Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management

control over an uncertain environment including threats to its power from work
groups and trade unions. In situations where the problem of employee motivation
escalates to levels where employment relations become unstable and managerial
authority is threatened, securing the power to govern becomes the pressing man-
agement objective. Even where such dramatic threats are rare, the natural tendency
of management is to act, over time, to enhance its room to manoeuver. We see this
in the way multinationalWrms tend to favor investment in countries with less
demanding labor market regulations (e.g. Cooke 2001 ; this Handbook, Ch. 24 ).
We also see it at industry and societal levels, in the tendency of employer feder-
ations to lobby, over time, for greater freedom to manage and to resist new
employment regulations seen to be diminishing management prerogative.
As with the tension between short-run productivity and long-runXexibility,
there is a tension between the need to secure social legitimacy and the desire to
enhance managerial autonomy. SuYcient levels of managerial autonomy are needed
if management is going to tackle the problems of building productive andXexible
enterprises in sensible ways that win support from investors and the community at
large. Rational management needs space for action. However, excessive degrees of
management autonomy come at the expense of worker rights and can escalate
income dispersion, making society more fragile and less cohesive. Similarly, as is
widely noted, management control of key information can be used to enhance
management rewards to the detriment of both shareholders and workers.
By way of summary, Fig. 3. 2 depicts the major motives that this chapter argues
underpin management’s HR activities. The arrows indicate the presence of strategic
tensions: there are tensions between economic and socio-political objectives as well as
within each of these goal domains. Space constraints limit any discussion of patterns
that arise across these four motives but the framework opens up important lines of
analysis. For example, one can readily identifyWrms in which management is seeking
to maximize autonomy and productivity (for example, through locating all produc-
tion in low-cost and loosely regulated countries). This is likely, however, to come at the
cost of some forms of agility and is likely, in time, to be met with legitimacy challenges.

Economic Socio-political

Static

The goals of HRM

Dynamic

Cost

effectiveness

Flexibility

Legitimacy

Autonomy

Fig. 3.2. The goals of HRM: a synthesis

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