research paper on human resource

Research trends in human resource management. A text-mining-based literature review

International Journal of Manpower

ISSN : 0143-7720

Article publication date: 26 April 2022

Issue publication date: 14 March 2023

The purpose of the study was to detect trends in human resource management (HRM) research presented in journals during the 2000–2020 timeframe. The research question is: How are the interests of researchers changing in the field of HRM and which topics have gained popularity in recent years?

Design/methodology/approach

The approach adopted in this study was designed to overcome all the limitations specific to the systematic literature reviews and bibliometric studies presented in the Introduction. The full texts of papers were analyzed. The text-mining tools detected first clusters and then trends, moreover, which limited the impact of a researcher's bias. The approach applied is consistent with the general rules of systematic literature reviews.

The article makes a threefold contribution to academic knowledge. First, it uses modern methodology to gather and synthesize HRM research topics. The proposed approach was designed to allow early detection of nascent, non-obvious trends in research, which will help researchers address topics of high value for both theory and practice. Second, the results of our study highlight shifts in focus in HRM over the past 19 years. Third, the article suggests further directions of research.

Research limitations/implications

In this study, the approach designed to overcome the limitations of using systematic literature review was presented. The analysis was done on the basis of the full text of the articles and the categories were discovered directly from the articles rather than predetermined. The study's findings may, however, potentially be limited by the following issues. First, the eligibility criteria included only papers indexed in the Scopus and WoS database and excluded conference proceedings, book chapters, and non-English papers. Second, only full-text articles were included in the study, which could narrow down the research area. As a consequence, important information regarding the research presented in the excluded documents is potentially lost. Third, most of the papers in our database were published in the International Journal of Human Resource Management, and therefore such trends as “challenges for international HRM” can be considered significant (long-lasting). Another – the fourth – limitation of the study is the lack of estimation of the proportion between searches in HRM journals and articles published in other journals. Future research may overcome the above-presented limitations. Although the authors used valuable techniques such as TF-IDF and HDBSCAN, the fifth limitation is that, after trends were discovered, it was necessary to evaluate and interpret them. That could have induced researchers' bias even if – as in this study – researchers from different areas of experience were involved. Finally, this study covers the 2000–2020 timeframe. Since HRM is a rapidly developing field, in a few years from now academics will probably begin to move into exciting new research areas. As a consequence, it might be worthwhile conducting similar analyses to those presented in this study and compare their results.

Originality/value

The present study provides an analysis of HRM journals with the aim of establishing trends in HRM research. It makes contributions to the field by providing a more comprehensive and objective review than analyses resulting from systematic literature reviews. It fills the gap in literature studies on HRM with a novel research approach – a methodology based on full-text mining and a big data toolset. As a consequence, this study can be considered as providing an adequate reflection of all the articles published in journals strictly devoted to HRM issues and which may serve as an important source of reference for both researchers and practitioners. This study can help them identify the core journals focused on HRM research as well as topics which are of particular interest and importance.

• Human resource management
• Text-mining

Piwowar-Sulej, K. , Wawak, S. , Tyrańska, M. , Zakrzewska, M. , Jarosz, S. and Sołtysik, M. (2023), "Research trends in human resource management. A text-mining-based literature review", International Journal of Manpower , Vol. 44 No. 1, pp. 176-196. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-03-2021-0183

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2022, Katarzyna Piwowar-Sulej, Sławomir Wawak, Małgorzata Tyrańska, Małgorzata Zakrzewska, Szymon Jarosz and Mariusz Sołtysik

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

The human resource (HR) function has evolved over the years from serving a purely administrative role into one that is more strategic in character. Today it is believed that the mission of human resource management (HRM) is to support the organization in achieving its objectives by developing and implementing HR strategies that are integrated with a company's business strategy, promote staff development, foster a positive employment relationship, promote an ethical approach to people management, and care about the environment (social and natural) ( Ehnert, 2009 ; Braga et al. , 2021 ).

In practice, HRM means providing continuous solutions to a wide array of problems occurring in employee-employer, line worker-manager, and employee-employee relations and also in contacts with, e.g. trade unions. Human behaviors, feelings and attitudes are determined both by the personal characteristics of individuals and by the impact of the environment. The shape of HRM is significantly influenced by such factors as, e.g. the demographic and technological transformations ( Greiling, 2011 ; Silva and Lima, 2018 ), and globalization ( Gerhart and Fang, 2005 ).

HRM has evolved as a professional and academic discipline in parallel with both planned shifts in global considerations and unplanned phenomena such as, e.g. epidemics. For researchers it is crucial to identify, define, explain, and help practitioners understand the key factors which have an impact on HRM. Another of the researchers' roles is to formulate practical guidelines on how to manage people in different circumstances and outline areas of future research. HRM thrives on the contributions made in other fields that it assimilates and applies in practice. It unscrupulously builds on theoretical developments made earlier in related disciplines ( Boxall et al. , 2009 ). Finally, the researcher endeavors to provide an overview, comparisons, analyses and syntheses of previously published findings ( Paul and Criado, 2020 ).

The theme of trends in HRM has been addressed in numerous publications (e.g. Cooper et al. , 2020 ; Madera et al. , 2017 ). Their authors have employed various approaches to identify such phenomena, including systematic literature reviews. Articles offering a traditional overview provide a quantity-oriented (i.e. meta-analytical, systematic) approach together with descriptive or qualitative elements. Jointly, they develop a theoretical background, highlight irregularities in existing findings, integrate the findings of a wide variety of publications and in general provide other researchers with an up-to-date understanding of the discipline, frequently prepared by leading specialists ( Palmatier et al. , 2018 ). In most cases, the documents selected for analysis were based on titles, keywords and abstracts only. Unfortunately, they contain only around 8% of all research findings ( Blake, 2010 ). In order to gain a deeper insight into such a body of knowledge authors have often turned to the by-hand review method (e.g. Cooper et al. , 2020 ).

Conventional systematic by-hand literature reviews are sometimes characterized by errors in article selection, possible simplifications and potentially incomplete and not universal results (subjective, impressionistic descriptions), In response to these shortcomings, in recent years a number of new alternatives have emerged. One new approach that has attracted increasing attention is bibliometric studies. This method applies dedicated IT tools to gauge trends in articles. They examine academic material from both an objective and qualitative perspective for the purposes of identifying, organizing, and analyzing information in a specific research field ( Capobianco-Uriarte et al. , 2019 ). As far as trends in HRM are concerned, Markoulli et al. (2017) presented a summary of previously published traditional and narrative reviews and on its basis created a science map and defined clusters based on keyword co-occurrence analysis and the VOSviewer software tool.

Bibliometric analyses can be treated as a platform for writing an entire article or can be used only as preparation for the groundwork for further in-depth content analysis and qualitative descriptions. In turn, a text mining toolset can help identify research trends and select papers which are in line with a particular trend. Moreover, a full-text analysis of publications using a text mining toolset enables researchers to obtain higher-quality results than when using only keywords, such as in the case of VOSviewer analyses ( Kobayashi et al. , 2018 ). As a consequence we decided that it was worth adopting a methodology based on full-text mining and a big data toolset in order to identify trends in HRM research. We believe that big data and analytics help not only companies function but also researchers in a highly data-driven world ( Kobayashi et al. , 2018 ).

The purpose of the study was to detect trends in HRM research presented in journals during the 2000–2020 timeframe. The following research question was asked: how are the interests of researchers changing in the field of HRM and which topics have gained in popularity in recent years?

The paper is organized as follows. In the second section we describe the HRM research trends identified in previous studies. Here the focus is on the context in which authors were operating when analyzing HRM issues. The third section is devoted to the research method employed for the purpose of this study. Then we present the results and discussion. The article ends with conclusions, including limitations and areas of future research.

The article makes a threefold contribution to academic knowledge. First, it uses modern methodology to gather and synthesize HRM research topics. The proposed approach was designed to allow early detection of nascent, non-obvious trends in research, which will help researchers address topics of high value for both theory and practice. Second, the results of our study highlight shifts in focus in HRM over the past 20 years. Third, the article suggests further directions of research.

2. Trends in the HRM research identified in previous studies

In their search for HRM research trends authors of this study firstly used the Scopus database and a search strategy based on such terms as: trends in human resource management/HRM, trends in research on human resource management/HRM, human resource management/HRM trends, intellectual structure of human resource management/HRM. The searching process covered titles, abstracts and keywords and was limited to articles written in English. The search produced 37 documents. Then the authors also searched for additional articles in Google Scholar.

Most of the articles were devoted to the trends identified in HR practices in companies (e.g. Dubravska and Solankova, 2015 ). One of such trends is HRM digitalization ( Ashbaugh and Miranda, 2002 ). Table 1 presents a list of HRM trends identified in the research (related to academic work) conducted by different authors.

It can be concluded from the above that researchers employed different approaches to defining and identifying these trends. Research trends may be associated with research topics (e.g. Özlen, 2014 ), research methods (e.g. Pietersen, 2018 ) and the general characteristics of the academic domain (e.g. Sanders and De Cieri, 2020 ). Although a number of authors have provided traditional literature reviews of trends in HRM, Chae et al. (2020) , for example, focused only on the local (Korean) research trends and used only keyword analyses. Others focused on a specific sector ( Cooper et al. , 2020 ), industry ( Madera et al. , 2017 ) or region ( Wood and Bischoff, 2020 ). There are also articles that outline the evolution of research in particular journals (e.g. Pietersen, 2018 ). Others address specific problems, such as international HRM (e.g. Sanders and De Cieri, 2020 ) or green HRM ( Yong et al. , 2020 ). The most visible trends identified in previous studies and associated with research topics were strategic HRM, HR performance and employment/industrial relations. The first topic was addressed in eight works while the remaining was the subject of five publications.

3. Material and methods

The approach adopted in this study was designed to overcome all the limitations specific to the systematic literature reviews and bibliometric studies as presented in the Introduction. The full texts of papers were analyzed. The approach applied is consistent with the general rules of systematic literature reviews ( Tranfield et al. , 2003 ) and consists of several steps, which are presented in Figure 1 .

3.1 Selection of journals

Thousands of articles covering HRM can be found on both Scopus and the Web of Science. For the sake of the present analysis, it was necessary to define inclusion criteria in the meta-analysis.

The main topic of the journal was related to HRM,

The journals were indexed in Scopus and WoS,

The journals have a high SNIP index value (the limit value is set at 1 - status for 2020; full values are presented in Table 2 ),

Full versions of the article were available,

The articles were published in the years 2000–2020.

A total of 8 journals met the above criteria ( Table 2 ). The full texts of the papers were downloaded from academic databases. No duplicates were found. Only research papers were included, while editorials, calls for papers, errata and book reviews were excluded.

All the metadata were removed from the papers. The titles and abstracts often contain catchwords designed to increase readership. As a consequence, only the texts of papers minus their titles, keywords, abstracts and references were analyzed in this study. Additional bibliographic information that could be useful in the analytical process was downloaded from the Crossref database. Each paper was converted into a text file and then into a bag-of-words model for the needs of automatic analysis using computer algorithms. The algorithms were created using Python libraries, such as grobid, nltk, scikit-learn, hdbscan, and scipy ( Pedregosa et al. , 2011 ).

3.2 Search for the most important terms

w i j – result for term i in document j ,

t f i j – number of occurrences of i in j ,

d f i – number of documents containing i ,

N – number of documents in the corpus (set of documents).

The TF-IDF method is not a mathematical model. It requires extensive computation, cannot be used to discover synonyms and ignores multiple meanings of words ( Zhang et al. , 2011 ). However, in the case of research papers, these problems have a minimal impact due to the more precise language used by researchers.

3.3 Identification of thematic groups (clusters)

The TF-IDF model presents each paper as a multidimensional vector. The number of dimensions is equal to the number of keywords used in the analysis. In the next step, all the vectors were compared to each other, which led to the discovery of clusters.

As mentioned in section 3.2 , the TF-IDF model does not analyse synonyms and ignores multiple meanings of words and phrases. In scholarly texts, it is rarely a problem. Even in HRM, where the number of synonyms can be perceived as higher than in other areas of management, the impact on the results should be negligible.

There are two main approaches to clustering: partitioning and hierarchical clustering. The former can be applied when all the corpus elements must be included in one of the groups. This induces data noise, as not even similar elements have to be included. The latter allows some elements to remain outside the clusters. The clusters become much more homogenous. This constitutes a better approach when it comes to identifying trends. Multiple hierarchical clustering methods are available, e.g. meanshift, DBSCAN, Optics and HDBSCAN (Hierarchical Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise) ( McInnes et al. , 2017 ). HDBSCAN is characterized by the least number of limitations. It takes each paper (vector) and checks at what distance it can find similar publications. Then it compares the results, and the densest areas are detected as clusters. Unlike some other methods, the clusters lack permanent density or a fixed number of elements. The only parameter that the researcher needs to establish is the minimum cluster size. The best value can be determined through a series of experiments.

In the present study, the authors carried out a set of experiments using different minimum cluster sizes. The highest value detected was 20. Lower values lead to a much higher number of clusters. Moreover, general phrases not directly related to HRM played a significant role in the discovery of these clusters. With the minimum cluster size set to values greater than 20, the number of clusters was significantly lower. That led to general results based on the most popular phrases only.

The entire sample was divided into groups of papers published in 5-year overlapping periods starting with 2000–2004 and ending with 2016–2020. Each paper was assigned to all the groups into which it fitted. Cluster analysis was performed for every group separately, and the results were used to identify trends.

Cluster analysis was performed on each group separately, and the results were used to discover trends. Approximately 30 clusters on average were identified for each five-year period. However, for a trend to be identified at least two similar clusters had to be discovered in successive periods Therefore, many unrelated clusters were excluded by the algorithm. Such behaviour is expected, as it removes noise from data. Usually, only one-third of clusters meet the conditions to form trends.

The number of papers published in each year is presented in Figure 2 . A slight decrease in the number of articles can be observed compared to 2018–19, which may have been a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

3.4 Identification of trends

Long-lasting trends that existed and evolved during the studied period,

Declining trends which came to an end during the studied period,

Emerging trends which began during the studied period,

Ephemeris trends that began and ended during the studied period.

3.5 Interpretation of trends

The results delivered by the algorithm must be checked through further studies. The algorithm can detect mergers or splits in trends. We decided, however, that the final decision should be left to researchers. At this stage, trends should also be named, interpreted and described. The interpretation phase should help highlight changes within trends and try to predict their future evolution.

4. Results and discussion

The analyses, performed by researchers using automatic algorithms and further verification, led to the discovery of 42 trends presented in Table 3 . These trends are ordered according to the year of their first occurrence and their duration. It is worth emphasizing that the year in which a trend was observed does not indicate that the idea behind it emerged at the same time. Rather, it shows when a subject began to increase in popularity among researchers. Furthermore, the number of identified trends is much higher than the results from previous studies presented in Section 2.1 Table 4 .

The use of tracking revealed the evolution of clusters, and made it possible to identify trends. The analysis led to the discovery of the types of trends presented in Section 3.4. Of the 42 trends, 4 were long-lasting, 5 declining, 17 emerging and 16 ephemeris in character. One possible fact to note is that “strategic HRM”, which was a prevailing trend in previous studies, is not directly presented in the results obtained using text-mining analyses. However, it is included in the “architecture and changing role of HRM” trend.

At this point it is worth emphasizing that sociologists of science have examined the principles governing the selection of topics analysed by researchers, and noticed that it may result from a trade-off between conservative production and risky innovation ( Bourdieu, 1975 ). The main problem when choosing research topics is deciding whether to continue topics fixed in the literature or take the risk of exploring new, hitherto unknown themes. Trend a analysis offers an indirect solution based on strategic ambidexterity. This is not only because it allows us to observe disappearing themes that continue to be exploited, but also to identify those topics, in which there is a growing interest (exploration).

Long-lasting trends are not homogenous and change over time. The evolution of trends can be tracked using keywords of considerable importance in subsequent years. The importance of keywords was evaluated using the TF-IDF algorithm and averaged for each cluster. The TF-IDF formula was presented in the Methodology section. It should be noted that the TF-IDF score has to be calculated for each phrase in each paper. In this study, over 150,000 phrases were identified in over 6 thousand papers. That resulted in a significant number of calculations made by the algorithm, which cannot be presented in the paper. A comparison of cluster keywords reveals new topics within trends. The evolution of trends may lead to the disappearance of earlier topics or to their parallel development. Declining and ephemeris trends are associated with issues that are of less interest to researchers, have been resolved or were eclipsed by changes in a researcher's approach to the object of their study. The disappearance of certain trends is a normal phenomenon in science. Such a disappearance can be predicted to a certain degree when the average number of papers decreases.

Since we identified many trends, only a few examples will be described below. One example of a long-lasting trend is “Diversity Management”, which covered the entire 2000–2020 timeframe. The articles that discussed this trend focused on effective diversity management, its impact on organizational performance (e.g. Choi et al. , 2017 ), team performance ( Roberge and van Dick, 2010 ), knowledge sharing ( Shen et al. , 2014 ), innovation ( Peretz et al. , 2015 ), and the various factors which impact upon its effectiveness. Some papers discussed only one form of diversity in the workplace, e.g. age diversity ( Li et al. , 2011 ), gender diversity (e.g. Gould et al. , 2018 ) or ethnic diversity (e.g. Singh, 2007 ).

One sub-trend that can be observed within the above-discussed trend is age management', which falls within the 2005–2018 time range. The papers assigned to this sub-trend focus on HR practices towards older employees (e.g. Kooij et al. , 2014 ).

One example of a declining trend is “new and traditional career models”. This trend, which was observed in the years 2000–2019, highlights the fact that the weakening of organizational boundaries has increased career freedom and independence from previously constraining factors. The papers which examined this issue provide conceptual knowledge of different career dimensions. For example, a shift has taken place from objective to subjective careers. Individuals have to make sense of their careers, because they can no longer depend on their employers ( Walton and Mallon, 2004 ). Individual cultural, social and economic capital builds a field of opportunities for pursuing a career ( Iellatchitch et al. , 2003 ). Simultaneously, two major kinds of boundaries to the “boundaryless career” have been identified: the competence-based boundary (industry boundary) and the relation-based boundary (social capital boundary) ( Baghdadli et al. , 2003 ).

In the last two decades, increasing environmental awareness has pushed researchers towards addressing the issue of HRM as a strategic tool for making companies sustainability-driven organizations (e.g. Podgorodnichenko et al. , 2020 ). One of the emerging trends identified in our study is “Green and sustainable HRM”. This trend focuses on the environmental responsibility of companies (e.g. DuBois and Dubois, 2012 ) or/and achieving simultaneously social and economic goals (if the triple bottom line concept is discussed) (e.g. Ren and Jackson, 2020 ). The results, in the form of behavioral changes, have also been examined (e.g. Dumont et al. , 2017 ) and the contribution of HRM to company sustainability has been discussed in the context of different countries (e.g. Alcaraz et al. , 2019 ).

Finally, one example of an ephemeris trend is “HR certification”. The discussion on this trend was initiated by Lengnick-Hall and Aguinis (2012) . They applied a multi-level theory-based approach to investigating HR certification. They tried to assess the value of HR certification for individual HR specialists, their organizations as well as for the HR profession as a whole. The main topic addressed in later articles devoted to this trend was the value of HR certification (e.g. Aguinis and Lengnick-Hall, 2012 ). The value of HR certification has been linked with shareholder value ( Paxton, 2012 ). The link between organizational values and HR certification is another issue that has been addressed. Organizational values are treated as a key antecedent to the use and pursuit of HR certification ( Garza and Morgeson, 2012 ).

Table 3 presents only those periods during which specific trends were active, but provides no information on their dynamics. This can be observed by looking at the average number of papers per year (ANPY) in consecutive periods. Table 4 presents all the trends active during the last year of the study. They were divided into three groups according to whether the ANPY was decreasing, increasing or stable in recent years. To depict the relative strength of these trends, table shows the average number of papers published in the final 5-year period.

It can be concluded that trends with an increasing dynamic coincide with the trends defined in the literature. For example, “flexible employment from the perspective of HRM” corresponds with “employment relations” distinguished by Markoulli et al. (2017) and “the HRM process, the changing nature of HRM, and precarious employment relations” in the typology developed by Cooper et al. (2020) . “Diversity Management” is related to “organizational culture” ( Özlen, 2014 ). “Employee participation” may be associated with “employment relations” ( Cooke et al. , 2019 ) and “organizational commitment” ( García-Lillo et al. , 2017 ). The latter occurs both in the presented typology and in previous ones. “leader–member exchange” should be included in “behavioral issues” ( Özlen, 2014 ). Finally, a trend characterized by an increasing dynamic is “green and sustainable HRM”. Green HRM was an independent subject of analysis in a study by Yong et al. (2020) .

5. Conclusions

5.1 contributions and implications.

The present study provides an analysis of HRM journals with the aim of identifying trends in HRM research. It makes contributions to the field by providing a more comprehensive and objective review than analyses resulting from conventional systematic literature reviews as well as by identifying 42 different trends. It fills an existing gap in literature studies on HRM with a novel research approach – a methodology based on full-text mining and a big data toolset. As a consequence, this study can be considered as providing an adequate reflection of all the articles published in journals strictly devoted to HRM issues and which may serve as an important source of reference for both researchers and practitioners. It can also help them identify the core journals focused on HRM research as well as those topics which are of particular interest and importance.

As the study covers a period of over 20 years it should come as no surprise that some trends emerged and declined over this time. However, our study creates an opportunity for reviving research topics which combine old trends with new ones, and at the same time take into account the interdisciplinary nature of HRM as a field of research. Some researchers have observed that success can often be achieved by adopting a tool from another research area or through a new way of analyzing old problems that brings new insights and solutions ( Adali et al. , 2018 ).

Finally, we observed the emergence of a number of trends during the studied period that are still active. In particular, green and sustainable HRM is not only an emerging trend but also developing rapidly. It is worth mentioning here that while many articles have focused on green HRM issues, they have not been published in journals that specialize in HRM but in journals devoted to environmental issues. One possible future challenge for researchers may be to estimate the proportions between HRM articles published in HRM journals and those featured in other journals.

Practitioners interested in the evolution of the field can find in this paper areas of HRM that require improving in their own businesses or which can be treated as a platform for introducing innovations in HRM (emerging trends). The information contained in this paper can also be utilized as a source for evaluating the performance of sub-fields in a HRM research domain and for adjusting research policies with regard to funding allocations and comparing research input and output ( Gu, 2004 ). The editors of journals may take into account the results presented in this paper when making decisions regarding the direction, scope, and themes of their journals.

5.2 Limitations

In this study, the approach designed to overcome the limitations of using systematic literature review was presented. The analysis was done on the basis of the full text of the articles and the categories were discovered directly from the articles rather than predetermined. The study's findings may, however, potentially be limited by the following issues.

First, our eligibility criteria included only papers indexed in the Scopus and WoS database and excluded conference proceedings, book chapters, and non-English papers. Second, only full-text articles were included in the study, which could narrow down the research area. As a consequence, important information regarding the research presented in the excluded documents is potentially lost. Third, most of the papers in our database were published in the International Journal of Human Resource Management, and therefore such trends as “challenges for international HRM” can be considered significant (long-lasting). Another – the fourth – limitation of the study is the lack of estimation of the proportion between searches in HRM journals and articles published in other journals. Future research may overcome the above-presented limitations. Although we used valuable techniques such as TF-IDF and HDBSCAN, the fifth limitation is that, after trends were discovered, it was necessary to evaluate and interpret them. That could have induced researchers' bias even if – as in this study – researchers from different areas of experience were involved. Finally, this study covers the 2000–2020 timeframe. Since HRM is a rapidly developing field, in a few years from now academics will probably begin to move into exciting new research areas. As a consequence, it might be worthwhile conducting similar analyses to those presented in this study and compare their results.

Workflow of the methodology used in this study

Number of papers in the years 2000–2020

Trends in HRM research identified in previous studies

HRM-related journals included in this study

Trends in HRM research in the years 2000–2020

Activity of long-lasting and emerging trends in recent years

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Introduction, section snippets, references (119), cited by (73).

Computers & Industrial Engineering

Human resources management 4.0: literature review and trends.

• • People are key factors in the success of the digital transformation.
• • Need to understand how machines complement people's work.
• • Associations' strategies for the application of digital technologies.
• • Need for new competencies for work.

Research method

Bibliometric analysis, implications for human resources management, conclusion and limitations, declaration of competing interest, acknowledgements, a knowledge-based approach for representing jobholder profile toward optimal human–machine collaboration in cyber physical production systems, cirp journal of manufacturing science and technology, future trends in human work area design for cyber-physical production systems, procedia cirp, a human-in-the-loop manufacturing control architecture for the next generation of production systems, journal of manufacturing systems, the psychology of talent management: a review and research agenda, human resource management review, industry 4.0: emerging themes and future research avenues using a text mining approach, computers in industry, holistic approach for human resource management in industry 4.0, empowering and engaging industrial workers with operator 4.0 solutions, analysis of the driving and dependence power of barriers to adopt industry 4.0 in indian manufacturing industry, smart operators in industry 4.0: a human-centered approach to enhance operators’ capabilities and competencies within the new smart factory context, computers and industrial engineering, industry 4.0: a bibliometric analysis and detailed overview, engineering applications of artificial intelligence, designing intelligent manufacturing systems through human-machine cooperation principles: a human-centered approach, text mining of industry 4.0 job advertisements, international journal of information management, explaining the heterogeneity of the leadership-innovation relationship: ambidextrous leadership, the leadership quarterly, the mediating effects of procedural justice on the relationship between performance-based remuneration management and job satisfaction, jurnal pengurusan, trends and opportunities of artificial intelligence in human resource management: aspirations for public sector in bahrain, international journal of scientific and technology research, analysis of barriers in implementation of digital transformation of supply chain using interpretive structural modelling approach, journal of modelling in management, efficiency of boolean search strings for information retrieval, american journal of engineering research, how transformational leadership facilitates e-business adoption, industrial management and data systems.

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The importance of digital literacy on the labour market

Employee relations, perspective directions of state regulation of competition between human and artificial intellectual capital in industry 4.0, journal of intellectual capital.

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Maximizing transparency in a doctoral thesis1: The complexities of writing about the use of QSR* NVIVO within a grounded theory study

Qualitative research.

• Brocal, F., González, C., Komljenovic, D., Katina, P. F., Sebastián, M. A., & Garciá-Alcaraz, J. L. (2019). Emerging...

Dynamic task classification and assignment for the management of human-robot collaborative teams in workcells

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• Deloitte Company. (2021). Ecosystems to the Future of Work (Issue 62470)....

The evolution of man–machine interaction: The role of human in Industry 4.0 paradigm

Production and manufacturing research, exploring the relationship among human resource flexibility, organizational innovation and adaptability culture, chinese management studies, the bibliometric analysis of scholarly production: how great is the impact, industry 4.0: defining the research agenda, benchmarking, placing the operator at the centre of industry 4.0 design: modelling and assessing human activities within cyber-physical systems, estimating industry 4.0 impact on job profiles and skills using text mining, human capital 4.0: a workforce competence typology for industry 4.0, journal of manufacturing technology management, recruitment through artificial intelligence: a conceptual study, international journal of mechanical engineering and technology, handling disruptive technology in industry – a strategic advance in today’s business practices, test engineering and management, still our most important asset: a systematic review on human resource management in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, a study of artificial intelligence impacts on human resource digitalization in industry 4.0, does psychological empowerment mediate the relationship between digital competencies and job performance.

Nevertheless, previous studies have identified the side effects of digital technology in the workplace (Berg-Beckhoff et al., 2017; Karimikia et al., 2020), including overload (Lee et al., 2016), excessive work demands (Guenzi & Nijssen, 2021), blurring of the boundaries between work and non-work domains (Barriga Medina et al., 2021; Kossek, 2016), broken work-life balance (Harris et al., 2021; Kovacs, 2018), strain (Stadin et al., 2016), stress (Fischer et al., 2021; La Torre et al., 2019), reduction in productivity due to distraction and hedonic use of technology (Ali-Hassan et al., 2015), and a decrease in workers’ well-being (Palumbo et al., 2022). In addition, the workforce has been identified as a key resource for successful digital transformation in any organization (da Silva et al., 2022); hence, personal and organizational resources should be aligned to face new technology adoption. A review carried out by Trenerry et al. (2021) highlighted skills and training as important dimensions that organizations must consider when looking for effective digital transformation.

Preventive maintenance scheduling of a multi-skilled human resource-constrained project's portfolio

In the current industry digitalisation, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) approaches can also be helpful. For example, ML is used in HRM functions, such as recruiting and selection, retaining talent, performance/job evaluation, training needs, and even predicting the need for competencies (da Silva et al., 2022), On the other hand, AI has many use cases around maintaining resources, i.e. in intelligent transport systems (Rajamoorthy et al., 2022), waste utilisation​ (Sharma and Sahoo, 2022), etc. The research in the area of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) (Ahuja and Khamba, 2008; Geurtsen et al., 2022; Budai et al., 2008; Gola et al., 2021; Jasiulewicz-Kaczmarek, 2018) is focused on increasing the stability of production processes, as well as extending the service life and reducing the maintenance costs of machines and devices.

Applications of the internet of things for optimizing warehousing and logistics operations: A systematic literature review and future research directions

PRISMA focuses on methods in which writers may guarantee the transparency and completeness of systematic reviews via the rigour of inclusion criteria. Additionally, the PRISMA technique is extensively employed in the academic sector for review research across disciplines (Gatto & Re, 2021; Falwadiya & Dhingra, 2022; Bueno et al., 2020; da Silva et al., 2022; Kon et al., 2020). Due to these features, the PRISMA protocol is utilised in the current research, enabling the aim of the present study.

Lean Tools in the Context of Industry 4.0: Literature Review, Implementation and Trends

Human Resource Management Research Paper Topics

Human resource management research paper topics are a critical area of study for students and professionals aiming to understand and advance the field of Human Resource Management (HRM). With the rise of complex organizational structures, diverse workplace environments, and evolving employment laws, HRM has become an essential part of any successful organization. This abstract provides an overview of the multifaceted world of HRM research and introduces a comprehensive list of research paper topics that cater to various aspects of HRM. From talent acquisition to employee retention, performance evaluation, training, and legal compliance, the following sections will offer detailed insights into these areas. Students interested in pursuing research in HRM will find these topics engaging and highly relevant to the current organizational landscape. Additionally, they will be introduced to iResearchNet’s writing services that provide expert assistance in producing custom HRM research papers, ensuring quality, depth, and adherence to academic standards.

100 Human Resource Management Research Paper Topics

Human Resource Management (HRM) is a field that delves into the multifaceted interactions between employees and organizations. The role of HRM has evolved over time to include not only the management of recruitment and employee relations but also strategic planning, legal compliance, and organizational development. Here, we present a comprehensive list of Human Resource Management research paper topics divided into 10 essential categories, each containing 10 specific topics.

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HRM is a dynamic and broad field that demands multidimensional approaches to study. As students explore various topics, they will find intricate connections between management strategies, organizational behavior, and employee satisfaction. The following list serves as an inclusive guide to inspire research and academic inquiry.

• The role of HRM in organizational strategy
• Integrating HRM and business planning
• Talent management strategies
• Outsourcing HR functions: Pros and cons
• Technology and HRM
• Cross-cultural HRM
• Mergers and acquisitions: HRM challenges
• Strategic HR planning and organizational success
• The future of strategic HRM
• Best HR practices in top-performing companies
• Innovative recruitment techniques
• Bias and discrimination in the recruitment process
• Role of artificial intelligence in recruitment
• Recruitment marketing strategies
• Social media as a recruitment tool
• Ethics in employee selection
• Assessing the effectiveness of recruitment strategies
• Diversity and inclusion in recruitment
• Remote hiring practices
• Campus recruitment strategies
• The effectiveness of training programs
• Employee development and organizational growth
• The role of mentors in employee growth
• E-learning and virtual training methods
• Personalized training approaches
• Training evaluation methods
• Cross-training and skill development
• The future of corporate training
• Impact of continuous learning culture
• Leadership development programs
• Modern performance appraisal techniques
• 360-degree feedback system
• Employee engagement and performance
• Performance management and job satisfaction
• Aligning performance goals with organizational objectives
• Challenges in performance evaluation
• Performance-based rewards
• Emotional intelligence and employee performance
• Performance management in remote work environments
• Real-time performance tracking systems
• Building trust and collaboration among employees
• Conflict resolution strategies
• Impact of organizational culture on employee engagement
• Managing generational differences in the workplace
• Role of leadership in fostering engagement
• Employee wellness programs
• The psychology of employee engagement
• Communication strategies for employee relations
• Remote employee engagement tactics
• Work-life balance initiatives
• Salary negotiation techniques
• The psychology of compensation
• Pay equity and gender wage gap
• The impact of benefits on employee retention
• Flexible compensation models
• Global compensation strategies
• Linking compensation to performance
• Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)
• Non-monetary benefits and motivation
• Compensation transparency
• Labor law compliance in multinational corporations
• Whistleblowing and ethical considerations
• HRM in unionized workplaces
• Workplace harassment laws
• Employee rights and employer responsibilities
• Managing employee terminations ethically
• Diversity and anti-discrimination policies
• Legal aspects of employee benefits
• Remote work and legal challenges
• Ethical dilemmas in HRM
• Building a diverse workforce
• Strategies for fostering inclusion
• The impact of diversity on team performance
• Gender diversity in leadership roles
• Managing cultural diversity
• Age diversity in the workplace
• Disability inclusion strategies
• LGBT+ inclusion in the workplace
• Ethnic diversity and organizational success
• Bias reduction training
• The role of HRM in shaping organizational culture
• Employee behavior and organizational success
• Workplace norms and values
• Emotional labor in organizations
• Organizational change management
• Strategies for building a positive work environment
• Employee motivation and organizational culture
• The psychology of workplace relationships
• Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and culture
• The role of leadership in defining organizational culture
• Emerging Trends in HRM
• HRM in the gig economy
• Artificial intelligence and HRM
• Employee mental health and well-being
• Sustainability and HRM
• The future of remote work
• Integrating HRM and corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• Blockchain in HRM
• Personal branding in HR
• The role of big data analytics in HRM
• HRM challenges in the post-pandemic world

The list of human resource management research paper topics presented above offers a rich and diverse avenue for exploration. Each category delves into core aspects of HRM, reflecting the ever-changing nature of this field. As students embark on their research journey, they will discover a world that intricately connects people, organizations, and societal values. Whether focusing on traditional practices or emerging trends, these topics provide the starting point for meaningful inquiry and the creation of knowledge that contributes to the continued growth and evolution of HRM.

Human Resource Management and the Range of Research Paper Topics

Human Resource Management (HRM) is an interdisciplinary field that integrates aspects of management, psychology, sociology, economics, and legal studies. It is the art and science of managing people within an organization to maximize their performance, well-being, and alignment with strategic goals. As a broad and multifaceted domain, HRM opens doors to a wide array of research opportunities. This article will explore the essence of HRM, its historical evolution, theoretical frameworks, practical applications, and the myriad of research paper topics it offers.

Historical Background

The history of HRM can be traced back to the early 20th century, during the rise of the industrial revolution. The scientific management theory introduced by Frederick Taylor sought to apply scientific principles to worker productivity. As the business environment grew more complex, the Hawthorne studies emerged, highlighting the importance of social factors and human relations in the workplace. The evolution from personnel management to modern HRM reflects a shift from viewing employees as mere resources to recognizing them as valuable assets.

Theoretical Frameworks

HRM is underpinned by several key theories that guide practice:

• Resource-Based View (RBV): Emphasizes the role of human resources as a competitive advantage.
• Equity Theory: Focuses on fairness and justice in employee relations.
• Expectancy Theory: Explains how employees are motivated by the expected outcomes of their actions.
• Human Capital Theory: Regards employees as assets whose value can be enhanced through training and development.

These theories offer diverse perspectives for research, ranging from organizational behavior to strategic HRM.

Key Functions and Practices

The scope of HRM encompasses various functions that address the needs of both the organization and its employees:

• Recruitment and Selection: Designing and implementing processes to attract and hire suitable candidates.
• Training and Development: Enhancing employee skills and knowledge through continuous learning.
• Performance Management: Assessing and managing employee performance to align with organizational goals.
• Compensation and Benefits: Structuring pay and rewards to motivate and retain talent.
• Labor Relations: Navigating the legal landscape and fostering healthy employee-employer relationships.

Contemporary Challenges

Modern HRM faces several challenges that provide fertile grounds for research:

• Diversity and Inclusion: Creating a workforce that represents various backgrounds, beliefs, and perspectives.
• Technology and Automation: Leveraging technology to enhance HR processes while considering its impact on jobs.
• Globalization: Managing HR practices across different cultures and jurisdictions.
• Ethical Considerations: Balancing organizational needs with ethical treatment of employees.

Emerging Trends

The ever-changing business landscape leads to new trends in HRM:

• Remote Work: The rise of virtual workplaces and the associated management challenges.
• Well-Being and Mental Health: Prioritizing employee health and well-being as part of HR strategy.
• Sustainability: Integrating social responsibility into HR practices.

Range of Research Paper Topics

The complexity and diversity of HRM lead to an abundance of research paper topics. Here are examples from different areas:

• Strategic HRM: Examining the alignment of HR practices with business strategy.
• Employee Engagement: Exploring factors that influence engagement and its impact on performance.
• Legal Aspects of HRM: Investigating laws and regulations affecting HR practices.
• Organizational Culture and Behavior: Analyzing the influence of culture on employee behavior and organizational success.

Human Resource Management is a vast and dynamic field that intertwines various disciplines, theories, practices, and challenges. From historical roots to contemporary issues, HRM offers a rich tapestry of research opportunities. Whether investigating traditional functions or delving into emerging trends, students and scholars can find a wealth of topics that resonate with their interests and contribute to our understanding of human interactions within organizational contexts. The spectrum of human resource management research paper topics reflects the depth and breadth of a field that continues to evolve, shaping the way we work, lead, and thrive in an ever-changing world.

How to Choose Human Resource Management Research Paper Topics

Selecting the right topic for a research paper in Human Resource Management (HRM) is a critical step that can shape the entire trajectory of your project. The topic you choose should align with your interests, academic level, the specific requirements of the assignment, and the current trends in the field. Here’s a guide to help you navigate the decision-making process and pinpoint a topic that resonates with you.

The realm of Human Resource Management is vast and diverse, encompassing various theories, functions, challenges, and emerging trends. Choosing a suitable research paper topic within this multifaceted field requires careful consideration and strategic thinking. This section will outline ten essential tips to guide you in selecting a meaningful, relevant, and engaging topic for your research.

• Identify Your Interests: Begin by reflecting on what aspects of HRM intrigue you. Are you passionate about organizational behavior, talent acquisition, employee welfare, or strategic HRM? Your research will be more enjoyable if it aligns with your interests.
• Understand the Assignment Requirements: Review the guidelines and grading criteria provided by your instructor. Consider the scope, length, and expected complexity of the paper.
• Conduct a Preliminary Literature Review: Explore existing research in areas that interest you. Identify gaps, controversies, or emerging trends that could form the basis for your study.
• Consider the Target Audience: Think about who will read your paper. Tailoring the topic to your audience’s interests, knowledge level, and expectations can enhance its impact.
• Evaluate Available Resources: Assess the availability of data, tools, and resources needed for your research. The feasibility of a topic depends on your ability to access relevant information and support.
• Align with Current Trends: Consider choosing a topic that relates to contemporary issues or recent developments in HRM. This alignment can make your research more relevant and appealing.
• Seek Guidance from Instructors or Peers: Don’t hesitate to consult with your instructor, classmates, or academic advisors. They may offer valuable insights, feedback, or suggestions.
• Ensure Ethical Consideration: Ensure that your chosen topic complies with ethical standards, particularly if it involves human subjects, sensitive data, or controversial subjects.
• Consider the Broader Impact: Reflect on how your research could contribute to the field of HRM. A topic with potential practical implications or theoretical advancements can add value to your work.
• Create a Shortlist and Evaluate: Draft a list of potential topics and weigh them against the criteria outlined above. This systematic approach can help you identify the most suitable option.

Selecting a research paper topic in Human Resource Management is a thoughtful and iterative process that requires introspection, exploration, and strategic thinking. By considering your interests, academic requirements, available resources, current trends, ethical considerations, and potential impact, you can identify a topic that not only resonates with you but also contributes to the vibrant discourse in HRM. Remember that your choice is not set in stone; it’s a starting point that you can refine and adapt as you delve into your research. Embrace the journey, for the right topic is a gateway to discovery, learning, and growth in the multifaceted world of human resource management.

How to Write a Human Resource Management Research Paper

Writing a research paper on Human Resource Management (HRM) is a complex task that requires a clear understanding of the subject matter, a methodical approach to research, and strong writing skills. The following section will guide you through the process of crafting a well-structured, insightful, and academically rigorous research paper in HRM.

Human Resource Management is at the core of organizational success, shaping the way businesses attract, retain, and develop talent. As a field that intertwines with psychology, sociology, business strategy, and law, writing a research paper on HRM is both challenging and rewarding. The following guide provides a step-by-step approach to help you navigate the research, writing, and revision stages, ensuring that your paper is thorough, coherent, and impactful.

• Understand the Assignment: Before diving into research and writing, clarify the assignment’s objectives, scope, format, and grading criteria. Ensure you understand what is expected in terms of content, structure, style, and depth of analysis.
• Choose a Relevant Topic: Select a topic that aligns with your interests, the course objectives, and current HRM trends. Refer to Section IV for guidance on choosing the right topic.
• Conduct Comprehensive Research: Utilize reputable sources such as academic journals, books, and industry reports to gather data, theories, and insights related to your topic. Evaluate the credibility and relevance of each source.
• Develop a Thesis Statement: Craft a clear and concise thesis statement that outlines the central argument or focus of your paper. The thesis should guide the reader on what to expect and provide a roadmap for your analysis.
• Create an Outline: Develop a detailed outline that breaks down the main sections and sub-sections of your paper. An outline will help you organize your thoughts, maintain coherence, and ensure a logical flow of ideas.
• Write the Introduction: Begin with an engaging introduction that introduces the topic, provides background information, highlights its significance, and presents the thesis statement.
• Develop the Body Paragraphs: Divide the body of your paper into clear sections and subsections. Use headings and subheadings to guide the reader. Each paragraph should have a clear topic sentence, supporting evidence, and a concluding sentence that links back to the thesis.
• Include Practical Insights and Case Studies: Where appropriate, include practical examples, case studies, or industry insights that illustrate your points. This application of theory to real-world scenarios can enhance the depth and relevance of your paper.
• Write the Conclusion: Summarize the key findings, restate the thesis in light of the evidence, and discuss the implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research or practice.
• Revise and Edit: Review your paper multiple times to check for clarity, coherence, grammar, and formatting errors. Consider seeking feedback from peers or instructors, and use plagiarism check tools to ensure originality.

Writing a research paper in Human Resource Management is a multifaceted process that requires careful planning, diligent research, critical analysis, and thoughtful writing. By following the tips outlined above, you can create a paper that not only meets academic standards but also contributes valuable insights to the dynamic field of HRM. Remember that writing is a process of continuous refinement; embrace revisions, seek feedback, and strive for clarity and depth. The journey of crafting an HRM research paper is an opportunity to deepen your understanding, hone your skills, and contribute to the ongoing discourse in a field that shapes the heart of organizations around the world.

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A human resource management review on public management and public administration research: stop right there…before we go any further…

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• https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2019.1695880

Introduction

Conclusion and future research agenda, disclosure statement, additional information.

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This overview paper focuses on the increased popularity of human resource management (HRM) in public management and public administration research. This is reflected in empirical articles published in scientific journals linked to HRM, public management and public administration in the period 2000–2016. The findings of the paper show some cross-fertilization between the different disciplines and the lack of it in some areas. The outcomes also provide input for a future research agenda including alternative theories, models, methods and research techniques for rigour and relevant HRM research in the public sector domain.

• Public management
• public administration
• human resource management
• literature review

Human resource management (HRM) is gaining popularity in public management research. In the period 1999–2002, 5 per cent of the publications in Public Management Review (PMR) were explicitly focused on HRM. In 2015–2016, this has increased to 14 per cent according to Osborne ( Citation 2017 ) who performed an analysis on paper topics across 1999–2002 and 2015–2016 in PMR. HRM has not only gained popularity, but has become one of the dominant themes in PMR comparable to other popular themes such as performance management and accountability. In line with Osborne’s analysis ( Citation 2017 ) we observe more publications on HRM in the public sector domain within Public Management (PM) and Public Administration (PA) journals such as Public Management Review on the one hand, and publications on HRM in public sector contexts in HRM journals such as Human Resource Management Journal on the other hand.

Before researchers go any further with research on HRM in public settings, we need to ‘stop right there’ and identify the lessons that can be learned from prior research in the fields of PA/PM and HRM. Seen from an academic perspective, identifying important lessons on the crossroads of HRM and PA/PM could enable that research in one field enhances research progressions in the other field. This means that HRM research insights would inform and enrich the PA/PM literature, and vice versa. The academic community has seen similar developments in other disciplines before, for example related to the empirical research development of HRM and organizational behaviour (OB) in the 1990s and 2000s (Wright and Boswell Citation 2002 ). HRM research benefited from the theoretical and methodological rigour in OB research, while OB research was affected by the contextualization that characterized HRM research.

From a practitioner perspective, determining the important lessons means that we can avoid the risk of imitating ‘best practices’ in HRM, that are developed and tested in private companies (Pfeffer Citation 1994 ), to the public sector domain, without fully considering contextual differences (institutional, political and cultural) between sectors (Brown Citation 2004 ). A textbook case is the implementation of the HR practice pay-for-performance in the public sector. PA-research has demonstrated that this best practice does not stimulate individual performance. On the contrary, pay-for-performance is found to non-significantly or even negatively impact public sector employees’ attitudes and motivation, because of, amongst others, institutional constraints in the public sector (Perry, Engbers, and Jun 2009).

The central question of this paper is therefore: What do we empirically know about HRM in public sector contexts from the disciplines of PM/PA and HRM? In addition, to what extent is there a degree of cross-fertilization among these disciplines? Finally, the insights that we gain when studying these questions can be used to construct a research agenda. In other words: What lessons can be learned that could guide future research?

What is HRM?

There is a substantial body of literature since the early 1980s on HRM. Our definition of HRM is the following based on Boselie ( Citation 2014 ): HRM involves management decisions related to policies and practices that together shape the employment relationship and are aimed at achieving certain goals . These goals concern performance goals which have been defined and measured in multiple ways. Using the Harvard model of HRM, Beer, Boselie, and Brewster ( Citation 2015 ) bundle these goals into a multidimensional performance construct. Performance is not only regarded as organizational effectiveness (that reflects financial performance indicators and productivity measures for instance), but also as creating employee well-being (reflected in satisfied and healthy employees) and societal well-being (e.g. an organization’s impact on society).

Delery and Doty ( Citation 1996 ) make a distinction between three modes of strategic HRM theorizing – universalistic (best practices), contingency and configurational – highlighting the best practice versus best-fit proposition in HRM research. The best practice approaches (universalistic) build on the notion of one-size-fits-all in HRM. The best-fit approaches (contingency and configurational) are more sophisticated emphasizing that the internal and external organizational context affects HRM choices, HRM outcomes and the relationship between HRM and outcomes. The complexity of public sector organizations, both internally and externally, requires a best-fit approach in which context matters.

They have the Abilities in terms of knowledge, skills and competences to do their job (through selective recruitment and selection, training and development, and coaching);

They are Motivated (through performance appraisal and feedback, payment and promotion opportunities);

They have the Opportunity to participate in decision making and the shaping of their own work (through employee involvement, autonomous teamwork, job rotation, job enrichment and job crafting).

The HR system or bundle approach is often built on the theoretical foundation of the AMO theory. Huselid ( Citation 1995 ) was one of the first to apply the HRM system approach and AMO model to HRM and performance research. He constructed HRM bundles of HR practices (horizontal fit)and studied the so-called vertical alignment of the HRM bundles to the business strategy and the impact on performance. This vertical fit has been a subject of many HRM studies over the past decades. The necessary fit between HRM and context (1. horizontal fit between individual HR practices; 2. vertical fit between HRM and the business strategy; 3. organizational fit between HRM and organizational systems, structure and culture; 4. environmental fit between HRM and the external institutional contexts) is far more complicated as suggested by Paauwe, Guest, and Wright ( Citation 2013 ). Given the highly institutionalized contexts these notions on fit and alignment are even more relevant for HRM research in public sector contexts. This requires contingency and configurational approaches as suggested by Delery and Doty ( Citation 1996 ) in combination with institutional approaches as suggested by Paauwe ( Citation 2004 ).

We decided not to include the concept of leadership in our analysis because we think that HRM itself does not include leadership, although leadership and management are necessary to shape HRM (see our HRM definition). A different but related popular concept – people management – does incorporate the concept of leadership (see Knies and Leisink Citation 2018 ). People management, however, has only recently been developed in the HRM literature.

The Harvard model is a theoretical framework that includes multiple stakeholders, organizational context and a multidimensional performance construct (Beer, Boselie, and Brewster Citation 2015 ). The AMO model can be considered a theoretical framework for specifying HRM and the Harvard model a theoretical framework for the shaping of an HRM value chain and the definition of performance affected by context and stakeholders involved.

What is the public sector domain?

Definitions vary on what the public sector domain entails, we therefore provide a short overview of the most common criteria that are used and elucidate the perspective that is central to our review. There seems to be a growing consensus that there is no such thing as the public sector (Knies and Leisink Citation 2018 ). Generally, the three formal criteria of government ownership, source of funding and degree of political control with organizational activities are used to distinguish public and private sector organizations (Bozeman Citation 1987 ). This means that, ideally, public sector organizations are publicly owned, funded by taxpayers, and densely regulated by law (Kjeldsen and Jacobsen Citation 2013 ). Although these criteria can usually be applied to general government activities, public services such as education and healthcare are not always organized in such a way and could contain private sector characteristics. For example, hospital care in the Netherlands is delivered by organizations that are legally private bodies and have a complex funding system in which the Dutch healthcare authority (an autonomous administrative authority) annually assesses a budget per hospital, but the hospital only receives their funding through making arrangements with health insurers, patients and other healthcare organizations on how much they receive per health care activity. Whereas in the UK, hospitals are part of the National Health Service and can be regarded as state-owned and directly funded by taxpayers. Despite their organizational structure, in both countries, it is the mission of hospitals to deliver health care services in such a way that it meets the needs of society (e.g. high-quality and efficient hospital care that is available for all citizens). In line with Rainey ( Citation 2009 ), we therefore use the additional criterion of public value creation to include organizations that deliver public services but are not always state-owned or entirely funded by taxpayers. The above example shows that such organizations could even be non-profit or private organizations as it is their mission that makes them different from profit-seeking organizations (Knies and Leisink Citation 2018 ).

Search strategy

To ensure high-quality research, we restricted our search to HRM and public sector domain articles that have appeared in pre-eminent, international journals. This decision meant that we had to exclude valuable work published in books, reports, unpublished papers and dissertations. Following a similar approach of focusing on target-journals as used by Wright and Boswell ( Citation 2002 ) and Boselie, Dietz, and Boon ( Citation 2005 ), we focused on eight journals with which readers of Public Management Review were likely to be familiar. First, Human Resource Management (HRM), Human Resource Management Journal (HRMJ) and the International Journal of Human Resource Management (IJHRM). HRM, HRMJ and the IJHRM represent three mainstream HRM journals that are representative for the field. Second, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory (JPART), Public Administration (PA), Public Administration Review (PAR) and Public Management Review (PMR). JPART, PA, PAR and PMR represent the field of PA and PMThird, Review of Public Personnel Administration (RoPPA) can be considered a PA and PM journal with a very specific focus on HRM that needs to be included in the analysis given the journal’s focus on public sector employees. The eight journals are all listed in the ABS (the Association of Business Schools) 2015 journal list. All journals have high impact scores above 2.00 according to the Web of Science in 2017. Based on the ABS 2015 journal ranking and the Web of Science 2017 journal impact factors, all eight journals represent high quality and high impact research.

Given the broad range of public sector specific journals, for example related to subsectors such as healthcare (e.g. Health Care Management Review ) and education (e.g. Teaching and Teacher Education ) we only include general HRM, PM and PA journals. Our deliberate choice for HRM versus PM/PA journals provides a unique insight in the different contrasting disciplines with, on the one, the more managerial and psychological HRM discipline and, on the other hand, the more contextual PM and PA discipline(s). Both sides of the same coin (with coin defined as HRM research in public domains) each have their own communities, audiences and journals. Our analysis provides opportunities to study these research communities and the degree of cross-fertilization (RQ 2).

Selection criteria

Table 1. details of studies included in the review, criteria for analysis.

Research design;

Continents/regions;

Organization type and public subsector;

Type of respondents;

Applied theory/model;

HRM theme and main findings on the theme.

In this section, we first present the results regarding the research characteristics of the 77 articles, followed by the results on theories/models and HRM themes.

Research characteristics

Type of empirical study.

As can be seen from Table 1 , 68 per cent of the journal articles (N = 52) were based on quantitative data, mostly survey data. 23 per cent of the articles (N = 18) were built on qualitative data, mostly interview data. Srinivasan and Chandwani ( Citation 2014 ), for example, used interviews with top managers to study the HR challenges arising from privatization and corporatization of Indian healthcare facilities, and the new emerging business models being used in healthcare delivery. 9 per cent of the articles applied mixed methods combining quantitative and qualitative data (N = 7). The study by Kooij et al. ( Citation 2014 ) represents mixed method research using multiple sources such as interviews, focus groups, policy documents and surveys on managing ageing workers in a Dutch Ministry. Overall, there was a wide range of research methods applied in our article sample. Although rare, we also observed the application of alternative research methods such as archival data analysis (Melton and Meier Citation 2016 ), action research (Pichault Citation 2007 ), focus groups (Butterfield, Edwards, and Woodall Citation 2004 ) and observations (Redman et al. Citation 2000 ). When looking at the prevalence of the various research methods over the eight journals, we observed that JPART, PA and PAR presented mainly quantitative studies, while HRMJ, the IJHRM and RoPPA, presented varied methods.

The 68 per cent quantitative research papers is in line with the further quantification of the fields of HRM, PA and PM. The latter is also reflected in the rise of behavioural PA (Grimmelikhuijsen et al. Citation 2017 ) and more attention for lab experiments that is strongly related with the further psychologization of applied sciences (Godard Citation 2014 ). Finally, it is important to note that, with the exception of two recent studies (Melton and Meier Citation 2016 ; Kilroy et al. Citation 2017 ), all studies were cross-sectional in nature.

The majority of the articles came from Europe (N = 33) with the following leading countries: the UK (N = 16), the Netherlands (N = 6) and Belgium (N = 5). 20 articles came from North-America with the USA taking account for 17 studies and Canada 3. Asia (N = 12) was represented by a wide range of studies from various countries such as China, India, Japan, Jordan, Korea, Malesia, Oman and Vietnam. Africa was represented by 6 studies and Oceania also by 6, the latter all based on Australian data.

Public subsectors

The data in 77 articles were based on different organization types with healthcare organizations (N = 20), local government (N = 18), central government (N = 13), education (N = 8) and provinces/state government (N = 8) as the most popular organizations for empirical data analysis on HRM in the public sector. Healthcare organizations such as hospitals and nursing homes have already attracted a lot of HRM research attention given the major reforms and employee related challenges (for example ageing population and ageing healthcare workers). The study by West et al. ( Citation 2002 ) on HRM and mortality rates in hospitals is an example of this type of healthcare research. Another example is the study by Mostafa ( Citation 2016 ) on high-performance HR practices, work stress and quit intentions in the public health sector.

Type of respondents

Employees were by far the most popular data sources in the 77 articles (N = 30 studies that used a single data source of employees). In the HR process model by Wright and Nishii ( Citation 2013 ) a distinction is made between intended HR practices (policies and strategy; input from executive directors, HR directors and top managers), actual HR practices (implementation; input from frontline managers) and perceived HR practices (perception; input from employees). We counted only a limited number of articles that included data from managers (line managers, middle managers and superintendents) that relate to actual HR practices in the model presented above. Overall, there was a lot of attention for HRM perceptions of employees (perceived) and to some extent HRM policies (intentions) from top management and the HR professionals. One remarkable and positive finding is the relatively large number of multiple source data articles (N = 27), for example using data from top management in combination with employees.

Theories and models

Table 2. theories and models.

The first category that we distinguish includes typical HRM theories such as system strength, HR attribution theory, human capital theory, social capital theory and the resource-based view. In 50 articles, HRM theories were the foundation of the research. The second category represents OB theories. These are psychological theories often aimed at employee attitudes and behaviours in organizations. 39 articles in our review used OB theories such as social identity theory, social exchange theory, motivation theory and leadership theory. As can be seen in Table 2 , the HRM theories (category 1) and OB theories (category 2) were popular in both the PM/PA and HRM journals in our review. OB theories were almost equally used in HRM and PM/PA journal articles. HRM theories were used slightly more in HRM journal articles but a significant amount of 54 per cent of the PM/PA journal articles in our selection used HRM theories as well. For instance, Gould-Williams ( Citation 2004 ) in Public Administration used a framework of high-commitment HRM to examine the impact of HR practices on employee attitudes and behaviours in local government organizations. Apparently, the HRM and OB theories have found their way to research on HRM in public management and public administration journals. The third category of theories refers to PA. 16 articles in this review applied PA theories or models such as public service motivation (PSM) theory, neo-institutional theory in a political context, rational choice theory and public values theory. Most of the articles that used this category can be found in the PA/PM journals (N = 11) and only 5 HRM journal articles used PA/PM theories. An example is the study by Morris and Farrell ( Citation 2007 ) in IJHRM that used an NPM framework to examine how HRM has changed in various public sector organizations in local government, healthcare, police, broadcasting and transport. Although the field of PA and PM has constructed and provided a wide range of theories, it appears that only a limited number of articles in our review applied these theories. The HRM and OB theories were dominant. Moreover, our findings in Table 2 seem to indicate that PA/PM theories have not quite found their way to HRM journals. The fourth category represents general theories and models such as socio-technical systems theory and transaction cost theory. 13 articles in our review made use of general theories, quite evenly distributed over PA/PM and HRM journal articles. The fifth category represents articles without any clear theory or model. We identified 5 articles that fitted this category.

Overall, most articles applied multiple theories across the categories. Here, usual combinations were, on the one, social-exchange theory or person-environment fit theory (OB) with, on the other hand, the resource-based view or SHRM models such as the HPWS framework (HRM). Although less frequent, we also detected HRM and PA/PM theory combinations in 7 articles. Usual combinations were the NPM framework, PSM theory or institutional theory (PM/PA) with SHRM models or the AMO model (HRM), Sporadically, articles combined OB, HRM and PM/PA theories (e.g. Gould-Williams et al. Citation 2014 ; Steijn Citation 2004 ).

The 77 articles reflect a wide range of results on HRM themes ranging from performance appraisal to diversity management in public sector contexts. We have classified the articles into two major HRM themes, to provide a meaningful overview of the research findings of the 77 articles without going into too much detail per study.

Theme 1: added value of HRM

The first HRM theme we distinguish is ‘the added value’ of HRM, which represents research in line with the ongoing HRM and performance debate that started in the mid-90s (Guest Citation 2017 ) and that focuses on HRM outcomes. We found 56 articles on this theme (see Table 1 ). A further analysis of this theme reveals that most studies focused on the relationships between ‘perceived HRM’ and HRM outcomes (N = 23). HRM outcomes include employee attitudes, behaviour and well-being indicators and the following list shows a high diversity of outcomes that were used in our sample: job and work satisfaction, trust, engagement, emotional exhaustion, organizational and affective commitment, motivation, intention to stay, stress, employee and job performance, absence due to illness, employee turnover, discretionary effort and organizational citizenship behaviour, burnout, fairness, job quality improvement, commitment to change and work-life balance. Of these variables, job satisfaction, commitment and health related outcomes such as stress, burnout and exhaustion were the most frequently used. Next, we could only identify 8 articles that focused on a subjective or objective form of organizational performance (instead of individual level performance), such as client satisfaction with the work (Kim Citation 2010 ) or patient mortality rates (West et al. Citation 2002 ).

Another 8 articles in the added value theme focussed on the effects of HR mini-bundles. A mini-bundle refers to a limited number of HR practices that are aligned to each other and that are targeted towards a specific aim such as employee development (Guest, Conway, and Dewe Citation 2004 ). We found mini-bundles aimed at for example diversity management (Ashikali and Groeneveld Citation 2015 ), performance management (Decramer, Smolders, and Vanderstraeten Citation 2013 ) and talent management (Van Den Brink, Fruytier, and Thunnissen Citation 2013 ). Van Waeyenberg et al. ( Citation 2016 ), for example, show that a performance management system that is carried out consistently and that is linked to strategic goals, reduces employees’ intentions to leave. These findings are in line with the HRM system approach in which it is assumed that horizontal and vertical alignment of HR practices lead to beneficial outcomes.

Finally, we analysed the (empirical) support for the added value of HRM in the 56 studies and observe that the far majority of these articles present a positive relationship between a certain type of HRM and the type of outcome used in the study.

Theme 2: (re)shaping of HRM

The second theme that we identified is labelled ‘(re)shaping of HRM’. This theme focusses on the impact of contextual factors on HRM. 21 articles fitted this theme and most articles aimed at understanding the content of HRM and the ways in which HRM is (re)shaped and implemented in governmental and public service organizations (see Table 1 ). Many authors conclude that institutional pressures have a large impact. Among the large scale of context factors that we witnessed in our data, there were several commonalities. First, several authors found that a country’s policy agenda and political opinions are key drivers for HRM reforms. For instance, Morris and Farrell ( Citation 2007 ) found that cost-pressure led to downsized and delayered public organizations in the UK, implying more demanding jobs for public managers in which they had less job security and opportunities for a hierarchical career. Thompson ( Citation 2017 ) concludes that ‘HRM developments can be best understood in the context of evolving societal values’ (22) and found amongst others that political neutrality, accountability and efficiency are important political values impacting HRM developments in US governmental organizations. Related, public pressure or opinion was used by several authors to explain the higher prevalence of work-life balance support opportunities (Den Dulk and Groeneveld Citation 2013 ) and employee involvement (Lonti and Verma Citation 2003 ) in public organizations when compared to the private sector. Next, rules and regulations on fair and equal treatment of public servants were found to have a significant impact on HRM. Boon and Verhoest ( Citation 2018 ) for example show that regulative pressures determine recruitment practices in Belgium’s civil service. Finally, the administration systems and traditions of a country were found to play a key role. The content of HRM and the organization of HR decisions are significantly rooted in the administration tradition, as Meyer and Hammerschmid ( Citation 2010 ) for instance showed in a comparative study of HRM in Europe. Amongst others, they found that the Anglo-Saxon and, to a lesser degree Scandinavian, traditions with more room for contractualism, marketization, decentralization and managerialism, explain the higher level of HR decentralization when compared to continental Europe (with a Rechtsstaat tradition).

Our literature review shows an increased attention for HRM in public sector research in line with Osborne ( Citation 2017 ). In the paragraphs below, we further elaborate on this finding that is related to our central question to review and summarize research on HRM in public sector contexts. In general, in this review we observe a quantification and psychologization of research on HRM in the public sector domain. This is reflected in the predominance of quantitative research, especially in PA/PM journals, and the heavy focus on individual-level employee attitudes and behaviours such as satisfaction. The HRM literature has recently been criticized for a further psychologization of the field (Godard Citation 2014 ), and our findings indicate that this is not a private-sector trend, but that it also applies to HRM research in the public sector. Most of the studies we analysed stem from Western country data (USA, Australia and Europe), although there is a wider range of studies from other continents including Africa and Asia. The most popular sectors were healthcare, government (local and central) and education. The popularity of research in the healthcare sector can be explained by the multiple organizational and employee challenges that healthcare organizations worldwide face. These challenges are related to for example issues of an ageing patient and workforce population, governmental cuts, organizational reforms and reorganizations.

Next, our thematical analysis of the 77 articles indicates the popularity of the ‘added value of HRM’ theme, directly related to the ongoing HRM and performance debate (Guest Citation 2017 ). The popularity of this theme can be explained by the strong performance orientation in the public sector in the last two decades (Osborne Citation 2017 ). In combination with the trend of a further psychologization of the field, it is not surprising that we found most studies to examine the impact of HRM on individual-level performance indicators. These indicators are often derived from HRM research in private organizations and cover a wide array of different variables, meaning that a rich, yet fragmented picture on the individual-level outcomes of HRM in public organizations is provided. Only a small group of papers included organizational performance indicators, meaning that definitive conclusions on how HRM impacts public sector performance cannot be drawn.

Although less prevalent than the first theme, the research findings in the second theme on (re)shaping HRM (referring to organizational reforms that are often related to governmental cuts, paradigm shifts in strategic decision making and austerity) indicate that institutional pressures and constraints that are characteristic of the public sector, directly impact HRM. Notably, cost-pressures, public opinion and rules/regulations are found to impact the form, content and impact of HRM in public organizations. The prevalence of the second theme in our review can be explained partly because of organizational challenges that have to do with work (re)design in a complex and dynamic environment and partly because of inevitable reorganizations in many public sector organizations because of governmental cuts and NPM initiatives. Indeed, several studies in our review show that a country’s political agenda has a significant impact on HRM in public organizations. Gooderham, Mayrhofer, and Brewster ( Citation 2018 ), for example, emphasize the differences between countries in comparative HRM research on the basis of significant institutional differences between countries using Cranet data in the decade 2007–2017. The International HRM or comparative HRM research presented by Gooderham, Mayrhofer, and Brewster ( Citation 2018 ) also provides lessons on a country’s political agenda and its impact on the shaping of HRM in public sector organizations.

A second question of our review was to study the degree of cross-fertilization between the disciplines of HRM and PA/PM. We conclude that true cross-pollination has only marginally been established. We found that HRM and OB theories inform the field of PA/PM, but the other way around was far less prevalent: PA/PM theories were mainly applied in the PA/PM journals and only marginally in HRM journals. We did find a small group of studies that used both HRM/OB and PA/PM theories indicating that cross-fertilization is not completely lacking.

Future research agenda

What are the lessons that can be learned from this review? The first lesson is that the added value of HRM for public sector performance is largely unknown and needs to be explored empirically. The added value of HRM is now a claim that is mainly based on findings from private sector research. Moreover, when the subject is studied in the public setting, the focus is mostly on individual worker performance using cross-sectional data. Researchers can learn from private sector research that use advanced research designs. Van der Voorde, Paauwe, and Van Veldhoven ( Citation 2010 ), for example, present an empirical study on HRM and performance in financial services using longitudinal data from individual employees and 171 branches of the company. Their analysis is multi-level using subjective employee survey and objective branch performance data. Another example of is the study by Tregaskis et al. ( Citation 2013 ), who present longitudinal data (both subjective and objective) based on a UK based heavy engineering plant of a multinational. The second lesson is related to the further possibilities of cross-fertilization between HRM, PM and PA research. PM and PA research can learn from the rigour in HRM and performance research of more than two decades of private sector research (see Guest Citation 2017 ). HRM research in its turn can learn from PA and PM research on contextual mechanisms and contextualized theories given the complexity of the internal and external contexts of public sector organizations. Such a cross-pollination means that the general HRM theories and methods will be refined and contextualized for the public sector, also leading to an evidence-based insight in the added value of HRM for public sector performance. Based on the most frequently studied PA/PM theories in our review, we provide two examples. First, PSM theory could be integrated in the (general) AMO model by viewing the M for motivation not only as general intrinsic motivation but also as public service specific motivation that could be stimulated by different types of HR practices and for instance not performance-related pay (Vandenabeele Citation 2007 ; Vermeeren Citation 2017 ). This way, oversimplification and imitation of best practices can be avoided in theory and practice. Second, institutional theory can be used to better understand the composition of HR systems and their impact on employees’ attitudes and behaviours. For instance, coercive mechanisms are found to impact HR practices’ prevalence in the public sector (Den Dulk and Groeneveld Citation 2013 ; Lonti and Verma Citation 2003 ). Moreover, coercive mechanisms such as rules and regulations could also be perceived as red tape by employees and negatively impact their motivation and well-being.

On the basis of our review, future research on HRM in the public sector domain could take into account the following methodological implications. First, a further theorization based on sector specificity requires the inclusion of sector-specific characteristics such as professionals, in particular medical specialists in hospitals, judges in courts, teachers in schools, police officers, fire fighters and civil servants. From a professional perspective this also implies specific characteristics and challenges such as hybrid managers in health care organizations, who are basically medical specialists with a management responsibility (Sartirana, Currie, and Noordegraaf Citation 2018 ). The combination of tasks and responsibilities (professional norms and management tasks) can be unique with significant theoretical and methodological implications for HRM research in public sector areas. Professionals as part of context has not been a subject that we encountered extensively in our literature study.

Second, it is important to apply longitudinal instead of cross-sectional research designs and start using methods such as experiments to test for causal effects over time (see for example Molineux Citation 2013 ) and to provide a solid empirical basis for claims on the added value of HRM for public sector performance. In addition, it is relevant to apply mixed methods and making use of multi-actor data (not just input from employees, but top management and line managers as well) to acknowledge the multidimensionality of public sector performance taking a multi-actor perspective (cf. Andersen, Boesen, and Pedersen Citation 2016 ) and to get a better understanding of the whole value chain from intended, actual to perceived HRM practices in line with the HR process model by Wright and Nishii ( Citation 2013 ). The HRM and performance study by Van der Voorde, Paauwe, and Van Veldhoven ( Citation 2010 ) is a good example of private sector research using advanced methods and techniques that have not been picked up in public sector research probably partly because of lacking access to data and partly because of challenges in defining public sector performance in terms of objective data (see also Knies et al. Citation 2018 ; Vermeeren, Kuipers, and Steijn Citation 2014 ).

Third, in addition to the comments raised above it is relevant to define and measure organizational outcomes and performance in contrast to the dominance of HRM outcomes (for example job satisfaction and employee commitment) used in the analyses, because good performance is more than employee perceptions and employee well-being. In line with the multidimensional performance construct – employee well-being, societal well-being and organizational effectiveness – we make a plea for widening performance in future research (Beer, Boselie, and Brewster Citation 2015 ). This also implies a further contextualizing of empirical research using multi-stakeholder approaches (Beer, Boselie, and Brewster Citation 2015 ) and PA/PM theories that are known for their contextuality. In our opinion contextualizing (and widening) performance in the public sector domains includes two important notions. First, the acknowledgement that there are very specific outcomes such as patient safety and quality in hospitals and productivity in schools. Mortality rates can be relevant in a health care context while totally irrelevant in another public sector context. Second, some outcomes are more important than others given sector specific challenges that can be temporarily. Employee retention, for example, appears to be highly relevant in health care organizations given challenges such as labour market shortages, a poor reputation of health work and additional urban challenges that are the direct result of extremely high housing prices (for example in the London, Paris and Amsterdam regions). The combination of situational factors (shortages, reputation and urban factors) can lead to a necessary prioritizing of certain performance indicators.

Fourth, researchers could include a broader range of public organizations beyond the popular subsectors healthcare, government and education. Specifically, research is needed within the police, military services, social services, the energy sector and the transport sector given the lack of empirical research in these areas that are also subject to governmental cuts, major reforms and organizational change. International governmental organizations (IGOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are also left out of mainstream HRM research. Except for Brewster and Cerdin ( Citation 2018 ) there is little or no HRM research on these types of organizations.

Fifth, future research could pay explicit attention for effective implementation and line management enactment of HRM policies and practices with an important role for leadership (Cho and Lee Citation 2012 ) and management (Knies and Leisink Citation 2018 ). The role of line managers in the shaping of HRM in public sector organizations is underdeveloped in prior research (Bauwens, Audenaert, and Decramer Citation 2018 ; Krause and Van Thiel Citation 2019 ), although this has not been a specific subject of the analysis in our review instead it is mainly based on additional insights from the references mentioned here. In addition, the role and position of HRM professionals in public sector contexts as innovators, designers, facilitators and shapers of HRM in public sector areas is both interesting and relevant. Larsen and Brewster ( Citation 2003 ) were among the first to acknowledge the importance of line managers in the shaping of HRM. This is now known as devolution theory approach. Their ideas were picked up by Purcell and Hutchinson ( Citation 2007 ) and Wright and Nishii ( Citation 2008 Cornell paper) focused on private sector HRM and performance research. The devolution approach and the role of line managers in the shaping of HRM is echoed in public sector research a couple of years later, for example by Knies and Leisink ( Citation 2018 ). Similar to the observation that private sector HRM research has applied more advanced techniques, we observe that line management enactment attention was picked up earlier in private sector HRM research than in public sector HRM studies. However, we need to be careful in using insights from HRM research in private sectors and avoid mere imitation but instead look for meaningful applications that considers the institutional context. Recent work by Vermeeren, Kuipers, and Steijn ( Citation 2014 ) could help to advance this proposed direction.

Stop right there, before we go any further. The observation of a further quantification and psychologization of research on HRM in public sector contexts implies more ‘rigor’ at the expense of ‘relevance’. Relevance refers to the meaning and possible implications of certain findings to organizations in practice. More rigour at the expense of relevance implies a risk of overestimating the extent to which individual public sector workers can be steered towards performance. In an ideal situation, research on HRM in public sector organizations reflects both rigour (theory and methods) and relevance (context and impact).

Limitations

This study has several limitations. First, the data analysis is limited to specific sources excluding books, dissertations, conference papers and research reports. The focus on a selection of peer-reviewed journals does, however, provide some assurance regarding the quality of the research. Second, we did not provide an in-depth analysis of every individual empirical journal article beyond the results of the added value articles. The selected articles in this study form a rich source for further analysis on the meaning and impact of HRM in public sector domains. Third, research on HRM departments, HR roles and HR competences was not included. The role and position of HRM professionals in public sector organizations are an interesting and relevant topic for further research. Finally, some of the findings reflect the attention paid to it in academic research without knowing if it is also popular or relevant in practice.

Concluding remarks

Human resource management (HRM) is gaining popularity in public management research. The overview in this paper provides some yardsticks and suggestions for new research areas and guidelines for setting up new research. The contribution of this study is threefold. First, the overview highlights what we already know about HRM in public sector domains based on empirical journal articles. Second, the study reveals cross-fertilization in some areas and the lack of cross-fertilization in other areas. Finally, the overview provides a future research agenda that could lead to more rigour in theories, research designs, methods and analyses.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Paul boselie.

Paul Boselie (PhD) is a Professor of Public Administration and Organization Science at the Utrecht University School of Governance (USG, Utrecht University). His research focuses on strategic HRM and public service performance, employer engagement of vulnerable workers and effective management implementation in public sector organizations. He is the Head of Department of USG and author of the popular textbook strategic HRM – a balanced approach (2010 and 2014). Paul has published more than hundred journal articles, books and book chapters in the area of HRM, performance management, talent management, private equity and employer engagement. He is a former editor of Personnel Review and the International Journal of HRM.

Jasmijn Van Harten

Jasmijn van Harten (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in Human Resource Management at the Utrecht University School of Governance (USG, Utrecht University). She is also the Chairperson of the Faculty Council of the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance.

In her research she examines the sustainable employability of employees. Other research interests include: leadership in organizations, the relationships between employee well-being and productivity, and contributions of HRM to individual and organizational performance.

Monique Veld

Monique Veld (PhD) is an Assistant Professor in Human Resources Studies at the Utrecht University School of Governance (USG, Utrecht University). Her research is concerned with strategic human resource management (in health care), strategic climate, employee well-being and employability.

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A Study of the Impact of Strategic Human Resource Management on Organizational Resilience

Jingjing yu.

1 Business School, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China

Lingling Yuan

Guosheng han.

2 School of Economics and Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai 264200, China

3 School of Public Health and Management, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai 264003, China

Organizational resilience is a key capability for modern firms to survive and thrive in the VUCA environment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the mechanism of strategic human resource management on organizational resilience and the mediating and moderating roles of self-efficacy and self-management, respectively, in the relationship between the two. A total of 379 valid questionnaires were obtained from employees of Chinese companies in August 2022, and the data were analyzed using SPSS 22.0 and Amos. The results showed that strategic HRM can effectively contribute to organizational resilience; self-efficacy plays a mediating role in the relationship between strategic HRM and organizational resilience; self-management can effectively contribute to the impact of self-efficacy on organizational resilience; and self-management can hinder the ability of strategic HRM to contribute to organizational resilience. This paper breaks with the previous literature that studied organizational resilience from a single perspective by studying organizational resilience from the perspective of strategic human resource management (SHRM) and verifies that SHRM can be a possible path for Chinese firms to improve organizational resilience.

1. Introduction

In recent years, unexpected events such as natural disasters, financial crises, industrial accidents, trade embargoes, and even terrorist attacks have occurred frequently, and sudden “black swans” and “gray rhinoceroses” have led to a business environment that has become more full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) [ 1 , 2 ]. The still-unresolved novel coronavirus epidemic has caused more than 40% of Chinese companies to lose money or suffer severe losses, and employees to lose their jobs or take pay cuts [ 3 ], which has a major negative impact on China’s social and economic development. It also revealed that many Chinese companies are “rigid” but “not resilient”. Organizational resilience is the core capability of today’s enterprises to cope with crises in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) market environment. It helps companies to remain sensitive and adaptable to the external environment and to recover and bounce back quickly from the challenging impact of adverse events. Additionally, in the process of reflection and improvement, it goes against the trend to become the key to gain core competitiveness and even steady progress [ 4 , 5 , 6 ]. Thus, how to enhance organizational resilience in a dynamically changing business environment has become a hot topic for entrepreneurs and scholars to address [ 7 ].

A review of the literature related to organizational resilience at home and abroad reveals that the current research on organizational resilience in China is still in its infancy. The research is mainly concerned with the elaboration of the concept and principles of organizational resilience, and the scarce literature on the antecedents of organizational resilience are studied from one aspect, such as management methods, human capital, social capital, business environment, organizational system, etc. [ 8 ]. Organizational resilience is a reflection of an enterprise’s comprehensive ability to cope with an uncertain environment, and the study of a single factor cannot comprehensively explain the formation of the mechanism of resilience in an enterprise and cannot well integrate the impact of the interaction of various factors on organizational resilience, which lacks operability in enterprise practice and cannot effectively help enterprises to improve organizational resilience [ 9 ]. At present, there is an urgent need to study the formation mechanism of organizational resilience from a holistic perspective considering the comprehensive effect of each antecedent factor and provide a theoretical basis for Chinese enterprises to improve organizational resilience. Strategic human resource management is a system, process, or measure consisting of a series of temporal activities taken in order to fit with the organization’s strategy and long-term development goals and thus maintain competitive advantage. Lengnick-Hall [ 10 ] believes that organizational resilience works through the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other attributes of people within an organization, and that strategic human resource management can be achieved by changing management styles, processes, practices, and HR policies, etc. to develop these qualities in employees to enhance organizational resilience.

In exploring the role of modeling the relationship between strategic human resource management and organizational resilience, this paper found the “key” of self-efficacy, drawing on the literature on emotional competence. All HR policies and plans in an organization require employees to take specific actions to achieve the desired goals. Thus, self-efficacy, an essential emotional competency on the part of employees, is critical to the effectiveness of plan implementation. Early warning capability, flexibility during a crisis, and learning and growth capability following a crisis are three core competencies included in organizational resilience [ 11 ]. Self-efficacy refers to a strong belief in one’s own ability to comply with a corporate strategy, which enables employees to relieve psychological pressure in time, stabilize the psychological reactions of personnel to adversity, actively obtain environmental resources and external support to optimize human resource allocation, and integrate human resource management practices with corporate strategy organically by focusing on internal personnel selection and appointment, performance evaluation and assessment, and external active recruitment; this approach allows organizations to shape a corporate culture of overcoming difficulties, create dynamic and flexible adaptation mechanisms, construct internal knowledge structures, and actively seek foreign environmental resources, thereby enhancing corporate resilience capabilities by providing solutions to crises and addressing corporate structural problems [ 12 ]. Thus, self-efficacy is an essential perspective for the study of organizational resilience that can explain why strategic HRM are able to influence organizational resilience capabilities; therefore, this study intends to discuss the relationship between strategic HRM and organizational resilience as mediated by self-efficacy.

In addition, we cannot ignore the key issue that strategic HRM must be implemented and accomplished through corporate employees no matter what policies are formulated, and corporate organizational resilience capabilities must also function through corporate employees as mediators. Thus, studying the mechanism of strategic HRM’s effect on organizational resilience is inevitably influenced by employees’ work style. As a result of the rapid development of the economy and excellent material abundance of China, employees’ sense of autonomy and their self-working ability are becoming increasingly prominent. According to the traditional HRM model, it is difficult for leaders to supervise and constrain employees. It is more practical to study the effects of strategic HRM with respect to enhancing organizational adaptability and flexibility to the environment from the perspective of employees’ sense of autonomous work. Therefore, this paper uses self-management as a moderating variable to determine whether self-management plays a moderating role in the relationship between strategic HRM and organizational resilience.

According to a report by Fortune magazine, the average life expectancy of small enterprises in China is 2.5 years, and the average life expectancy of large enterprises is 7-8 years, which is far behind those of European and American countries. From the side, it shows that Chinese enterprises lack the ability of resilience to cope with the crisis. Especially under the impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic, many enterprises have experienced serious losses or even bankruptcy, resulting in employee pay cuts and unemployment, adding a heavy burden to China’s social stability and economic development. In summary, this paper takes conservation of resources theory and self-cognitive theory as the theoretical basis and empirically investigates the intrinsic mechanism of strategic human resource management on organizational resilience. It provides references for Chinese companies to enhance organizational resilience.

The main contributions of this study include two main aspects. On the one hand, this study can enrich the literature related to the study of strategic human resource management and organizational resilience; on the other hand, the research results of this paper can guide the managers of Chinese enterprises to formulate strategic human resource planning, coordinate all resources of human, financial and material resources, optimize enterprise processes, improve enterprise management policies, increase enterprise innovation, etc., so as to enhance organizational resilience.

2. Literature Review and Research Hypothesis

2.1. strategic human resource management and organizational resilience.

Strategic HRM was developed to facilitate the strategic management of organizations, and Wright and McMahan [ 13 ] give a more representative definition of this concept. They consider strategic HRM to represent an organization’s plans for human resource deployment and behavioral norms with the aim of achieving the organization’s goals. This definition emphasizes both the vertical and horizontal fit of strategic HRM: vertically, strategic HRM refers to the match between and mutual adaptation of HRM practices and the organization’s strategic management process, whereas horizontally, strategic HRM emphasizes the coherence among various HRM practices based on the planned action model. The vertical and horizontal fit of strategic HRM ensures that HRM is fully integrated into strategic planning to guarantee that HR policies and practices are generally accepted and widely used by managers and employees, such that companies can obtain inimitable or alternative competitive advantages by leveraging their HR strengths [ 9 , 14 ]. According to conservation of resources theory, strategic HRM, as a strategic organizational resource, represents an organic combination the talent resource elements in an organization as well as the allocation of resources among members of the organization; thus, strategic HRM emphasizes the flexible adjustment of staffing policies and practices, training and development programs, performance standards, selection criteria, and rewards and punishments in response to changes in external contexts, thus providing strategic tools to promote resource integration, crisis prevention and control, and learning and innovation in organizations [ 15 ].

The concept of resilience originated in the fields of physics, ecology, and environmental science, and Meyer [ 16 ] first introduced this concept into the field of management, thereby opening up a new chapter in the study of organizational resilience, which was quickly and widely studied in the fields of crisis management, disaster management, and high-reliability organizations. Previous research on organizational resilience has been focused on two main research perspectives: the rebound perspective and the rebound + overtake perspective [ 10 ]. The rebound perspective views organizational resilience simply as the ability of the organization to recover from an accident, stress, or crisis to return its original state, i.e., the ability of an organization to take countermeasures to return to its precrisis level of performance. The rebound + overtake perspective views organizational resilience not merely as the organization’s ability to respond to challenges and changes to return to its original state but also as the organization’s ability to develop new capabilities or create new opportunities for the organization to continue to thrive and grow [ 17 ]. This paper considers organizational resilience to be a dynamic and flexible organizational capacity that allows organizations to survive, adapt, recover, and even return to prosperity in an adverse environment. Lengnick [ 18 ] claimed that organizational resilience capacity is rooted in the psychology and behavior of individual employees. Employees’ knowledge, skills, and strengths regarding their values, mindsets, levels of stress tolerance, and innovation abilities are essential sources of organizational resilience [ 18 , 19 ]. These employee qualities and capabilities are closely related to the individual’s ability to adapt to dynamic environments and to develop creative solutions to resolve crises. Employee resilience is an important source of and foundation for organizational resilience; thus, organizations can enhance their organizational resilience capabilities by developing employee resilience.

In this paper, we argue that strategic HRM can influence individual resilience and thus enhance organizational resilience via the development of HRM policies and practices that match both the external environment and organizational goals [ 20 ]. Specifically, the effects of HRM policies and practices on organizational resilience can be elaborated in terms of three aspects of human resources: human capital, social capital, and psychological capital [ 15 ].

First, human capital primarily includes the physical quality and physical health of employees on the one hand and the knowledge, skills, and experience possessed by employees on the other hand. In a crisis, members of an organization can make timely judgments and actions based on the knowledge, skills, and experience they possess to change the organization’s passive situation as much as possible, thus influencing its resilience [ 19 ]. The exchange of knowledge and experience among organizational members and their interactions can promote the formation of the collective cognition of the organization. This collective cognitive ability encourages organizational members to cooperate tacitly, trust each other, and unite in the face of adversity, thus developing the unique organizational ability of the enterprise to cope with crises and affecting the organizational resilience ability [ 21 ].

Second, social capital is a potential resource possessed by the organization within the social network system, which is essentially an environmental factor that is mainly divided into internal environmental factors (e.g., colleague relationships, learning atmosphere, team spirit) and external environmental factors (e.g., partnership with suppliers or distributors, flexible external information system) [ 22 ]. Social capital can increase the levels of coordination and cooperation that employees exhibit in their work, which in turn increase the motivation and efficiency of the organization with respect to coping with a crisis. Moreover, social capital can be used to obtain resources and information from the external environment that are critical for crisis resolution and the reallocation of resources both inside and outside the organization, thus enhancing organizational resilience and mitigating the negative impacts of the crisis for the organization.

Finally, employees with high psychological capital can withstand the tremendous pressure entailed by a crisis and face challenges and changes with a positive and confident attitude, create a good organizational climate, and apply their knowledge and skills based on the local conditions to create opportunities for the organization to survive and grow in the face of adversity, which has a significant impact on the organization’s ability to enhance its resilience and obtain competitive advantage [ 23 ]. In addition, previous studies have demonstrated that strategic HRM that is well matched with the organizational environment, strategic planning, and corporate culture is closely related to organizational resilience. For example, Shafer et al. [ 23 ] found that when organizational HR practices are aligned with organizational values, organizations can promote organizational agility through staffing policies, personnel training, career development programs, and performance standards, thereby enhancing organizational resilience. Okuwa [ 24 ] found positive relationships among training, human resource development, and organizational resilience. Mienipre [ 25 ] found that talent management was significantly correlated with organizational risk monitoring and crisis response capacity. In summary, the following hypothesis is proposed.

Strategic human resource management has a positive effect on organizational resilience.

2.2. The Mediating Role of Self-Efficacy

The concept of self-efficacy was introduced by Bandura [ 26 ], an American psychologist who believed that self-efficacy represents an individual’s subjective evaluation and perception of his or her abilities, which in turn influences the individual’s behavioral choices, beliefs regarding success, and level of effort, and can to some extent determine the individual’s ability to fulfill the requirements of a particular job; that is, self-efficacy is dynamic and can change due to different levels of access to external resources, the acquisition of new knowledge and skills, or an increase in experience. According to previous studies, the factors affecting self-efficacy mainly include the following. (1) Individuals’ ability levels are evaluated prior to performing certain activities; individuals evaluate their own ability based on their past successes or failures, such that individuals who exhibit a strong sense of self-efficacy do not deny their ability due to occasional failures but rather search for the causes of environmental factors, strategies, and experiences and adjust their future actions accordingly. (2) Individuals who observe the behavior of others and encounter people with similar abilities who have achieved success can greatly enhance their own self-efficacy and increase their firm belief in achieving success. (3) Individuals receive evaluations, encouragement, and self-motivation from others. Evaluations or encouragement based on the facts of the situation can increase the individual’s belief in his or her ability to accomplish the goal. (4) The individual’s own emotional and physiological state also affects self-efficacy, such as the ability to remain calm under tremendous pressure, avoid exhibiting arrogance, analyze the pros and cons of the actual situation, and make the most appropriate decision, which can increase the individual’s ability to accomplish the goal as well as his or her sense of self-efficacy [ 26 ].

Self-efficacy is an important component of human capabilities that can influence individuals’ perceptions, ways of thinking, motivation, and actions [ 27 ]; in addition, it varies with people’s knowledge and external environment [ 28 ]. Thus, organizations can improve employees’ self-efficacy by implementing human resource practices such as communication, training, sharing successful experiences, and providing opportunities for success. For example, organizations can increase employees’ relevant work experience by providing training and organizational learning [ 29 ]. When employees are trained in job-related practices, they are able to acquire relevant job knowledge and information that can enhance their self-efficacy to perform their jobs competently. Second, employees’ self-efficacy can be stimulated by sharing the successful experiences of colleagues with similar abilities to enhance their beliefs in their ability to overcome specific job difficulties and their efforts to do so, thus moderating the empowerment of employees and providing them with opportunities to grow and succeed to ensure that employees feel supported by the organization and trusted by their leaders; this approach increases employees’ sense of organizational belonging and self-efficacy, thus allowing the organization to take full advantage of employees’ knowledge and skills and to face challenges and cope with stress actively. Strategic human resource management refers to the alignment of organizational strategic planning with human resources, which is used to guide human resource practice activities and is frequently considered to be an essential factor influencing the cognitive, motivational, and affective processes of self-efficacy [ 30 ]. Organizations can ensure sound planning and develop action plans for future operations by engaging in HR activities such as training, sharing successful experiences, role models or motivation, and developing employees’ confidence in dealing with dynamic environmental challenges and complex work. In summary, the following hypothesis is proposed.

Strategic HRM has a positive effect on self-efficacy.

According to conservation of resources theory, self-efficacy, as an essential psychological resource, is closely related to employees’ self-beliefs and can motivate them to accept challenges and persevere in the task of accomplishing their work goals [ 31 ]. Thus, when facing complex tasks, on the one hand, self-efficacy can strengthen employees’ determination and confidence to complete tasks and allow them to unite their colleagues actively, integrate relevant resources and information, and courageously face difficulties and challenges [ 32 ]; on the other hand, self-efficacy can motivate employees to self-regulate in a timely manner, relieve tension and anxiety, and reallocate resources and set goals based on the specific situational conditions at hand to ensure that difficulties can be broken down into simple goals and achievable work objectives [ 33 , 34 , 35 ]. In addition, employees who exhibit a high sense of self-efficacy are skilled at using new methods and ideas to solve unconventional problems, thus enabling the organization to find alternative ways of surviving situations of adversity and contributing to the organization’s resilience [ 35 ]. In conclusion, self-efficacy enables employees to believe in their ability to work in situations of adversity, recover quickly from anxiety, and invest the necessary effort and creativity to accomplish challenging tasks. Therefore, the following hypotheses are proposed.

Self-efficacy has a positive effect on organizational resilience.

Self-efficacy plays a mediating role in the relationship between strategic human resource management and organizational resilience.

2.3. The Moderating Role of Self-Management

According to self-cognitive theory, individuals have certain values, beliefs, knowledge systems, and behavioral norms. Individuals form their unique control systems based on these internal resources and accordingly set goals, engage in self-assessment, and exhibit self-motivation as a means of guiding their work activities, i.e., self-management [ 36 ]. The awareness of the practice community that organizational control and supervision must be achieved by influencing the self-management system to achieve this goal, i.e., by harmonizing organizational control and individual motivational orientation, is increasing [ 37 ]. Self-management refers to the process by which employees set goals, take positive actions, and engage in a series of behaviors, including self-monitoring and evaluation as well as self-reward and punishment, to promote their own intrinsic self-worth based on their personal needs. Self-management results from the interaction of individual cognition, behavior, and the external environment. Bandura [ 38 ], in developing social cognitive theory, proposed that individuals exhibit self-rationality, that is, that the individual’s response to the external world is not mechanical and passive but rather represents a form of goal-oriented behavior following self-regulation of and self-reflection on their activities; in addition, the achievement of such a goal can allow the individual to obtain self-worth and meaning (such as monetary or spiritual rewards, social needs, or self-actualization). Bandura’s model of individual self-management [ 39 ] includes three components: self-observation, self-assessment, and self-response. The process of self-observation involves actively identifying the quality, quantity, and frequency of the performance accomplishment of other individuals and comparing those individuals with oneself to make an objective assessment of one’s own work ability; the process of self-assessment entails comparing one’s actual performance with the company’s performance standards, thereby assessing one’s own performance and developing strategies for improvement; and the process of self-reaction implies rewarding and punishing oneself according to the results of the assessment as well as reflecting on and improving oneself continuously.

According to conservation of resources theory, organizational resilience is an essential intangible resource that allows the organization to survive and develop in adverse situations, thus enabling organizations to make decisive decisions in dynamic situations, flexibly deploy their internal and external resources, and take appropriate actions to ensure that the organization is always able to adapt to the business environment and obtain competitive advantage [ 11 ]. In times of crisis, only if the organization is united, determined, and confident can it seize the fleeting moment, make decisive decisions, and act efficiently to take full advantage of its own resilience. A high level of self-management ability on the part of employees, with good self-cognitive ability and the ability to obtain and process environmental information to ensure that they can quickly judge the situation in times of crisis and work in an orderly manner based on the situation, is target management. Thus, a high level of self-management can increase employees’ sense of psychological security and self-efficacy in times of crisis, thereby enhancing the resilience of the organization. Specifically, on the one hand, the process of self-management is driven by employees’ intrinsic values, and the achievement of the organization’s goals is a testament to employees’ self-worth [ 40 ]. Employees view the challenges presented by adversity as opportunities to prove their own ability and value. They view work as their responsibility and believe in accomplishing challenging goals by taking full advantage of their professional skills and creativity and working with other members of the organization to deal with environmental challenges and smoothly survive crises, thereby enhancing organizational resilience. On the other hand, employees with high levels of self-management are skilled at assessing their own abilities and performance levels or those of others as well as setting reasonable work goals and developing reasonable action strategies based on the resources and information that they obtain because employees who are skilled at self-management tend to take the initiative to collect and process environmental information, remain sensitive to the external environment and organizational operations, and ensure that they are always needed by the organization as a means of maintaining their competitive positions in the organization. In times of crisis, when the organizational landscape changes, employees quickly orient themselves to their goals with self-management ability, integrate their accessible resources, develop reasonable action plans and smoothly execute them, reduce their confusion and anxiety, increase their self-efficacy, and take full advantage of organizational resilience [ 41 ]. In conclusion, self-management can enhance the contribution of self-efficacy to organizational resilience. In summary, the following hypothesis is proposed.

Self-management plays a positive role in regulating the impact of self-efficacy on organizational resilience.

Previous studies have shown that the application of self-management in organizations can reduce the costs of business supervision and management and improve business performance and employee well-being, among other effects [ 42 ]. However, self-management is not effective in all situations [ 43 ]. Employee self-management is based on mutual trust between leaders and employees, such that leaders trust employees to be capable of accomplishing the established goals, and employees trust that they will receive set rewards for accomplishing such goals [ 44 ]. However, critical moments that require companies to demonstrate their resilience to cope with difficult times can lead to changes in companies’ human resource management plans and thus in their goals and development direction as well as the reshuffling of personnel rights and interests within such companies. In this situation, employee self-management hinders the ability of strategic human resource management to promote the company’s organizational resilience capabilities. Specifically, first, according to conservation of resources theory, the achievement of self-management goals requires the input of individual and organizational resources [ 45 ]. Crises cause the achievement of goals to be rife with uncertainty. Employees have negative attitudes toward the implementation of the company’s strategic human resource plan and corporate goals due to their desire to prevent their resources from being lost. In addition, organizational resources become scarcer and more difficult to acquire in a crisis. Employees tend to compete for internal resources to maintain their existing resources and rights, which strains the relationships among people within the organization and is not conducive to communication, cooperation, and knowledge sharing among members of the organization. In contrast, organizational resilience requires a high degree of team cohesion, mutual trust, assistance, and cooperation and thus is not conducive to organizational resilience. Second, the adjustment of strategic HR policies in times of crisis can lead to the reformulation of individual goal management. Employees’ internal self-actualization and self-growth are essential drivers of self-management goals. Once corporate goals deviate from individual goals, employees’ actions may impede or even prevent the implementation of strategic HRM plans, thus rendering the organization unable to deploy people and resources rapidly and perhaps even causing the organization to miss the best time to act, which is not conducive to the development of organizational resilience [ 46 ]. Finally, strategic HRM is a management approach that aligns HRM with corporate strategy. Corporate strategy often takes the form of management involving multiple goals, such as corporate performance, social responsibility, and brand image. The complexity of work and teamwork cause corporate goals to become indistinguishable or unclear, which makes it difficult for employees to set and implement their personal self-management goals, thereby causing them to become confused and uncomfortable and to experience self-doubt or negative emotions, which is not conducive to the development of organizational resilience. In summary, the following hypothesis is proposed.

Self-management negatively affects the impact of strategic human resource management on organizational resilience.

In summary, based on conservation of resources theory and self-cognitive theory, this paper constructs a moderated mediation model, as shown in Figure 1 , and examines the relationships among strategic human resource management, self-efficacy and self-management, and organizational resilience.

Hypothetical model of the mediating effect of self-efficacy and the moderating effect of self-management.

3. Methodology

3.1. study sample.

This study was conducted to investigate the organizational resilience of enterprises within China. In order to guarantee the accuracy, reliability of data, and wide distribution of the research sample, this study follows the principle of randomness to select the employees of enterprises with different industries, ages, education levels, positions, and income statuses in several cities within China. Due to the special national conditions of China, there are major disparities in the development levels of various regions, so the sample source of this paper includes developed large cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, etc., medium development level cities, such as Jinan, Qingdao, Dongguan, Huizhou, Haikou, Lanzhou, etc., and developing small cities, such as Jiuquan, Weihai, Hami, etc. For the convenience of sample collection, a combination of online and on-site distribution was chosen for this study. In order to guarantee the authenticity and accuracy of the acquired data, a partial reverse setting of the question items was used. It was filled out voluntarily and anonymously to reduce the concerns of those who filled it out. A lottery link was also included with the questionnaire to incentivize the completion of the questionnaire. A total of 441 questionnaires were collected for one month starting from August 2022, excluding invalid questionnaires that were completed too quickly, filled out incorrectly, had omitted answers, or were duplicates. 379 valid questionnaires were obtained, for a return rate of 86%. The gender distribution of the sample was 53% males and 47% females; the age distribution included 16.9% of participants aged 25 and below, 37.2% aged 26–35, 28.5% aged 36–45, 14.8% aged 46–55, and 2.6% aged 55 and above; the education distribution included 20.6% of participants with a high school/junior college education, 43.3% with bachelor’s degrees, 10.3% with master’s degrees, and 2.1% with doctoral degrees.

3.2. Variable Measurement

All variables included in this study questionnaire were measured using the seven-point scale developed by Richter. All the scales used in this paper are well-established scales with good reliability and validity that have been validated many times in the Chinese cultural context. Additionally, a small sample of 73 people was taken for pre-study. Afterwards, two professors and three PhD and MSc students in the field of business management and human resource management examined and adjusted the new questionnaire according to the research questions, validity, and reliability of the questionnaire results, Chinese cultural background, and readability.

Organizational resilience: this variable was measured using a 15-item organizational resilience scale developed by Xiu’e Zhang et al. [ 47 ] in the context of China. This scale contains items such as “ability to adapt and creatively solve problems when a crisis occurs” and “ability to access needed resources quickly to address challenges in times of crisis”.

Strategic human resource management: this variable is assessed using a 19-item scale based on Delery’s Strategic Human Resource Management Scale [ 48 ], adapted to the Chinese cultural context, which contains items such as “Individuals in this job have clear career paths within the organization“ and “Individuals in this job have very little future within this organization (reverse-coded)“.

Self-management: this variable is assessed using a 10-item scale based on Renn ‘s self-management scale [ 49 ], adapted to the Chinese cultural context, including “I set specific goals for myself at work”, “I establish challenging goals for myself at work”, and “I clearly define goals for myself at work”.

Self-efficacy: this variable was measured using an eight-item scale developed by Chen et al. [ 50 ]. This scale contains items such as “I will be able to achieve most of the goals that I have set for myself” and “When facing difficult tasks, I am certain that I will accomplish them”.

Control variables: this paper investigates the effects of organizational human resource management policies, self-efficacy, and self-management on organizational resilience from the perspective of human resource management. To make the questionnaire data as accurate as possible, the gender, age, and education of employees are used as control variables in this paper to reduce the influence of errors on the analysis of the relationships among variables.

4.1. Common Method Biases Test

This study draws on Podsakoff et al. [ 51 ] to procedurally reduce homogeneous method bias by selecting different spatial survey respondents, anonymous surveys, and partial question item reversal settings at the time of data acquisition. Harman one-way analysis of variance was used to measure the presence of severe common method bias. The results of the SPSS 22.0 test revealed a total of six factors with eigenvalues greater than one for the unrotated exploratory factor analysis. Additionally, the maximum factor variance explained was 28.22%, which was much less than 40%; thus, there was no serious common method bias in this study.

4.2. Reliability and Validity Tests

First, this study used SPSS 22.0 and AMOS statistical software to analyze the data from 379 samples. Internal consistency tests were conducted based on the criteria of whether the coefficient of internal consistency was greater than 0.7 and whether the coefficient of internal consistency would increase after the deletion of a question item. The test results are described in Table 1 . The Cronbach’s α values of all variables are above 0.90, and the deletion of any question item does not increase the Cronbach’s α value significantly, indicating that the variables have good internal consistency. The CR values are all greater than 0.90, and the AVE values are all greater than 0.55. This indicates that the variables have good composite reliability.

Reliability test results for each variable.

Note: SHRM represents Strategic Human Resource Management; SM represents Self-Management; SE represents Self-Efficacy; OR represents Organizational Resilience.

Second, this study developed confirmatory factor analysis models for strategic human resource management, self-management, self-efficacy, and organizational resilience and conducted confirmatory factor analysis on the research models using AMOS. The results showed that all model indicators met the statistical benchmark values (χ 2 /df = 2.658, RMSEA = 0.066, CFI = 0.905, IFI = 0.905), thus indicating that the model goodness of fit well. In addition, the fit indices of the randomly selected two-factor model and those of one-factor and three-factor models were compared, as shown in Table 2 . The results showed that the fit indices of the original model were significantly better than those of the one-factor, two-factor, and three-factor models, thus indicating that the original model had good discriminant validity.

Results of validation factor analysis.

Note: *** denotes p < 0.001.

4.3. Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Analysis

The mean and standard deviation of each variable as well as the correlations among all the variables were analyzed using SPSS 22.0, and the results of this analysis are shown in Table 3 . There was a positive and strong correlation between strategic HRM on the one hand and organizational resilience (r = 0.722, p < 0.01) and self-efficacy on the other (r = 0.676, p < 0.01); the relationship between self-efficacy and organizational resilience (r = 0.711, p < 0.01) also exhibited a positive and robust correlation, thereby providing preliminary evidence to support the research hypotheses.

Means, variances, and correlation coefficients of the variables.

Note: ** denotes p < 0.01; SHRM represents Strategic Human Resource Management; SM represents Self-Management; SE represents Self-Efficacy; OR represents Organizational Resilience.

4.4. Test of Mediation Model with Moderation

In this paper, we refer to Wen [ 52 ] with the moderated mediation model test method to test the mediation model first, and, on the basis of significant mediation effect, we conduct the moderated mediation model significance test to verify whether each model proposed in this paper is significant.

First, this study tested the mediating effect on the relationship between self-efficacy on strategic HRM and organizational resilience using Model 4 (mediating model) in the SPSS macro developed by Hayes [ 53 ]. The results of this test are shown in Table 4 . Strategic HRM has a significant positive effect on organizational resilience (B = 0.711, t = 19.952, p < 0.001); strategic HRM has a significant positive effect on self-efficacy (B = 0.568, t = 17.180, p < 0.001); and self-efficacy has a significant positive effect on organizational resilience (B = 0.459, t = 9.098, p < 0.001). In addition, the upper and lower limits of the bootstrap 95% confidence intervals pertaining to the direct effect of strategic HRM on organizational resilience and the mediating effect of self-efficacy do not contain 0, as shown in Table 5 , thus indicating that strategic HRM affects organizational resilience not only directly but also indirectly via the mediating effect of self-efficacy, with the direct and indirect effects accounting for 63% and 37% of the total utility, respectively.

Mediated model test of self-efficacy.

Note: * denotes p < 0.05; *** denotes p < 0.001; SHRM represents Strategic Human Resource Management; SM represents Self-Management; SE represents Self Efficacy; OR represents Organizational Resilience.

Decomposition of total utility, direct effects, and mediating effects.

Second, the moderated mediation model was tested using Model 15 in the SPSS macro prepared by Hayes (2012) [ 53 ]. The results of the test are shown in Table 6 and Table 7 . After including self-management in the model, the product term of strategic HRM and self-management has a negative effect on organizational resilience (B = −0.144, t = 6.617, p = 0.01). Furthermore, the moderating effect of self-management contains 0 between the upper and lower limits of the bootstrap 95% confidence intervals at the eff1 (M − 1SD) level. In comparison, this effect does not contain 0 between the upper and lower limits of the bootstrap 95% confidence intervals at the eff1 (M + 1SD) level, thus indicating the significant moderating effect of self-management. The product term of self-efficacy and self-management positively affected organizational resilience (B = 0.137, t = 6.617, p = 0.001). Further simple slope analysis indicated that the effect of strategic HRM on organizational resilience tends to decrease gradually as the level of self-management increases and that the effect of self-efficacy on organizational resilience tends to increase in this context, as shown in Figure 2 a,b.

( a ) The moderating role of self-management in the relationship between strategic human resource management and organizational resilience; ( b ) the moderating role of self-management in the relationship between self-efficacy and organizational resilience.

Mediated model tests with moderation.

Note: * denotes p < 0.05; ** denotes p < 0.01; *** denotes p < 0.001; SHRM represents Strategic Human Resource Management; SM represents Self-Management; SE represents Self-Efficacy; OR represents Organizational Resilience.

Direct and mediated effects at different levels of self-management.

5. Discussion

Based on the conservation of resources theory and self-cognitive theory, this study takes employees in Chinese culture as the research object and explores the mechanism and boundary conditions of strategic human resource management on organizational resilience. The three aspects of human capital, social capital, and psychological capital are explained to ensure that the human resources of a company fit with the corporate strategy to ensure that the strategic goals of the company match with the external environment, and that the internal resources are rationally allocated to promote the organizational resilience. Self-efficacy, as an emotional ability, is an employee’s attitude and belief about the company’s ability to cope with crises. Organizational resilience is a corporate soft capability embedded in employees’ knowledge, skills, and traits. Thus, employees’ beliefs about achieving strategic human resource management goals will influence employees’ performance in times of crisis and thus the ability to perform with organizational resilience. Therefore, the potential impact of self-efficacy on the performance of organizational resilience capabilities cannot be ignored. The impact of self-management on organizational resilience is uncertain. Self-management can enhance the positive impact of strategic HRM on organizational resilience but hinders the positive impact of self-efficacy on organizational resilience.

• (1) Hypothesis 1, that strategic HRM in the Chinese context facilitates organizational resilience, was confirmed. Facing a VUCA environment, business operations are fraught with many uncertainties, a point which is especially salient to this study since it was conducted in the middle of the novel coronavirus pandemic, which has had a massive impact on the global economy and people’s lives. To address this major crisis that can reshape the global economic landscape, it is imperative for companies to adjust their corporate strategies and long-term development plans, encourage their employees to respond to the associated challenges actively, and transform the crisis into an opportunity for growth. The empirical study of strategic human resource management and organizational resilience in the face of crisis shows that strategic human resource management can actively transform corporate development strategies, reorganize and reallocate corporate human resources, lead companies to adapt to changes quickly, act flexibly and innovate actively, and have a positive effect on the improvement of organizational resilience. Accordingly, strategic human resource management is an effective way in which enterprises can ensure their survival and obtain competitive advantages in the face of a crisis.
• (2) This study tested hypothesis 2, that strategic human resource management has a positive effect on self-efficacy, hypothesis 3, that self-efficacy has a positive effect on organizational resilience, and hypothesis 4, that self-efficacy mediates the effect of strategic human resource management on organizational resilience. Based on the argument that strategic human resource management positively affects organizational resilience, this study further argues that strategic human resource management can enhance organizational resilience by increasing employees’ self-efficacy. Self-efficacy refers to an employee’s strong belief in his or her own ability to do his or her job and accomplish the associated tasks. Self-efficacy enables employees to act rationally in times of crisis, to believe that the company has the strength to deal with the crisis, to respond positively to the company’s HR policies and practices, to unite with colleagues, and to dare to solve corporate problems in innovative ways. Self-efficacy enables the company’s strategic human resource management policies and practices to be implemented quickly throughout the company, thereby enhancing the company’s operations and flexibility in times of crisis and enabling the organization to recover quickly from a crisis and respond to a variety of environmental challenges, thus enhancing the organizational resilience that allows the organization to deal with complex environments.
• (3) Hypothesis 5 was tested, that is, the positive moderating role of self-management in the effect of self-efficacy on organizational resilience. Self-management has a nonnegligible impact on the effect of self-efficacy on organizational resilience. The achievement of corporate strategic goals is ultimately based the actions taken by employees at work, and the self-management ability of employees is related to the efficiency and effectiveness of policy implementation. Employee self-management motivates employees to combine corporate goals with their own internal needs, set their own goals, actively access and use external information and resources, assess the gaps between goals and actual performance as well as the difficulties associated with crossing those gaps, and choose creative action paths to achieve their goals. Thus, self-management ability can enhance the organization’s sensitivity to the external environment, thus allowing the organization to prepare for crises in advance to ensure that employees can act with plans and goals in times of crisis, thereby enhancing their self-efficacy and making full use of their creativity and professional skills; given such preparation, the organization can smoothly survive the crisis and continue normal operations or even increase the prosperity of the enterprise.
• (4) Hypothesis 6 was also tested, that is, the negative moderating role of self-management in the effect of strategic HRM on organizational resilience. Self-management negatively influences the impact of strategic human resources on organizational resilience. Previous research on self-management has focused on the positive effects of self-management on business management, such as its effects on business performance, employee satisfaction, employee happiness, and creativity. However, this study finds that employee self-management capabilities at the strategic level may be detrimental to organizational resilience. The original driving force behind the role of self-management is rooted in the deep-seated needs of employees. In times of crisis, if adjustments to corporate strategies and resource reorganizations deviate from the goal of self-management, employee self-management may impede or jeopardize the implementation and achievement of corporate strategic goals. Self-management causes the organization to become slow to act, rigid in its operations, and inflexible and insensitive in times of crisis, and it is detrimental to the development of organizational resilience.

Based on these findings, this paper argues that strategic human resource management is conducive to the enhancement of organizational resilience and is a possible way in which organizations can cope with potential crises and turbulent business environments. Strategic HRM allows companies to create innovations in their organizational staffing structures and systems actively, thereby enhancing the ability to self-repair and self-rebound at the organizational level; it allows companies to respond to the diverse and constantly changing needs of the market and customers and enhance the adaptability and flexibility of the organization, which is crucial for the organization’s competitiveness in the market.

6. Conclusions

Strategic human resource management facilitates organizational resilience capacity enhancement and is a possible path for organizations to respond to potential crises and turbulent business environments. Strategic HRM facilitates companies to actively innovate their organizational staff structure and system, enhance the ability to repair and rebound at the organizational level, respond to the diversified and changing needs of the market and customers, and enhance the adaptability and flexibility of the organization to the market. This is the reason why many companies are consciously implementing strategic human resource management. Thus, strategic HRM is a possible path for Chinese companies to enhance organizational resilience.

6.1. Theoretical Contributions

• (1) This paper expands the conservation of resources theory and discusses important antecedent variables that facilitate the organization’s ability to exhibit organizational resilience. Organizational resilience is an essential resource and capability that allows companies to adapt to changes actively following a crisis, seek opportunities for survival and innovation, and overcome difficulties and achieve counter prosperity. In a dynamic and changing business environment and given human-centered management trends, it is crucial to clarify the manner in which strategic human resource management can enhance organizational resilience. Managing and utilizing the company’s employees well in a manner that takes advantage of the company’s talent and allows the company to cope with an unpredictable business environment has become a hot topic for both corporate managers and academic researchers. This paper focuses on the ways in which a human resource management model that fits with corporate strategy can enhance employees’ self-efficacy and thus organizational resilience, thereby providing a new perspective on the relationship between strategic human resource management and organizational resilience, theoretically considering possible ways of enhancing organizational resilience, and helping expand research on the mechanisms underlying the impact of strategic human resources.
• (2) This paper validates the important influence effect of self-efficacy, and it explores the relationship between strategic human resource management, self-efficacy, and organizational resilience from the perspective of conservation of resources theory and self-cognitive theory, using strategic human resource management as an antecedent variable of self-efficacy, which helps to understand the intrinsic correlation between strategic human resource management, self-efficacy, and organizational resilience in depth. The mechanisms of how strategic HRM affects organizational resilience have been unclear in past previous research. This paper explores the “black box” of the relationship between the mechanisms of strategic HRM’s impacts on organizational resilience through the self-efficacy variable and highlights the vital role and value of self-efficacy in organizational resilience.
• (3) This paper analyzes the theoretical mechanisms and boundary conditions according to which organizational resilience can function in crises. Regardless of the uniqueness and effectiveness of the strategies and responses that are adopted by enterprises, these strategies and responses must be implemented and facilitated by employees. Therefore, in times of crisis, enterprises should pay more attention to employees’ psychology, attitudes, and abilities, stimulate their creativity and motivation, and take the best path of action. Therefore, this paper includes self-management as a moderating variable to deepen our understanding of organizational resilience at the enterprise human resource management level. Through theoretical extrapolation and empirical research, the paper reveals that employees’ self-management is not conducive to the promotional effect of strategic HRM on organizational resilience, a conclusion which differs from the findings of many previous studies regarding the positive effects of self-management on enterprises; the paper thus argues that the promotional effect of self-management on enterprise management must have an appropriate background and conditions.

6.2. Practical Implications

Previous research has failed to answer the question of why some companies can transform themselves and survive when faced with a significant crisis, whereas others fall apart. This paper has significant practical value for understanding the ways in which strategic human resource management can help companies survive and grow in a dynamic environment by enhancing organizational resilience when faced with a crisis and uncertainty.

First, enterprises should actively guarantee that their corporate strategies match their human resource management to ensure that human resources can serve as critical capital to help enterprises survive the crisis and achieve their strategic goals smoothly. The novel coronavirus epidemic is a significant test of enterprise human resource management and continuous operation and development. Companies should optimize their corporate strategies and human resource structures continuously as part of their daily operations and should focus on the power of talent. When facing a crisis, companies should be skilled at exploring the potential opportunities associated with the challenges, thereby improving the cohesiveness of employees, taking full advantage of the creativity of employees, and skillfully using the company’s potential resources so that the company can endure the crisis smoothly; accordingly, the company should actively reflect on the problems and loopholes in the company’s operation after the crisis, further adjust the company’s strategic layout, and be fully prepared to deal with possible crises in the future.

Second, the enterprise should focus on improving employees’ self-efficacy and enhancing their work execution and enthusiasm. Employees are the primary capital of an enterprise and represent the only driving force for the creation of value. In an enterprise, human resource management should focus on adopting people-oriented management policies, cultivating employees’ self-efficacy, and allowing employees to realize that the enterprise values them. This paper explores the role of self-efficacy in enhancing organizational resilience from a practical perspective and shows that the enhancement and utilization of the enterprise’s organizational resilience capability ultimately depends on the power of its employees.

Finally, the enterprise should focus on employees’ self-management capabilities and simultaneously enhance its own internal management capabilities. Previous research has illustrated a variety of benefits of employee self-management on corporate performance. However, based on both theoretical extrapolation and practical research, this paper demonstrates that self-management is not beneficial to organizational development under all conditions. Only when employees’ self-goals and organizational goals are aligned do employees exert their utmost efforts to accomplish overall corporate goals. In management practice, managers should focus on employees’ career development plans and intrinsic needs to ensure that the organization’s strategy matches their jobs and to guarantee that their jobs meet their intrinsic needs.

6.3. Limitations and Prospects

This study employs a combination of theoretical derivation and empirical research. It achieves some success regarding both the theoretical and practical aspects of organizational resilience research, but it also faces certain limitations. First, this paper uses only the questionnaire method to obtain sample data, i.e., it relies on a single data source. Future research can employ experimental, interview, and other methods combined with a questionnaire to improve data accuracy. Second, the data used in this study were obtained from employees’ self-reports, and no attention was given to temporal changes when the respondents completed the questionnaires. Although this paper examined the possibility of common method bias using Harman’s one-way analysis of variance method, the results of which were within an acceptable range, the effect of common method bias could not be avoided entirely. Future studies can reduce common method bias by obtaining objective data from companies or enhancing the design of the study. Finally, this study explored only the mediating variable of self-efficacy. Future research can explore other mediating variables associated with the relationship between strategic HRM and organizational resilience from other perspectives with the aim of gradually improving the research on the mechanism underlying the effects of strategic HRM and organizational resilience.

Funding Statement

This research was funded by Natural Science Foundation of China grant number 42201224 and the Innovative Team Development Project of Inner Mongolia Higher Education Institutions, grant number: NMGIRT2206.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, J.Y. and L.Y.; methodology, L.Y.; software, L.Y.; investigation, L.Y.; resources, P.L.; data curation, H.L.; writing—review and editing, G.H.; visualization, H.L.; supervision, G.H.; project administration, G.H.; funding acquisition, P.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Ethics Committee of Shandong University (Project identification code: 3885535).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Uk martin-gatton cafe study on food insecurity receives paper of the year award.

A team from the Department of Dietetics and Human Nutrition found local traditions can play a big role in addressing food insecurity.

By Jordan Strickler Published on Sep. 24, 2024

The University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment  is pleased to announce a study researching Appalachian culture and its impact on food insecurity has won the Health Education & Behavior Paper of the Year Award for 2023.   

The paper, titled “Exploring Food-Based Cultural Practices to Address Food Insecurity in Rural Appalachia,” emphasizes how significant culturally entrenched food practices are in enabling communities from Appalachia to fight food insecurity. The study was led by Lauren Batey and co-authored with Emily DeWitt, Dawn Brewer, Kathryn Cardarelli and Heather Norman-Burgdolf. 

The recognition from Health Education & Behavior was unexpected for Batey and her team. The journal selects one paper each year based on its research quality, relevance to public health and potential to impact the field. 

“We were surprised and honored to receive this award. It wasn’t something we applied for, so it was a pleasant shock when we found out,” Batey said.  

This research, which evolved from Batey’s master’s thesis, focused on how Central Appalachian communities, especially in Eastern Kentucky, use long-standing cultural practices to address the challenge of limited food access. Appalachia, a region long plagued by poverty, inadequate access to healthy food and high rates of chronic disease, has been grappling with food insecurity for generations. The study revealed that despite these challenges, cultural practices like gardening, canning and hunting remain essential to the community’s ability to meet their needs. 

“I’ve always been drawn to Appalachian culture, and as I looked deeper into food insecurity, it became clear how much culture influences how people respond to challenges,” Batey said. “Our research showed that although community members may not think of their actions as direct responses to food insecurity, their traditional practices are, in fact, key to addressing it.” 

The research was conducted in Martin County, a small rural Appalachian community facing economic hardship, geographic isolation and persistent health challenges. The study’s purpose was to recognize how local food traditions are embedded in Eastern Kentucky culture and how these practices might be used to improve food security. 

One of the most intriguing findings from the study was the community’s unique sense of resilience.  

“People in Appalachia take pride in their self-sufficiency, but it’s not just about individual survival—it’s about working together as a community to get by,” Batey said. “The sense of shared responsibility is what makes these communities so strong.” 

Batey stated the research offers valuable insights for those designing programs to tackle food insecurity in rural regions. By recognizing and incorporating the cultural practices already in place, public health initiatives can be better tailored to meet the specific community needs. 

“Too often, health programs overlook the local traditions, but this research shows that communities in Appalachia are already addressing food insecurity in ways that reflect their traditions and values. By building on those strengths, future programs can be much more effective,” Batey explained. 

The study found that nutrition education programs in the region can benefit from promoting traditional food procurement practices such as gardening and hunting. Local initiatives like the Kentucky Nutrition Education Program , which includes recipes using wild game and home-grown produce, are already showing success in helping families prepare nutritious meals that fit within their cultural norms. 

“We hope this study encourages others to look closely at the cultural practices within communities and understand how they can play a vital role in addressing food-related challenges,” Batey said. 

While this study contributes significantly to understanding food insecurity in Appalachia, Batey sees opportunities for future research and intervention.  

“We’ve only scratched the surface in terms of understanding how cultural practices can help tackle food insecurity,” she said. “There’s so much more to explore, especially regarding how we can work with communities to build on these traditions in ways that improve health outcomes.” 

This project was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $500,000 with 0% financed with non-governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by CDC, HHS, or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visit CDC.gov.  

The Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment is an Equal Opportunity Organization with respect to education and employment and authorization to provide research, education information and other services only to individuals and institutions that function without regard to economic or social status and will not discriminate on the basis of race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, creed, religion, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, marital status, genetic information, age, veteran status, physical or mental disability or reprisal or retaliation for prior civil rights activity.        

Contact: Lauren Batey,  [email protected] Media Inquiries: C.E. Huffman, [email protected]

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