Pour une utilisation des études de cas dans la compréhension des pratiques de gestion des ressources humaines dans les entreprises

Abstract

Though large scale studies enable to understand current trends like absenteeism, lowering motivation among some groups of workers or problems encountered in hiring workers with specific skills on the Belgian labour market, they do not always help to capture why companies set up specific human resource management practices. For instance, these studies seem to devote little attention to contextual factors that can affect work organisation. Based on quantitative methods, they often fail to integrate perceptions of individuals working at different organisational levels and to capture the underlying dynamics of specific HRM practices. Considering our empirical approach at the firm level, we argue that a more qualitative analysis, especially based on detailed case studies, could contribute to enrich these quantitative approaches through a better understanding of companies behaviour on the labour market and to suggest new original theories or proposals related to work organisation. For example, these proposals can be either to adopt a more diagnostic approach for companies that need to implement specific changes or to take into account the potential impact of previous experiences in the decision-making process.JEL Codes: M10, M12.