Work

Beating the advertising drum for the employer: How legal context translates into good HRM practice

Year: 2021

Type: article

Abstract: The legal context is constitutive for the legitimacy of HRM practices. In this paper, we use an institutional work approach to investigate how a legal mandate requiring employers to state the minimum pay in job advertisements in Austria was translated into a legitimate HRM practice over time. In this process, HR practitioners translated the law into an HRM practice going well beyond the legal requirements. In contrast to merely constraining HRM practice, we find HR practitioners actively engaging with the legal context. In the discursive struggle over a legitimate translation of the law into practice, actors speaking ‘for HRM’ were mostly HRM consultants and service providers building on an individualist and unitarist frame of reference for employment relations. Our findings contribute to a contextualized understanding of HRM practices by considering the interaction of HR practitioners and legal context.

Source: Human Resource Management Journal

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12413

Authors: Isabella Scheibmayr, Astrid Reichel

Institution: University of Salzburg

Language: English

Topic: Management and Organizational Studies

Subfield: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Peace, justice, and strong institutions, Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,700