Ken Kamoche’s latest book is a welcome and accessible addition to the critical‐analytical literature on HRM, which moves beyond the unitarist perspective taken by many practitioner texts and indeed some academic texts. It is also written with great clarity.
He focuses on the underlying themes that have shaped and are shaping HRM including strategy, the resource‐based view, appropriation and more recently knowledge management. He also makes a valuable contribution to deconstructing the traditional perspectives of international HRM. Finally, Kamoche proposes a future research agenda for HRM.
Chapter 2 explores the HRM debate and critiques the themes that have shaped contemporary HRM such as its links with strategy, change management, culture and the search for excellence, and its unitarist undertones.
He raises a number of key questions emerging from the “history” of people management:
How long do radical concepts take to mature into workable management practices?
How effective have people management “measures” been?
What is the next stage in “humanizing” work?
He argues that two, perhaps conflicting themes, may have survived into the twenty‐first century: the concern for performance at individual and organisational levels, and a concern for the “human side of enterprise”.
Chapter 3 considers the relationship between HRM and strategy. Kamoche argues that HRM has sought legitimacy by emphasising its link with corporate strategy but that this is a limited perspective for managing people. He argues that this alignment to strategy does not take account of the social context of employment. In particular he argues that HR research needs to move beyond managerial stakeholders and to explore the impact and meaning of HRM for the individual employee, beyond the assumptions made about psychological contracts, which few HR scholars have attempted. Although Mabey et al. (1998) provide a notable exception to this managerial dominance.
Kamoche then continues to argue that there is a need to move beyond rhetoric and to demonstrate that HRM does generate value and is a source of competitive advantage. He questions the recognition of “added value” in HRM given recent large‐scale reductions in workforces resulting in the lost of organisational knowledge, whilst the remainder of the workforce is left feeling insecure. Kamoche argues that the over‐reliance on financial performance measures does not provide a complete picture of organisational performance. Other measures such as quality, customer service and regulatory compliance rely significantly on HR performance.
He criticises the dominance of research into the private sector arguing that lessons could be learned from non‐profit organisations where the generation of a surplus is secondary to the organisation’s primary mission.
He concludes the chapter by posing fundamental questions for HR academics, HR specialists and managers:
Why should it matter that HR is a source of competitive advantage?
Does it matter to employees that they are perceived as a source of competitive advantage?
Chapter 4 utilises a range of theoretical frameworks, in particular the resource‐based view of the firm, to enhance our understanding of HRM. He provides an authoritative and interesting discussion of resource‐based view, which he argues has been the high point of the strategic management: HRM nexus. He believes that a strength of this view of HRM is that it redirects attention to the internal environment which the firm has control over, given the increasing uncertainty of the external environment. He does acknowledge limitations of the resource‐based paradigm in particular the intangibility of resources such as trust and commitment. Can they really be “bought”? This leads on to chapter 5 where he focuses on the dynamics of appropriation.
Appropriation rooted in the strategic management literature generally takes a unitarist and economic perspective. Appropriation is concerned with securing and retaining the “added value” or “surplus value” arising from the utilisation of resources. This perspective is generally viewed as unproblematic in the HRM literature, yet firms do not own people and the concept of appropriation does not take account of psychological rewards. However the capacity to negotiate clearly distinguishes people (human capital) from other assets such as machinery. Therefore the reality of the working world suggests that the appropriation process is essentially a negotiated one.
Chapter 6 focuses on the growing theoretical area of knowledge management. Kamoche argues that HR scholars need to move beyond narrow interpretation of knowledge management being solely concern with so‐called “knowledge workers”. He also provides a welcome discourse on knowledge management that does not concentrate solely on ICT. Here we see consideration of the social construction of knowledge rarely considered by technocratic discourses of knowledge management. Other interesting contributions include the discussion on the paradigms of control and empowerment in managing people in an increasingly complex technological age.
Chapter 7 provides a powerful analysis and critique of existing knowledge of and scholarly approaches to international HRM. He moves beyond the traditional narrow discussion of international HRM that tends to focus on the needs of MNCs, expatriates and cross‐cultural management. Kamoche considers the wider impacts of globalisation on HRM and on home country nationals, which have recently been highlighted by media and public attention on the HR practices of MNCs such as Next and Gap. He is particularly critical of researchers applying developed world tools and ideas to investigate HRM in the developing world. He does, however, acknowledge that some researchers have taken on board the need to consider social‐cultural and institutional factors.
Chapter 8 focuses on the social context of HRM. Kamoche challenges the meaning of management by asking why should people be managed and can they be managed? He suggests that facilitation may be more appropriate for releasing the “resourcefulness” of employees.
He considers that organisations have the potential to be communities. He highlights not‐for‐profit organisations and some hi‐tech firms as being able to sustain community tenets where people will want to be part of a “community”, share its aspirations for success as they are consistent with their own and be proactively involved in sustaining and generating them. Within his discussion on social context he also highlights the growing awareness of ethics and HRM. In particular should organisations give people a positive experience of work or should all activities be founded or judged on utilitarianism? Clearly the idea of constructing a community where concern is for employees builds on humanistic traditions.
He argues, somewhat idealistically, that there is a need for all managers, not just HR managers, to deal with social challenges being faced by organisations. Although he does not discuss how they will be equipped to do this. He does however recognise that not all individuals will want to share knowledge or belong to a community where “knowledge‐sharing” is the norm.
In chapter 9 he concludes that he does not think it is appropriate to think of HRM as a uniform set of practices that can be applied like a formula to any HR issue, nor in an international context is it enough just to make adaptations. He also acknowledges that a critical challenge identified for HRM is the role of line managers. The concept of HRM has long argued that line managers should have more responsibility for HR issues, yet the reality is that many are ill prepared for the technical and social demands of HRM.
In terms of a future research agenda he highlights two key themes. These are: first, the need for multidisciplinary research into the impact of global business and HRM; and second, the need for HR scholars to listen to the voice of grassroots employees as well as management cadres. Finally, he concludes that HRM is too important to be considered unidimensionally.
