chapter 6
....................................................................................................................................................ORGANIZATION
THEORY AND HRM
....................................................................................................................................tony watson
6.1 Introduction
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HumanResource Management is an activity that occurs in work organizations
across the industrialized world. HRM is also an academic ‘subject’ that is taught
and researched, primarily in higher education in those same industrialized
societies. However, this latter ‘HRM’ is not an academic activity which has a
clear body of theoretical ideas of its own. There is almost no literature on the
‘the theory of HRM.’ This is not to say, however, that theories are absent from
academic HRM. Use is made of theoretical concepts from areas such as psychology,
sociology, employee relations, economics, and strategic management. And, to
some degree, use is made of ideas from organization theory. The purpose of
the present chapter is to identify the contributions that have been made by ideas
from organization theory to our understanding of the organizational activity
of human resource management—and its earlier ‘personnel management’ mani-
festation. Attention will also be given to ways in which greater use might be
made of organization theory in the analysis of HRM activities and processes in
the future.
HRM processes are organizational processes. They occur within all work organ-
izations and they cannot be understood separately from the way in which we
understand organizations themselves. The same can be argued about management
more broadly. In eVect, any ‘theory of management,’ like any ‘theory of HRM,’ has