, ‘internalised belief’, which established

association between organizational ends and individual goals (ibid), i.e., attitudinal commitment

(Allen and Meyer 1990 in Verheul). In most cases, control and commitment can be viewed as

two ‘extreme sides’ of HRM practices (Verheul, 2007). However, commitment and control are

not totally mutually exclusive (Walton 1985, Verheul, 2007). Sometimes ‘the practice may

enhance both control and commitment’ (ibid). This study focused on the commitment-based

practices in the whole HRM system. First, ‘commitment’ system can generate more positive

impact on firm’s performance (Verheul, 2007; Huselid, 1995; Huselid et al, 1997). Moreover,

commitment often links with those ‘soft’ HRM policies (Legge, 2005), which will be discussed

in detail in the context. Next part of this article is talking about how the HRM practices develop

employee commitment. HR planning should be one of the most vital ways under commitment-

based strategy (Walton, 1985). The author will emphasize some of the most important practices,
which are recruitment, selection and retention. Simoutanously, the difference between rhetoric

and reality, and their relationship with commitment are shown in the last part of paper.

HRM practices---define work and employees’ effort

A range of definitions of HRM are provoked in the literatures (Legge, 2005, p103). As

Huczynski & Buchanan (2001) provoked that, HRM is an administrative view which combines

with comprehensive aspects. It should also illustrate the individual policies consistent with

strategy in organization, thus ‘quality of working life, high commitment and performance from

employees, and organisational effectiveness and competitive advantage’ should be ensured.

From the definitions above, it is easy to imply that the performance of an organization mainly

rely one of the key resource, which is people (Armstrong, 2003). Therefore, there is obviously

relation between HRM practices and organizational performance. Obviously, resourcing of HR is

one of crucial factor of HRM. As Townley, B. noted in 1994, HRM practices determine the

work’s characteristics, which not only form integrated extend of the labour process but also

deeply affect employer’s level of endeavour. Similarly, some practice tends to affect the efforts

of employees that are undoutbly from the variation HR beharvior (Huselid, 1995). Alan in his

work notes, resourcing is the ‘movement of human resources through an organization’ (Chap.

13). Thus, resourcing is vital for people managers to consider. Simultaneously, based on

previous human resource literatures, it can easily conclude that human resource practices are a

range of methods that integrate with whole company’s long-term competitive strategy can

generate a source of ‘sustained’ competitive advantage (Begin 1991 ea al in Huselid,). That is to

say, appropriate practices can make drastically contribution to organizational performance.

The ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ management philosophy about HRM

Based on the definition given by authors above, two different keys should be focus on in terms of

what the HRM, that is, ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ model. (Legge, 2005, p105) According to Storey (1987)

and Henry & Pettigrew (1990) in Legge (2005), these two model indicate a ‘utilitarian

instrumentalism’ (hard) and ‘developmental humanism’ (soft) respectively. However, it is also

undoubted that both two models are being deployed in some HRM practices nowadays (Bolton

& Houlihan, 2007), the differentiation between them cannot be discriminate easily. Specifically,

‘hard’ model emphasis the benefits the organization can get and the outcome present employee

can produce. Thus these practice will build more communications with outside (‘core periphery

Models’) through ‘routinising, delay ring and outsourcing’. Essentially, the ‘hard’ model

centring on the ‘quantitative, calculative and business strategic aspects of managing the head

count resource in as ‘rational’ a way as for any other economic factor’. (Storey in Legge, 2005

p105)

By contrast, soft HRM focus on the value asset that the human resource should be through the

high commitment practices. The employee in this model is more involved in the organization

which employees might act proactive and elastic towards organisational objectives. They are

more willing to ‘development’, be ‘trust’ and desire to ‘collaboration’. (Beer and Spector in

Legge, 1985) Such model is emphasis on creating a more appealing environment to work

(Bolton & Houlihan) that employee can totally participate in (i.e., career development plans,

involvement initiatives). Legge (2005) found that commitment can be generated from ‘soft’

HRM ‘employee involvement’ which ‘even allowing for the difficulties in accessing the

consequence of the commitment’.Though these hard and soft aspects of HRM are rather varied,

the application of them in reality cannot be separate. If a organization pursue profit maximum
among their field, it should ‘adopt a policy of value added growth’ and ‘treating employees as

resourceful humans to be developed by humanistic policies makes good business sense’(Legge).

Control or Commitment Strategy

The question of the practices of whether HRM is control or commitment is contested in the

literature. Before judging these two behaviours, there definition should be explicit at first.

Walton (1985) shed some light on the “traditional control strategy”, that is organization is

willing to build an “order, exercise control” by means of operating work force to accomplish

their profit maximum. Under control strategy, how much earnings employees can get is in light

of ‘a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ (Walton). In other words, differentiated salary cannot

be applied even mentioned by the managers. Control system also can be regarded as behaviour

that will cause ‘reactive’ instead of ‘proactive’, even ‘work to rule’. (Legge, p209). In contract,

commitment strategy could be seen as ‘internalized belief’, which can bring about the proactive

interaction among the employment relationship under prevailing personnel management.

(Ogbonna 1988 & Walkinson 1990 in Legge). Walton’s (1985) paper asserts that commitment

strategy focus on sustainable enhancement and providing flexible objectives. In terms of

compensation, the pay system under commitment is more elastic which emphasize the

significance of group achievement, especially the role of individuals. It is also obviously that

these two strategies oriented from varied period, which are from the early part of this century

(control) and early 1970s (commitment) respectively (Walton, 1985). From Gusts’ work in 1987,

a standard model of HRM was given, which is organizational should place more importance to

employee commitment. The essence of that can be ‘found in the assumption that committed

employees will be more satisfied, more productive and more adaptable (p157)’.
Based on the explanations above, it has been debate that the ‘commitment’ system can generate

more positive impact on firm’s performance (Verheul, 2007; Huselid, 1995; Huselid et al, 1997).

Huselid asserted that the firm give priority to ‘committed’ employees and ‘incentive

compensation’ could make their job more attractive that ‘high performance employees’ may turn

up because they can get more reward for their contribution, i.e., attitudinal commitment (Allen &

Meyer 1990 in Verheul). This will directly influence the productivity and profitability of the

firm. Although most corporation’s HRM practices can be separate into control or commitment

system (ibid), but few of them applied all aspects of commitment-oriented or control- oriented

approach, in Walton’s paper, this is called as ‘transitional’ stage. As Verheul wrote, the HRM

practices, in some cases, also embody both sides of strategies. Specifically, a corporation may

both raise their control towards employees (i.e., Skill learning, production process) and

improving commitment through flexible working and incentive structure (i.e., training, variable

reward). This paper emphasizes the commitment strategy behaviour of HRM practices and its

influences towards the whole performance of corporation.

How does HR help employee commitment?

According to Walton (1985), the HRM practice should integrate HR planning and

implementation under commitment-based strategy. The work of Pilbeam & Corbridge explain it

in detail: the necessity of HR should be identified to generate the high quality performance

through the effective resourcing with employees. That is to say, it’s essential for corporations to

get clear understanding of its ‘position’, ‘objective’ and ‘future development’. Human resource

planning could be a strategy used by corporation to guarantee ‘the right person is in the right job

at the right time with the right skills’ (Jackson & Schuler, 1990).
The paper of Pilbeam & Corbridge (p92) demonstrates the key of HRP, that is achieving its

‘stretch objective’ (Walton) through establishing strategic planning. Specifically, the planning

can be accomplished through the main resourcing below:

Recruitment and Selection:

Suitable recruitment and selection approaches could result in effective and sustainable

organizational performance (Pilbeam & Corbridge, p155). There are a range of methods for

firms to establish process of recruitment and selection. Explicitly, recruitment can include job

analysis, person specification, advertising et al (Pilbeam & Corbridge, p159; ACAS, 2006) to

compare the appropriately candidates to the vacancy and hire new staff (Robert, 1996).

Selection, as well as recruitment, is ingredient of the same system. It is a process to achieve the

goals of ‘selecting, appointing and inducting’ through appropriate technology and methods (i.e.,

interview, practical tests, psychometric and psychological tests) (Pilbeam & Corbridge, p156,

ACAS, 2006). Commitment-based recruitment is dynamically focus on significant interactive

and strongly pursuit of ‘values and beliefs’. Simultaneously, commitment-oriented selection

centre on evaluation of these ‘values and beliefs’, which define the extent of their consistency

with the organizational objectives (Etzinoni 1961 in Wiener, 1982).

Retention

According to MacDuffie 1995 in Gutsrie, employees are regarded as particularly significant

human assets who may leave his job for a range of reasons (Taylor et al; Branham 2005 in

Torrington p198). Author (1994) examed that there is very close correlations between employee

retention and productivity in ‘high-commitment’ HR system while no relationship exist in

‘control’ HR system. Torrington in his study points out that the best way to retain staff is not

only give them the better deal that their new employer can provide, but also to improve the job
satisfaction of employees, as well as career development opportunities. In his work, the strategies

include pay, training and development, improving quality of line management (ibid).

Specifically, the objective of reward strategy is to use various economic instrument which could

be ‘pay, bonus, shares, benefits and recognition’ to attract and retain the best employees (CIPD

survey, 2009b). In terms of training and development, the author show that no matter what kind

of training can integrate with other methods of retention to develop a ‘capable and committed’

work force. The last strategy he showed is to improve the quality of supervisor to be a ‘staff-

view’ manager. The explicit explanations can be reveal by Guthrie that such commitment

practices is ‘employee-centred’; ‘information and decision-making power are disperse

throughout the organization’.

Rhetoric and reality in HRM

As Keenoy perceptively states, the essence of HRM rhetoric is the perspective that it stands for a

new approach to the management of employees which emphasises employee commitment and

involvement that ‘integrating HR policy and practice with strategic goals’. Similarly, Keep (in

Tom & Rolf) also notes the essence in the rhetoric of HRM is that, ‘the creation of conditions

whereby latten potential of employees will be realized and their commitment to the success of

the organisation secured’. But the fact is, whether we choose to use the HRM concept, we are

‘engaged in process of reality construction and cannot stand without considering the reality of

the world’ (Watson, 1995). Karen Legge (2005) in her books illustrates that though there are few

variations between the models of HRM and individual management. She also analyses some of

the internal contradiction of the HRM ‘prescription, focussing’, especially to integrate the HR

policy with the ‘pursuit of commitment, flexibility, quality and strong culture’.
Conclusion

The main finding of this article is taking an overview of HR practices which embody the

‘control’ or ‘commitment’ strategy in HR resourcing. In some cases, commitment is portrayed as

the reverse side of the ‘resigned behavioural compliance’ (Ogbonna 1988 in legge). Similarly,

compared to control, commitement is a diverse way in which ‘employee behaviours and attitudes

can be influenced’ (Arthur, 1994). In other words, the effort and the degree of effort is

determined by what HR practices the people manager carry out (Townley, 1994 & Huselid,

1995). Subsequently, Legge (2005) found that commitment can be generated from ‘soft’ HRM

‘employee involvement’ which ‘even allowing for the difficulties in accessing the consequence

of the commitment’. However, the finding shows that the ‘commitment’ system can generate

more positive impact on firm’s performance (Verheul, 2007; Huselid, 1995; Huselid et al, 1997).

This study adopt a deeply descriptive methods to explore the commitment-oriented practice and

its impacts to the performance of organization, which compared with ‘control’ strategy

simoutanously. In the reality of organisational life, commitment should be reflected through HR

planning, the author focused on some of them, include recruitment, selection and retention. Each

of them is analysis its explicit measures and impacts on the organizational performance under

commitment system. Specifically, recruitment contains the whole processes which taken by an

organization to identify feasible applicants, have a comprehensive survey and hire new staff

(Robert, 1996). It is a process to achieve the goals of ‘selecting, appointing and inducting’

through appropriate technology and methods (Pilbeam & Corbridge, p156, ACAS, 2006). From

Robert’s (1996) work, retention refers to the capacity of an organization to keep high-quality

employees.
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