The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management – Edited by Peter Boxall, John Purcell and Patrick Wright
| Published date | 01 December 2007 |
| Author | Nicolas Bacon |
| Date | 01 December 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00651.x |
The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management edited by Peter Boxall, John
Purcell and Patrick Wright. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, xv +658 pp.,
ISBN 0 19 928251 7, US$160.00.
This excellent handbook provides a valuable insight into the main issues that currently
preoccupy the field of human resource management (HRM). It presents HRM as a
combination of the three subfields of micro-HRM dominated by occupational psy-
chology, strategic HRM utilizing insights from strategic management and the resource-
based view of the firm in particular, and international HRM reflecting international
business. The overall approach of the book is to describe and explain practice, consider
how HRM contributes to organizational performance and assess the broader out-
comes. Most chapters acknowledge the effect of context on HRM and several chapters
provide sound research-based advice to managers. In bringing together authors from a
range of disciplinary backgrounds (10 by my count), the book is remarkable. It
contains many first-rate chapters written by leading authorities and the chapters should
feature on student reading lists. The first section starts with two chapters outlining the
historical development and goals of HRM. Six subsequent chapters place the field
within an academic context as an area related to economics, strategic management,
organization theory, occupational psychology, the labour process perspective and
institutions. Section two includes nine chapters covering the standard micro-areas of
HRM practices such as work organization, equal opportunities, selection and pay. In
the third section, seven chapters outline HRM issues in a variety of different contexts
including manufacturing, services, public sector and in multinational firms. Four
chapters in the final section cover business and worker outcomes.
As the handbook ‘reviews...thestate of formal knowledge in the field of HRM’
(p. 2), it is appropriate to ask whether the book helps establish HRM as a distinct
cognate field. It is worth noting that many of the contributors are happier to criticize
than to praise the progress made in the field. We find that HRM authors will ‘beg,
steal or borrow’ ideas from other disciplines (Editors, p. 7), ‘most HRM textbooks are
parochial’ (Editors, p. 14) and most writers sidestep the downgrading of employment
practices to ‘focus...only on paradigmatic “best practice” cases’ (Kaufman, p. 38).
Furthermore, ‘much of the literature in HRM is normative’ (Boxall, p. 49) and ‘the
field of HRM has not adequately incorporated issues of national policy and national
goals into an analysis of organisation’ (Grimshaw and Rubery, p. 84). It is hard to see
how to rectify such problems as ‘there is no clear consensus in research and writing
about either the conceptual or operational definition of HRM’ (Guest, p. 132) and
‘HRM is not a homogenous body of scholarship’ (Thompson and Harley, p. 148). The
editors deal with this problem in part by presenting a diverse view of HRM through
their selection of authors. As the authors draw on different disciplinary backgrounds,
attend different conferences and read different journals, not surprisingly they often
place less value on work that is not central to their disciplinary field. The extent of
inter-disciplinary dialogue in many chapters is inevitably limited although the book is
a potentially important step to help stimulate this dialogue.
Another important question is whether the view of labour management taken is
sufficiently all encompassing. The overall balance of concern in the book is towards
an emphasis on firm performance rather than outcomes for employees (an approxi-
mate two-thirds/one-third balance reflected in the index comparing references to ‘firm
performance’ and ‘employees’). More striking is that few chapters emphasize or detail
the impact of law or the broader economic and political context studied in the
varieties of capitalism literature. Many chapters focus on business strategy and
858 British Journal of Industrial Relations
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007.
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