Chapter 2: Not so “Secondary” Data: The Use of Staff Surveys in Human Capital Management Research

Work is one of the most researched of human activities. The academic enquiry into work is a major subdiscipline in both psychology and sociology, while the management discipline is devoted entirely to the scientific study of people at work. In addition to the plethora of academic inquiry into work, there is a substantial body of work reported in the practitioner literature; however, the gap between research and practice in management is substantial, despite efforts to establish “evidence-based management” (Rynes, Giluk, & Brown, 2007). While both groups study work (and workers), the immediate aims of the two are different. Academics seek to understand the relationship between work and human capital at a fundamental level and to build theories to advance our understanding of how human capital contributes to the performance of work organizations. Practitioners, on the other hand, seek immediate and direct understanding of how to influence the human capital at their disposal in order to improve the productivity of the workplace. Put another way—the practitioner wants to know what happened and how (s)he can address the issue, whereas the academic wants to know why it happened.