Neuroscience: should HR be about art or science?
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/SHR-01-2015-0012 |
| Date | 08 June 2015 |
| Published date | 08 June 2015 |
| Pages | 107-108 |
| Author | Elaine Wilson |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Employee behaviour |
Neuroscience: should HR be about art or
science?
Elaine Wilson
Elaine Wilson is a Managing
Consultant based at ASK Europe,
Cranfield, UK.
HR has always triggered
debate. While this has often
focussed around the theme
of “friend or foe” – the function’s
tightrope walk between
organisations and employees – the
emergence of neuroscience as an
informing discipline may resurface
an older “nature of HR” debate: art
or science? Although HR and L&D
have not been total strangers to
applied science disciplines – such
as psychology and behavioural
economics – its engagement with
them has often been at a “dabbling”
level: picking and choosing
elements that offer either evidence
or hope. But the roots of
neuroscience, which the OED
defines as “any of the sciences that
deal with the structure or function of
the nervous system and brain”, lie
firmly in the life sciences. Its
findings, and the work that produces
them, come from an arena where
scientific rigour and validity are not
bonuses but touchstones.
Neuroscience’s promise to HR is
powerful, particularly in relation to
enhancing learning, workplace
relationships and interactions. It
offers the ability to cite scientifically
proven accounts of human brain
behaviour to an organisational
function often criticised for lacking
hard evidence. A 2014 CIPD report,
Neuroscience in action: Applying
insight to L&D practice, cited
examples: “the importance of sleep
to memory and learning, the benefits
of spacing learning sessions, and
how creativity is enhanced by tasks
that require unusual mental
connections”. David Rock’s SCARF
model offers the promise of
improved leadership where leaders
understand their behavioural impact
in five social domains the human
brain perceives as “survival issues”:
status, certainty, autonomy,
relatedness and fairness.
The danger for HR lies in this very
potential. A discipline eager to
prove its impact and value may not
approach these “findings” as
scientists would, promoting
“solutions” that rest on “evidence”
that is not yet fully proven, rather
than correctly stating that “further
research is needed”.
HR practitioners should read not just
books, websites and blogs from
their own discipline that embrace
neuroscience, but also authors in
the scientific community. They might
also consider a 1974 Caltech
speech, Cargo Cult Science, by
physicist Richard Feynman:
In the South Seas there is a cargo
cult of people. During the war they
saw airplanes with lots of good
materials, and they want the same
thing to happen now. So they’ve
arranged to make things like
runways [. . .] to make a wooden
hut for a man to sit in, with two
wooden pieces on his head to
headphones and bars of bamboo
Strategic commentary
DOI 10.1108/SHR-01-2015-0012 VOL. 14 NO. 3 2015, pp. 107-108, © Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1475-4398 STRATEGIC HR REVIEW PAGE 107
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