Phase 3 Research Themes
PERFORMANCE LOGICS
Over the next couple of years, in addition to the research themes that have been examined in Phases 1 and 2, which we see as continuing priorities, we shall explore a range of new issues that we see as exerting a more dominant role on HR. We believe that for the next few years organisational performance will be driven by a number of strategic logics:
- Innovation
- Customer centricity
- Lean management
- Global integration
Our future work will build upon our initial analyses of Innovation and Customer Centricity by exploring these strategic logics, and the organisational and people management challenges that they create, in more detail.
The first two sub-themes that are currently being researched are as follows:
The New Lean Management: Mapping The Implications for HR
One of the White Papers picks up on traditional concerns with efficiency and effectiveness. We shall examine what might be called "the new lean" - attempts to create fast and frugal organisation processes that do not, however, fall into the trap of being driven just by cost cutting as seen in many previous philosophies such as business process re-engineering.
We have access to case studies in firms that have traditionally done a lot of work on lean thinking in manufacturing and engineering contexts, and firms that are now applying lean thinking in white collar contexts. There are two separate agendas being explored here:
- Lean thinking as a general business driver and performance context. We shall explore lean thinking and its recent derivatives as one of three strategic drivers that have relevance for HR agendas (the other two papers having been written on Innovation and Customer Centricity.
- Lean thinking as specifically applied to white collar work and (or indeed even to HR) and the new opportunities and questions for HR to think about with regard to a) the knowledge that it needs about lean b) where it might situate/ structure this knowledge
We shall explore how recent initiatives may be leading to changes in the ownership of the “intellectual capital” surrounding lean thinking, new core expertise, or the fragmentation of the HR role?
Learning and Development: The Forgotten Function?
Another of the White Papers is working with the hypothesis that Learning & Development has become the forgotten function, possibly superceded by Talent Management, caught up in the outsourcing/ e-enabled or transactional debate, or seen as a decentralized capability to be embedded in business divisions. The paper is intended to build an evidence base as to what has been happening with the function, and given the current agenda of high levels of business change, how it should now be positioned. It will examine the literature on the L&D function, its changing role, status and organizational positioning, and contrast the current reality with the messages from academic research on organizational, team and individual learning.
PROCESSES
We will also examine what we see as five key process capabilities that HR needs to master:
Globalisation of HR: One of the first key processes to examine is that of globalisation as it impacts people management. This work will cover study of the architecture required to cope with the impact of globalisation on HR functions, global resourcing options, global services delivery, known currently as outsourcing, and the impact of HR policies and processes across national cultures. Opening research will cover both Global Talent Management and Global HR Structures:
- How is the centralisation-localisation dilemma being handled in the provision of talent on a global basis?
- What other activities (such as employer branding, strategic workforce planning) are being brought together with the traditional management of international mobility?
- How are global HR structures being changed to manage this?
Cross-organisation delivery models: We shall look at the challenge in providing seemless HR support to business arrangements that might be based on partnering (in its many guises).
- How do we ensure governance, risk management and capability development across partnered business arrangements, or in business models that involve several agencies?
- What are the implications for HR functions as they move from managing the employment relationship in owned entities to a need to manage the quality of people and organizational management across partnerships?.
Redefining the contours of fairness: Questions of fairness are becoming more complex as we consider the future of work - many issues (eg. pension provision, questions of reward, careers across different age groups, global sourcing of work, social mobility etc) have impacts across generational groups and across different internal employee segments.
- What does engagement look like in the context of these complex considerations?
- How should we think of, and manage, what is perceived to be fair in the modern employment relationship?
- What models can we find to think about, and help define, what is considered fair in these complex situations?
- What guidance does this suggest for creating coherent and believed-in HR strategies.
Big Data Capability/ HR Insight: Organisations now have the technical capability to bring together - and create integrated tools across - powerful sources of data. This development, often referred to as "Big Data Analytics" or "Employee Insight" has become popular within human capital management circles. The data that are beoing combined range from analyses of customers and their needs, subjective employee attitude data, objective data contained in HR Information Systems, business unit performance dashboards using financial, customer, and quality metrics, and longer-term strategic outcomes linked to brand or risk management. Increasingly such analytics can be targeted to create much deeper insight into employees, customers and performance. The challenges, however, are immense and go far beyond the immediate technical and IT investments that become necessary, or management and cultural concerns:
- What sort of analytical systems need to be developed to link people and performance data into meaningful management tools?
- How can such data be mainstreamed and embedded inside organisations?
- What are the new hybrid professions, functions and networks that are being created to understand and disseminate the resulting data insights?
- What must be done to deal with the traditional line management blocks that often exist inside organisations, and that detract from doing useful things from any HR insight?
Sustainable and authentic leadership: As a concept sustainable leadership is bringing together many ideas - the need for a changing value set in the definition of leadership capability, ideas about long-term versus short term performance management, ideas about corporate social responsibility, and more sustainable business strategies. As part of this theme the Centre continues its interest in strategic talent management.
- What is really implied by sustainable leadership?
- Can it be managed?
- Does it have positive performance effects?
- How can better links be forged between talent systems and leadership models?
