Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the human resource management (HRM) literature that builds up to our current concern with dualities, paradoxes, ambiguities, and balance issues; and to introduce the six papers in this special issue on managing the dualities in...

Purpose – Research in strategic human resource management (HRM) has focused mainly on the effects of HRM practices or systems on organizational effectiveness. However, institutional theory argues that besides being financially successful, organizations also need legitimacy to survive. Owing to...

Purpose – To provide an overview of recent empirical survey research on human resource competencies in Europe. Design/methodology/approach – The survey data were collected in 2002 in the global human resource competence study (HRCS), an initiative of the University of Michigan. The study was...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the concept of human resource management (HRM) frames, to identify frame domains, and to explore their role in implementing HRM innovation. HRM innovation implementation is considered through the theoretical lens of social cognitive theory, and...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of management practices – specifically, high‐performance work practices (HPWPs) – on employee burnout. Two potential mediating mechanisms that counterbalance each other in the development of burnout are compared: a critical...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test whether the use of numerical and functional flexibility practices in firms affect their performance. Design/methodology/approach – A combined employer/employee Norwegian data set is used to estimate production function like equations. The data...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how a national policy on sickness absence management is translated by HR managers into local human resource management (HRM) practices by developing and applying an analytical framework with three dimensions: individual preferences, strategic...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different team learning activities relate to different types of team performance as rated by team members and managers. Design/methodology/approach – The 624 respondents, working in 88 teams in seven different organizations indicate...

Purpose – This study aims to “bridge” two streams of HRM research: organisation level research on HRM and performance and individual level research on employee work perceptions and behavioural performance. This study seeks to analyse the value of organisation level HRM practices for...

Many of the techniques and procedures used in our current work in personnel were developed and refined during the economic growth years after the Second World War. The present authors feel that we should reconsider the current relevance of these techniques and procedures, in the light of major...