=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=Arguments for practice-based studies in e-HRM Case study of HR transformation at Sandvik Corp.
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-570/paper021.pdf
|volume=Vol-570
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==Arguments for practice-based studies in e-HRM Case study of HR transformation at Sandvik Corp.==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-570/paper021.pdf
Arguments for practice-based studies in e-HRM Case study of HR
transformation at Sandvik Corp.
Johan Gregeby, Uppsala University, Sweden
johan.gregeby@fek.uu.se
Abstract. This paper promotes philosophical arguments for a practice based
view to e-HRM, as an alternative to evidence based management, to close
the gap between HRM academics and practitioners. A reflexive theorizing of
HR work is proposed, encouraging diversity in epistemological and
ontological assumptions to support a mindful problemization of empirical
work. In my study of an HR transformation project at Sandvik Corporation I
argue for a positioning of e-HRM studies towards a deeper acknowledgment
of situated work practices. I also propose some contemporary discussions
within organization studies and information systems research,
acknowledging especially the entanglement of technology and every day
practices, and ethnography as a strategy of investigation. Finally I conclude
with a discussion of the contribution of this research approach to the study
of e-HRM.
Keywords: e-HRM, HR transformation, practice-based, relationality,
ethnography
1 A gap to practice
In recent years „e-enabled HRM‟ and the idea of evidence-based HRM has had
significant impact upon HR professional skills and the way organizations design HR
practices. Within Multi National Corporations (MNC) technological developments and
the use of integrated Human Resource Information Systems (HR IS), have promoted
reengineering of processes and made possible the integration, centralization and
rationalization of administrative work within HR departments [35, 49]. The use of such
“pull technologies”, and the mass customization of terms and conditions, have revealed
a transformational potential of HR IS [33], and positive associations between technical
and strategic effectiveness have also resulted in a situation where HRM is more often
understood as a major competitive advantage [16].
A key driver in the rhetoric behind this development has been Ulrich‟s (1997) highly
influential business-partner model. This value-driven business model for HRM, based
on research, has for more than a century figured as a benchmark for the creation of
modern HRM. It is widely dispersed and discussed in businesses, and to be found as
guidance in many HR transformational projects and consultancy marketing information.
The basic idea of this business partner model includes the use of integrated software
solutions to support and enable benchmarking of global HR processes. This gain in
Strohmeier, S.; Diederichsen, A. (Eds.), Evidence-Based e-HRM? On the way to rigorous and relevant
research, Proceedings of the Third European Academic Workshop on electronic Human Resource
Management, Bamberg, Germany, May 20-21, 2010, CEUR-WS.org, ISSN 1613-0073, Vol. 570, online:
CEUR-WS.org/Vol-570/ , pp. 360-376.
© 2010 for the individual papers by the papers´ authors. Copying permitted only for private and academic
purposes. This volume is published and copyrighted by its editors.
efficiency through automating information structures and often outsourcing HR
administration, is supposed to “release” HR professionals into more strategic activities
as „business partners‟. Instead of being preoccupied with routine work, HR
professionals are ideally released into more analytical work tasks taking on a more
proactive role in the organization working with people development and change issues
in line with corporate strategy. This is supposed to contribute to the organizational
mutual interests of employees and share holders, and raise the professional standing of
HR [86].
‘Business partnering makes HR accountable to the business, and expects HR to add
real value. This is a shift away from traditional HR functions where purpose, priorities
and successes were defined within HR‟ [18]
Though, in “reality” there seems to be general disappointment in the use of these high
performance work models. HR managers seem to have failed to seize the opportunities
outlined by Ulrich‟s „business partner model‟. A majority of participating managers in a
recent study don‟t believe in the structure of this model and that one out of four also
questioned it‟s effectiveness [65]. There also seems to be a lack of clear definitions of
the roles for HR professionals within this model [7].
From a more general point of view there seams to be large discrepancies between
research findings and practitioners‟ beliefs in “how it is in reality” [74]. Professionals
often do not agree with research findings and this in turn leads to a general problem of
getting companies to put scientific knowledge into practice, i.e. Evidence-Based
Management (EBM) as companies [practitioners] often make decisions based on false
beliefs that stem only from personal experiences [62, 63]. Why is this? Why do
practitioners not just do as we think?
Rynes, Giluk, et.al. (2007) argue that this is because of academics inability to
communicate their research findings. They suggest academics agree about evidence that
supports the use of specific practices, and that intermediate HR journals should
communicate this information to practitioners, but fail to do so. They claim that
information distribution is the main problem; that academics are miss-interpreted and
that we are not good enough at communicating our facts. Managers need information
that is timely and relevant for their jobs, providing them with fresh insights and
meaningful solutions that help them also within the political game. But academics miss
out on this opportunity, and instead management gurus and consultants take over and
fill out the “expertise gaps”, using good narratives and emotionally appealing, and
efficient, marketing [31].
A second explanation is the difficulty for managers to relate to our research, and when
using it they still miss out interpreting them wrong because of poor scientific
understanding [70]. This is arguably because management is not a profession, like
medicine, psychology, education, or law that shares a common knowledge base (Leicht
and Fennell 2001; Trank and Rynes 2003; Rynes, Giluk et al. 2007). Highly structured
practices, such as these, are in stark contrast to the messy and ambiguous practicing of
management in contemporary organizations [95]. Managers generally don‟t read
scientific articles, but consult other managers to solve problems [15, 99].
A third explanation may be found in Deadrick and Gibson‟s findings about interest
areas. Looking at the interest groups of HR professionals and practitioners there seem to
be a gap in interest areas. In a content analysis of 4300 HR related articles, in two
academic and two professional journals, Deadrick and Gibson (2007) found a
significant difference in the interest areas of HR professionals and HR academics and a
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general lack of interest in everyday activities by HR academics. This was especially
prevalent in studies of HR technology, strategic HR, managerial change efforts, and role
of HR departments. In total these subjects (HR department, strategic HR and technology
issues) covered 29 % of the professional articles, while just found in 7 % of the
academic articles [20]. While professionals seems to be more interested in the technical
and day-to-day aspects of their work, academics devoted more attention to generalizable
phenomena (macro/statistical research) [20].
Figure 1: Largest content-area gaps, represented by percentage of articles published in HR
professional and HR academic journals (1986–2005). Deadrick & Gibson 2007, p. 134
„As long as the professed goals of HR Academic and Professional journals diverge, the
espoused (and published) interests of the two groups will also diverge. As a result, the
privileged knowledge of HR Professionals and Academics will differ, which will lead to
knowledge gaps and, most likely, “doing” (implementation) gaps.‟ [20] p.138
To sum up, I see two clear arguments for why these gaps exists, but weather this gap to
practice exists because of incompatible ways of communicating what we academics
know, or professional‟s ability to understand academic results, one question still lingers:
why are the interest areas so diverse and why are not academics focused on problems as
they are experienced by those who own them?
For sure Dave Ulrich, takes his responsibility responding to the critique, and gradually
developed his model [87-89], but the general gap between practitioner and HR research
is more profound and complex than to be answered by some leading authors. Fact is that
despite the attention paid to the strategic agenda of future HR work, there is up to 2005
still little empirical evidence yet to support the HRM-performance link and the actual
enactment of HR practices and employees perception of them [11, 59]. Arguments
regarding the proposed shift from transactional to more strategic work in real practices
is lacking evidence [60], and studies of the impact of HRM on different stakeholders are
sparse [10]. Also regarding HR IS research, little has been done to address the perceived
benefits and potential barriers to the implementation and use of HR technology [9, 37,
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50, 82]. Studies of the implementation of integrated Enterprise Resource Planning
(ERP) software, specifically, is still in it‟s infancy [9].
a. A way forward
Arguably there seem to have been a loss in philosophical reasoning about the
knowledge that EBM scholars argue we are in consensus of, and a problematic distance
between practitioners and academics interest areas and understanding as a consequence
of this [31]. These questions need to be deeply thought through, searching for answers
that can bridge this gap. Guest (2007) firmly steer this question towards a broader
understanding of what is consensus within the academic discussion. Arguably,
functionalistic writers seem to assume that we have the scientific knowledge of those
basic principles that should guide HR practicing. Seeing this calling for EBM from a
European perspective, Guest (2007) argues the situation being a bit different in Europe.
For sure, there are fairly strong national initiatives supporting the development of
evidence based management in the UK (e.g. Social research council, ESRC, and
additional funding to universities that can demonstrate a strategy for transfer of
knowledge). Still, compared to the development in the United States, in Europe EBM
may be an even more disputed territory. In the context of a strong pluralist tradition in
European industrial relations, with strong trade unions sustained and even reinforced by
homogeneous legislation within European Union, European critical management
scholars [1, 44], have fundamentally questioned the positivist (functionalistic and
rationalistic) paradigm, drawing instead on the salience of issues such as power, social
structures, and social relations, acknowledging a fundamentally different understanding
of what is valuable knowledge.
„On the one hand, strategic HRM is characterized by the dominant organizational
imperative for performance and productivity, which derives from an industry-based
view of the firm and is informed by a rationalistic view of human action. On the other
hand, HRM is concerned with meeting a more complex and often ambiguous needs and
expectations of employees, the humanizing of work,…‟ [57] p.185
Through inquiries into the field priorities and limits, critical scholars have produced a
viable critique of rationalistic approaches, arguing that value centric and unitary
solutions too many complex and emergent organizational phenomena are simplistic.
Instead this critical view of HRM argues for a pluralist approach that cares for diversity
and the multiplicity of managerial conduct [31]. But, this critique seems to have fallen
somewhat in the shade. European scholars argue that there has been a neglect of critical
perspectives within HRM research between 1995 and 2000 [41]. Compared to European
management and organizations theory journals, HRM journal appear to be oriented
towards a consensus perspective, while organization theory construct HRM both in a
way that strives for consensus and critique of reigning paradigm.
However, there are viable examples in the contemporary HRM debate [3, 96]. Going
back to the critique of the „business partner‟ model, Francis and Keegan (2007)
critically evaluate the idea of „e-enabled HRM‟ and the key underpinning assumptions
behind the business partnership (i.e. CIPD notion of the „thinking performer‟). They
argue that instead of enhancing the creative and progressive roles (strategic partner,
change agent and employee champion), HR professionals seem to miss out on the
classical employee facing roles that are so important to maintain the social and human
capital [27]. Guest and King suggest the same interpretation, arguing HR managers
seem to put heavy emphasis on the rationalizing infrastructure designed to support line
management, and so they neglect paying more attention to build good relationships with
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line managers and taking an explicit role in change management issues, [32]. Francis
and Keegan (2006) argue that the profession needs to reflect seriously about the
consequences of this framing of HR work. As business-values may be given as the only
supposed contribution, this might render in a depersonalization and a lack of strategic
amplification of HR professionals relationship with employees, employee well-being
and the career paths of HR professionals. As soft elements cannot be measured in
objective terms, and the ´high commitment´ HRM practices are still shaped by a
rhetoric concerning “right” attitudes and behaviours, a great cost may instead occur
when loosing empowerment and its potential to facilitate the incorporation of broader
issues of employee well-being [27]. Arguably, there is a need for more constructive and
balanced dialogue on the employee-facing role in the HR and a deeper understanding of
the diversity of work practices as a basic building block in a sustainable way forward
[26, 46].
Guest (2007) suggest academics need to stop thinking too much of what is “perfect
information” and go back to “the roots” of what good communication is, and in
particular, we need to readdress the perspective of the practitioners and reflect on what
happens in organizations and understand why practitioners do not find the same value in
EBM. Instead of thinking information distribution, we should be realistic about what the
intermediate HR publications can do, and that we instead must see the plethora of
different communication channels open to us in a modern society, including the
formation of new relationship building constellations that take on more “direct”
activities, such as joint forums and networks for further collaboration [71]. This work
also involves our engagement in helping HR professionals education, to develop
enhanced critical understanding and a capacity to conduct there own scientific inquiry
and to know where to find and validate academic results and find workable solutions
[68]. There is obviously a need for HR professionals to understand how power,
responsibilities and critical reflection may help balance the inherent tensions in the
employer contract, and it‟s centrality for the psychological contract between employee
and organization [27, 69].
What looks to be an apparent gap between rhetoric and reality in HRM research [45]
has only one way forward: we need to start again paying interest into what HR
managers every day work is really like. We need way forward that once again focuses
upon “real” practices, giving attention to empirical setting. We need to ask our selves if
a the every day problems and challenges for HR professional and management in
general (often concerned with existential affairs, relying on good relationship building
and flexible solutions to resolve everyday problems) can seriously be compared with
other professions, such as medicine or law, and if not, what are the negative
consequences of these “hard practices” in such a “soft practice” as HRM,? These issues
need to be addressed in a way that cares for the totality of human organizing. It needs to
be a perspective that better conceptualize the development of the HR profession, not
from what they are supposed to be, but from where HR managers are today, relating
stronger to „workers verdict‟ of what is valuable HR work.
The enactment of HR models occurs in „actual‟ organizations and if we are to educate
managers in relevant know how, we need to study practicing management‟s knowledge
to solve the real puzzles, also reflecting on the effects of the scientific rhetoric on this
reality that we try to understand [21]. We supposedly need to get closer to the problems
of organizations and experience them personally, rather than describing them from the
outside [21]. We need to come closer to this reality and understand lived organizations,
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conducting empirical research that account for the richness in organizational
„sensemaking‟ [98]
„…we need to be more aware of the structural and experience-based contexts of our
investigation; to see more than we understand.‟ [21] p.554
This needs to be done in a constructive and balanced way, not just in opposition to the
functionalist paradigm, advocating a deconstructive logic, but systematically
investigating the impact of HRM models on the shop floor. However, this is not to say
that we shall adapt to the “marketization” of HRM research where scholars try to
compete with consultants and journalists, in a consumer driven research. This could
result in knowledge generations methods that loose both rigor and relevance, adopting
an atheoretical language, close to what organizations already feel that they know and
say [21, 75]. Rather, we need to explicitly target both HR managers and their reasons
for their sticking with conventional truths and the misuse of EBM [62], and at the same
time reflect upon our scientific rationale [meta-theory] and how such might lead to a
“quick fix” mentality [36]. This way a critical view, need not to be in contrast to an
EBM approach, but can be a complement to the critique forwarded by Guest (2007) and
Lawler (2007), arguing for an „engaged academy‟ [19]. Extended with behavioural
theorizing, the functionalist perspective can readdress the weight of employee well-
being and work based dynamics for the actual performance within embedded HR
practices [23].
2 e-HRM at Sandvik Corp.
Answering this call for more empirical work and new types of research approaches, the
aim of my doctoral thesis is to contribute with a case study of HR transformation at
Sandvik Corp. Sandvik Corp. is a knowledge-based Swedish engineering group with
advanced products and a world-leading position within the selected areas such as
mining and construction, hard materials and industry tools. With over 40‟ employees
and an order intake of approx. 9 billion EURO and, the company is one of the largest
companies in Sweden.
Since 2003 the corporation drives a large HR change program called CONNECT. The
program was created to introduce new ways of working with HR questions on a global
basis, securing efficient and common ways of working and changing focus from
administrative tasks to more strategic HR work. The program consists of four corner
stones being the implementation of a Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software
(„Peoplesoft‟), to enable a global HR information handling, introducing global HR
processes, a new HR role on both global and national level, called „HR advisor‟ and a
service centre solution, responsible for delivering effective HR administration services.
Having had strong support from top management team, the program has over the last six
years overcome many breakdowns and developed an experienced project management
group. Focusing on all four cornerstones in each country implementation, introducing
processes to streamline the organisation on a global basis, the program have had
fundamental impact on the way HR is delivered at Sandvik Corp.
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Figure 2: Sandvik HR transformation model; CONNECT. From Sandvik web-presentation.
a. Technology, processes and everyday routines
Initial findings of the 20 interviews conducted, and observation of CONNECT project
management group, can be bracketed into two areas of concern: CONNECT project
management group and the use of Peoplesoft, and the development at a production plant
in Gimo, Sweden.
Historically the HR work at Sandvik has been dispersed, having uneven quality within
the different business areas. The organization has been characterized by a decentralized
organizational culture and varied ways of coping with HR problems and opportunities.
With the help of offensive change management and internal marketing the CONNECT
program management group have delivered the tools necessary to raise the general
quality on HR work, but the different business areas seem to have made very different
progress in their work with the CONNECT agenda, most significantly on the use of
„Peoplesoft‟ and it‟s more formal routines. The system seems to be thought of as hard to
handle. Line managers complain about the interface and that the system is built on the
wrong philosophy, being to rigid. There seem to be significant influence from system
requirements, and dependency on system architecture where much work needs to be
focused on getting the basic functionality running, globally, before the more qualitative
and parts can be developed. It‟s arguably a communication challenge; that in order to
get the value adding parts working the basic functions need to be in place; adjusting
system modules to local requirements, and getting service centres working and
operational reporting done by managers and employees. This seem to have affected the
way CONNECT has influenced the practice, often through the connection HR
professionals and technical experts on a global level. They work as a sort of „high
competence support‟, but in reality they are reasonable apart from the ongoing business
of day to day HR work practices played out in the relationships between line managers
and HR advisors.
„ -As commented from a globally responsible HR advisor, all the four corner stones in
the delivery model are all as important and he insists that they would not suspend the
idea of a system support, just because of old routines, but for him it is a question that
needs support from top management and it needs to gratify line managers and HR
advisors in their everyday work [77]
366
As an example at the production unit, HR advisors and line managers thought they
needed to take another turn in clarifying role descriptions, reasoning at all level in the
business area about current situation and future expectations.
„- We noticed that during this transformation we needed to do this more than once,
because they forget and you go back on the same track. [77]
This reflective activity was conducted all over the production unit, where all involved
managers had the opportunity to state their point of view and collectively make sense of
the new situation, find their responsibilities and figure out the contribution of the new
technology.
„ -People often miss, or choose not to tell the main reason, the most significant reason
for managers not getting efficient in their work with „Peoplesoft‟, that they don‟t want
to work with the system.. They think It‟s much better to call someone…but It‟s not
inefficient to use the system. [77]
„-I have no reason to defend „Peoplesoft‟, but I have had great reason to see, do we do
the right quality, and my conclusion is: It‟s not rationally conditioned, It‟s a resistance
to change, and we all have the responsibility to get this working. It‟s OUR
responsibility to work with this change and that‟s why the program management is not
such a powerful instance. [77]
This constant centrality of the CONNECT program management and the use of
Peoplesoft, in relation to every day work practices and organizational routines, have
become a central phenomena for ongoing investigation and theorizing process. The
whole HR philosophy at Sandvik, as such, and this tension between the rationalizing
goals of program management, and how it is answered and interpreted by individuals
and groups in the organization, in everyday work practices, will be the main mystery
being described and analyzed in the study of HR work at Sandvik Corp.
3 Contribution to e-HRM
In trying to connect this study to current discussion within e-HRM, I recently got in
contact with the work of Tatyana Bondarouk and Huub Ruël, who have made recent
attempts to find a common conceptual umbrella of this kind of transformational process
[72, 73]. Traditionally, the definition has touched upon the implementation and
structuring process of technology driven HR transformations and the consequence of
these organizing activities in creating HR network structures throughput the
organization [83]. Ruël, Bondarouk & Van der Velde (2007) further suggest a definition
of e-HRM as a complete approach for modern HRM, also including en explicit
recognition of the relevance of integrated ERP systems. Bondarouk and Ruël (2009)
continue this definition, arguing that we need to find a consensus in a definition
covering the integration of HRM and IT, focusing also on targeted employee and
managers, often being the value creating consumers of web-based technologies:
„…an umbrella term covering all possible integration mechanisms and contents
between HRM and Information Technologies aiming at creating value within and across
organizations for targeted employees and management. [9]
To focus the problemization on Sandvik I have used this definition of e-HRM, and four
interrelating aspects of e-HRM proposed as relevant for further elaboration: content of
e-HRM, implementation of e-HRM, targeted employee and managers and e-HRM
consequence. From my experiences at Sandvik Corp. this made explicit four study
objects that guide the investigation:
367
1) Use of HR IS: providing global information handling, as a central mechanism to
understand the development of CONNECT. Studying the appropriation process of
technology may show the logical demands of the integrated system and its role as a
boundary object. By studying the demand of integration of HRM strategy and policies,
as they are documented in web-based and other communication material, the aim is also
to understand the intended HR practices
2) Transformation of HR work practices: understood as real time changes in both
management and shop floor practices. Studying interpretations of formal roles and
processes to uncover differences in the way this transformation is enacted and perceived
in actual HR practices
3) New roles and relationships between top and line management: studying how
CONNECT program management, HR advisors and line management
collaboratively/relationally make sense of their new work situation, to understand how
new work roles/identities are played out, and how these relationships changes over time
as work is routinized.
4) Value creating HR work: the subjective experience of value in the constructing HR
tools, transformational leadership, and every day practicing of HR. A deeper
understanding of the practical knowledge needed to produce value will unravel
important competency needs. A relative appreciation of the contribution within the
organization from HR problem solving and the development new tools and policies, will
show both the political and creative/productive value.
a. Practice-based theorizing
The construction of these four study objects, as understood in the empirical setting, has
also been constantly influenced by a parallel theorizing process. The guiding principle
in my research has been the iterative “dance” between different explanatory frameworks
and the experiences at Sandvik Corp. From the early framing the empirical phenomena
and the interrelation of technology, HR practice transformation and HR managerial
competence, I was trying to find research that could help me get a better general
understanding.
In this theorizing process I was initially inspired from contemporary academic debates
within relevant academic fields, and interviews with key stakeholders at Sandvik Corp.
Reading literature on the area of HRM resulted in a broad informing research base that
supports the problemization of the case, pointing out some relevant theoretical questions
and concepts regarding HR IS and HR transformations [35, 47], subsequent changes in
competency demands for HR professionals [28, 38, 87, 89, 90], and the changing role of
line managers [8, 66, 93]. This reasoning was further complicated with arguments from
adjacent disciplines such as Information systems (IS) research, Organization Studies
(OS). Driving this process is my fundamental interested in the link between research
and practice, and the „practice turn in social science‟ [67, 79]. From a sociological
background [13, 30] practice-based studies have offered a pragmatic (re)orientation in
organizational studies through the observation of everyday practices [14, 43, 53, 56, 61,
103].
„…beyond its canonical abstractions of practice to the rich, full-blooded activities
themselves. And it must legitimize and support the myriad enacting activities
perpetrated by its different members.‟ [14] p. 53.
368
Basically these influences handles the phenomena of organizational learning [14, 29,
43, 51, 79, 84, 85], and within information systems research a substantial research of
„IT and organizational change‟ [6, 12, 48, 52, 54, 91, 102, 103].
In later developments this iterative process has resulted in a framing of more distinct
theoretical constructs. To further focus my elaboration of central mechanisms (i.e. the
study objects), I refer to some key constructs in a number of converging debates within
information systems research, organization studies and science and technology studies.
These concepts gain their relevance in explaining central phenomena at Sandvik Corp.,
but their common philosophical argument is just as interesting. From a sociology and
science and technology perspective [5, 42, 64, 79] scholars argue we need relational
view of organizational practices, understanding technology and human organization on
an ontological level as fundamentally entangled. Rather then talking about objects and
humans as having distinct properties, these authors, and I, argue we need to better
understand the social and technical phenomena as fundamentally relational phenomena,
i.e. the one cannot exist without the other.
„The thrust of site [practice] ontology, consequently, is that human coexistence
inherently transpires as part of a context of a particular sort...What makes them („sites‟)
interesting is that context and contextualized entity constitute one another: what the
entity or event is tied to the context, just as the nature and identity of the context is tied
to the entity or event (among others).‟ [78] p. 465
We do not “come into” a situation, but we constantly are in situations as we go about,
together, and with the use of tools and cultural artefacts, to take purposeful action,
already „being-in-the-world‟ [34]. I refer to this relational ontology and its
phenomenological grounding as a new meta-theoretical starting point [36]. As a sort of
„pragmatic pluralism‟ [97], or what may be called „interpretive repertoire‟ [4], I will
reflexively refer to theoretical concepts relevant for empirical interpretation, also trying
to ensure that central concepts within the are used together in a coherent way,
introducing a framework of assumptions that has its own ontological, epistemological
and methodological integrity [97].
This framework will involve relational concepts such as „socio-technical agency‟ and
„performativity‟ [5, 39], „reflection-in-action‟ and the constitutive „entanglement of
sociality and materiality‟ in organizational life [55]; all used as tools to cut the rose out
of the cake. Based on such theoretical background knowledge, the aim is to present a
relevant vocabulary and analysis of HR work as sociomaterial practices, and a direct
argument for a relational view of both HR transformations, and HR professional
competence and expertise needed in contemporary HR work [22, 76].
b. Methodological and theoretical awareness
Charreire Petit & Huault (2008) argues forcefully that the general deployment of
constructivist approaches in studies of organizational knowledge is unreflective as to the
specificity of the research design and the basic philosophical assumptions [17].
A practice-based problematization needs an inquiry where data are inextricably fused
with theory, and where academics and practitioners constructs the mystery by
deepening their understanding of the phenomena [2]. Theorizing practices this way also
becomes a problem of recognizing the interplay between theory and method [94]. It is
an iterative research process where there is no blueprint, but every approach needs to be
justified and the contribution needs to be constructed [92] via recursive cycling among
369
the case data, emerging theory, and later, extant literature [25], theorizing „up‟ from
grounded practices [51, 100].
Through the constant negotiation of the role of technology and how modern HR
practices may look like, the subjective elements of powerful stakeholders and creative
users at Sandvik Corp. plays a subtle but very significant role. Whether or not these
changes are objective in the form of materialized technology, or subjective in the form
of line managers understanding of their formal HR responsibility, what we experience
as a change is always happening in the every-day coping with HR service delivery at
Sandvik Corp. Arguably then, a practice-based approach need to have an appropriate
methodology for research of what it is people in organizations actually do, and In
contrast to traditional triangulation of data or methods, a constructivist approach
requires an emphasis on the varied and engaged nature organizational practices. This
needs an commitment seeking approach, such as ethnography [80] or action research,
that forces the researcher to participate and familiarize oneself with the situation and to
gain empirical access into these knowledge based processes to “get a feel” for the place.
I use an ethnographically inspired investigative method, using three distinct
methodological lenses (time, breakdowns and narratives) [61] to distil the rich and tacit
knowledge to be found in every day informal organizing activities.
4 Summary
This paper is an argument for the understanding of HR design practices and the design
of HR practices that takes into count the situated character HR transformations. Rather
than just affirming the „black box‟ view of organizations, a situated perspective can
probably help closing the gap between theory and practice in HRM research,
contributing with a critical discussion of modern HRM. A practice-based approach
argues that we need better knowledge of how rules, routines and roles are affected by
these premises of complex technology and program management. From this
understanding I hope to achieve an analysis and vocabulary relevant both to academics
and practitioners, and strong consistent arguments for alternative ways to understand
success or failure of HR transformations.
Engaged by voices that encourages scholars in the field of HRM to continue exploring
empirical investigations through innovative theoretical and methodological approaches
[40, 58, 81], the main aim is to theorize these changing HR practices in a way that
informs discussions within the field of HRM and e-HRM, and practitioners interest in
this process. Hopefully my study will be of value for those interested in the phenomena
of HR transformation projects, presenting a case that works as a reference frame for
discussion and debate and work as a catalyst of new theoretical knowledge [24, 25,
101], crossing both academic and occupational boundaries. With the help of other
modern ways of communicating this academic knowledge, as suggested by Guest
(2007) (e.g. homepage, forums and networks for Swedish e-HRM research, and
pedagogical interventions/feed back sessions within Sandvik Corp.), a secondary aim is
also to contribute directly to the development at Sandvik Corp. and other Swedish
organizations conducting this type of transformation.
370
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