how many employees are required, the interface with technology, skill levels
required, and strongly inXuence what people actually do at work. Beyond these,
factors such as organizational values and culture will be inXuential.
Scholars have only recently begun to apply these features of organizational
behavior to HRM and its eVects on performance. Wright et al. ( 2005 : 419 ) give
examples of leadership, organizational culture, and line management enactment
inXuencing performance. They argue that ‘a ‘‘spurious’’ relationship might exist if
there were an actual true co-variation between the measures of HR practice and
performance yet, there was no direct causal relationship between the two variables.’
HR practice measures may be acting as proxies for these wider variables of
leadership, culture, and manager behavior. They conclude that ‘studies that do
not control for a full set of variables that might cause performance may lack the
data necessary for making valid causal inferences’ (ibid.: 420 ). However, to be able
to apply controls, the variables must be measured. The justiWcation for collecting
such data merely to control for variances, alongside the usual suspects ofWrm age,
sector, size, and certain workforce characteristics, can only be made if there is
a clear, unambiguous, agreed deWnition of what HRM is. This is far from the case.
From a practitioner perspective, questions of leadership, culture, and managerial
behavior are commonly seen to fall within the HR manager’s area of activity with
growing roles in the management of change and organizational transformation.
Thus, on grounds of theory, and from both employee and HR manager perspec-
tives, it is argued that a wider deWnition of HRM is necessary. Some use the wider
term ‘people management’ (Paul and Anantharaman 2003 ; Purcell et al. 2003 ). This
has some merit since it signals a wider research agenda and avoids one of the
pitfalls in HR–performance research where respondents erroneously believe the
research is about the eYcacy or the importance of the HR department. This is a very
diVerent question from that considered here.
We need, therefore, to develop our causal chain model further if we are to capture
these key additional features discussed in the most recent research. Figure 26. 2 pays
attention to the experience of HRM by employees, especially to the role of the line
manager when implementing HR practices, and sets this within the wider context of
the operational system and the culture and climate of the organization. The model
does not predict a particular research method. Indeed, as many review papers have
noted, there is a need for qualitative and quantitative research at unit level,Wrm
level, sector, and country if we are to understand both the relationship between HR
practices and performance outcomes and the dynamics of the interconnections.
- 1 The Vital Role of Line Managers
The omission of line managers as HRM agents, and more broadly in managing or
leading employees, is seen as ‘curious’ by Delery and Shaw ( 2001 : 136 ) ‘given the
hrm and business performance 543