Bringing variety and change into strategic human resource management research

Abstract

Strategic human resource management (HRM) research has been dominated by a best-practice perspective that calls for seeing uniformity and stability in HRM practices across organizations. The dominance of the best practice perspective occurs despite the many theoretical arguments and typologies that suggest there is variety and change in HRM practices. We argue that strategic HRM research will gain considerably from bringing in variety and change in HRM practices. We propose a theoretical framework that examines both variety and change at the organizational and the population level based on the strength or lack of competitive and institutional pressures in an organizational field. The framework identifies how variety arises in different ways and change takes different forms. We illustrate the framework in the contexts of the taxicab industry, large corporate law firms, and university tenure system. We conclude by discussing the implications of the framework for strategic HRM research.