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In this paper, we investigate how conventions enable organisational actors to cope with paradoxical tensions in performance appraisal systems. Building on a case study of a performance appraisal system reform in a public sector organisation, we analyse how this organisation enabled superiors to take into account both accountability and professional logic. When new appraisal rules required superiors to rank their employees according to their qualifications but also to show collegiate solidarity, superiors negotiated an organisation-wide understanding of the rules that enabled them to address both logics simultaneously. The study underlines the importance of collective understandings for individual responses to paradoxical tensions and reveals how performance appraisal systems can be operated according to different logics.
The implementation of human resource (HR) policies often proves troublesome due to the appearance, and stubborn persistence, of gaps in the process. Human resource management (HRM) scholars problematise these gaps and advocate tight implementation to reduce gaps and to ensure the desired impact of policies on organisational performance. Drawing on organisational institutionalism, we contend that gaps in implementing HR policies can actually be productive, as they secure organisational legitimacy, and thus enable organisations to operate viably within several institutional environments. We suggest that different approaches to implementation are needed, some of them premised on accepting sustained implementation gaps. We introduce minimum and moderate implementation approaches, rooted in the notion of decoupling, to complement approaches aimed at tight implementation. Our aim is to support the further development of research based on a richer interpretation of HRM implementation challenges and choices they present for HR managers.
»Flexible Arbeitspraktiken: Eine Analyse aus pragmatischer Perspektive«. Traditional human resource management (HRM) research can hardly relate to today's developments in the world of work. Organizational boundaries are blurred because of the complexity due to globalization, digitalization, and demographic changes. In practice, new ways of organizing work can be found that depend on the specifics of the work situation. In this paper, we build on the economics of convention (EC) to elaborate on the current challenges HRM scholarship is confronted with and provide a theoretical lens that goes beyond the tension between market and bureaucracy principles in actual employment settings. We apply EC’s situationalist methodology to examples of the challenging coordination of flexibility in the workplace. We explain two hybrid forms of coordination – compromises and local arrangements – and highlight the dynamics of employment practices in organizations related to these forms. Thereby, we show that different modes of coordination in employment are applied in a fluctuating manner that depends on the specific situations. In doing so, we further seek to remind HRM scholars of the fruitfulness of the pragmatist perspective in analyzing work practices, as well as extending its conceptual toolkit for future analysis.