A recent paper by Tatiana Andreeva of our School of Business, with Veronika Kabalina (HSE) and Maral Muratbekova-Touron (ESCP) suggests that it matters not only what HR practices are used, but also how they are implemented. Their study, published in the European Management Review, explored the discrepancies between what HR managers intended to do and what employees perceived was being done, and how these gaps influenced employee behaviour.
One of key practical implications of this study is that it suggests looking differently at the role line managers have in HR implementation process: they are usually seen as “implementers”, but we argue they are first of all recipients of HR practices – so they can implement HR practices only as much as they perceive them to exist and understand them.
You can read the study here (open access)