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...

Much publicity has recently been given to the attempts of a number of organisations to improve the flexibility of their human resources. By this is normally meant keeping their labour costs closely related to their level of business activity. We are particularly concerned in this article with...

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...