Suchergebnisse

PurposeA place in the boardroom is often considered a necessary if not sufficient condition for HR directors to exercise strategic influence on business decision‐making. The purpose of the paper is to explore the perceived importance of HR boardroom representation, both in a formal and symbolic sense, and to what extent HR directors can exercise strategic influence without it?Design/methodology/approachEvidence is explored from a survey of 1,188 UK HR practitioners, including 255 board members, and a series of follow‐up interviews with 16 HR directors.FindingsAnalysis of the survey findings suggests that boardroom versus non‐boardroom representation of HR appears to matter in four key areas: board members believe they have greater involvement and influence in business planning processes; they have more positive perceptions of the overall performance of HR; they give higher ratings of CEO perceptions of the HR function; and they believe they achieve greater integration of HR strategy with business strategy.Research limitations/implicationsWhile there are increasingly other formal mechanisms and forums (e.g. executive committees, personal networks) outside the boardroom for HR directors to exercise their influence, it appears that the "symbolic capital" of boardroom recognition and esteem still retains enormous significance and rhetorical appeal for the HR profession.Originality/valueThe paper seeks to reframe the debates on the relative importance of HR boardroom versus executive committee representation as forums of strategic influence, by focusing on the continued symbolic significance of boardroom representation. It is concluded that a reworking of Bourdieu's concept of "symbolic capital" (i.e. professional esteem, recognition, status, or respect) as board capital may be useful in reframing future research on HR boardroom representation.

Michel Foucault's work marks an important break with conventional ontological dualism, epistemological realism and rationalist and intentional notions of individual action and human agency. In these respects his ideas have had an enormous influence on postmodern organization theory and analysis, as well as related forms of social constructionism. In particular, Foucault's ideas have led to a rejection of agency-structure dichotomies and a move towards process-based ontologies of `organizing/changing', that create new problematics of agency as discourse, talk, text or conversation. While this ontological shift toward nominalism has often provoked a counter-reaction against the `death of the subject' and the corrosive influence of postmodernism, there have been few attempts to explore how Foucault's decentring of agency is related to new, more positive and potentially emancipatory discourses that redefine the relationship between agency and change, resistance and power in organizations and society. Here it will be argued that Foucault's legacy can be re-conceptualized as a theorization of the decentring of agency consisting of four key components: discourse, power/ knowledge, embodiment and self-reflexivity. Redefined within Foucauldian organizational discourses, decentred agency can lead to new possibilities for the exploration of agency as discourse and the broader dispersal of agency in organizations. It will be concluded, however, that Foucault's concept of agency fails as a theorization of change: it breaks the link between the voluntary choice or desire to `act otherwise' and the moral, political and practical possibilities of `making a difference'.

The history of the concept of 'agency' in organizational theory over the last 50 years makes dismal reading. From a position of unbounded optimism that organizational change could be managed as a rational or planned process with a transparent agenda, we now confront restructured workplaces characterized by new forms of flexibility, hypercomplexity and chaos in which the nature, sources and consequences of change interventions have become fundamentally problematic. How did this occur and what implications does it have for our understanding of agency and change in organizations? Should we assume that rationalist concepts of centred agency are no longer viable, or should we welcome the plural and promising new forms of decentred agency emerging within organizations? This article presents a selective interdisciplinary history of competing disciplinary discourses on agency and change in organizations, classified into rationalist, contextualist, dispersalist and constructionist discourses. Although the four discourses clarify the meta-theoretical terrain of agency in relation to organizational change theories, the growing plurality of discourses challenges the social scientific ambitions of the research field to be objective, cumulative or unified. It is concluded that the future for research on agency and change in organizations is characterized by new opportunities for empirical investigation and intervention, but also by mounting threats to the epistemological rationale of objective knowledge and the efficacy of practice.

AbstractThe article defines the fit between the strategies of involvement and commitment and employee communication styles.Four employee communication styles are identified and described in detail.The author argues that the organization may have to adopt more than one style to achieve its aims.

AbstractDuring the 1980s, many companies embarked on 'culture change' programmes that were designed to achieve a shift from traditional command and control models of management to more open, participative styles founded on employee involvement. New employee relations initiatives designed to communicate change and get closer to employees were a fundamental feature of this transformation. Here, Dr Caldwell proposes a model of employee involvement and communication, which helps to clarify the nature of the shift from the closed to the open organization of the future.