Quantification in HRM: A study of the practices and consequences of measuring individual employees

Andreas Werr
2012

Project description

The research project studies quantification within Human Resource Management (HRM), that is, the use of numbers to describe and categorize employees. Due partly to organizations' growing dependence on people for achieving competitive advantage and partly to HR functions' zeal to become strategic, the use of quantification, in particular measurement of individual employees, is attracting widespread interest among HR professionals, consultants and scholars. The underlying idea is to transform employee qualities such as competencies, attitudes, motivations and "talent" into quantities and thus render them more manageable. "Soft" people knowledge is thereby refashioned into "hard" data. Despite this interest and despite the considerable (unintended) practical and ethical ramifications potentially raised by this development, quantification in HRM remains an under-examined organizational practice, especially in the Swedish context.
The purpose of the proposed project is to explore the practices and consequences of measuring individual employees within HRM. We will conduct in-depth case studies of Talent Management using micro-oriented methods, including ethnography, interviews with key actors and collection of interactional data (e.g. meetings). The research strategy will be to track the "paths" of numbers, i.e. to trail numbers throughout the organization as they are produced, communicated and consumed by actors such as managers, employees, HR professionals and decision makers.

Final report

Published or accepted for publication

Bolander, P., Asplund, K. & Werr, A. (2017), The practice of talent management: A framework and typology. Personnel Review (forthcoming).

Asplund, K., Bolander, P. & Werr, A. (2017). Achieving Strategic Change through Performance Management: The Role of Identity Threat. Research in Organizational Change and Development (forthcoming).

Kumra, S. and Werr, A. (2017), Organizing expertise in the professional service firm - meritocracy in theory and practice. I Furusten, S. and Werr, A. (eds.), The organization of the expert society. New York & London: Routledge.

Bolander, P. & Asplund, K. (2016) Talent management i skolan: Utvärdering och utveckling i förändring. I Löwstedt, J. (ed.) Skolledning: Scener från den organiserande vardagen. Lund: Studentlitteratur.


Work in progress

When merit meets practice:  Exploring how professionals deal with tensions between meritocratic ideals and non-meritocratic performance management practices (European Management Review; 2nd review).

Emotions in elite identity work: Young talents and the pressure to perform. (Conference paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Academy Of Management, Anaheim 2016 and at the Global HRM-conference in Gothenburg 2015; Under revision for submission to Management Learning.

Intertwining practices: The intended and unintended consequences of changing performance evaluation practices in a Swedish school district. (Conference paper presented at the 31st EGOS colloquium in Athens, 2015).

Talent management – the emergence of a new management occupation? (Conference paper accepted for presentation at the 33rd EGOS colloquium in Copenhagen 2017).

2017/06/30
15:01
Overview
Grant administrator
Stockholm School of Economics
Reference number
P12-0986:1
Amount
SEK 2,842,000
Funding
RJ Projects
Subject
Business Administration
Year
2012