Management Revue

Human Resource Management: The Need for Theory and Diversity

Human Resource Management as an academic discipline needs to be theoretically grounded, i.e. it requires support through theories, theory-driven empirical research and critiques. In doing so, different theoretical perspectives are addressed suggesting a problem-oriented theory selection which leads inevitably to theoretical diversity.

Social Systems Theory As Theoretical Framework for Human Resource Management - Benediction or Curse?

Social systems theory as developed by Niklas Luhmann is an option for the theoretical foundation of Human Resource Management (HRM). After clarifying the advantages of using a grad (social) theory as the basic theoretical perspective, the roots of this social systems theory - the deterministic view of systems as machines, the open systems approach and non-linear systems theory - are addressed. Based on the view of social systems as autopoietically closed systems, 5 major contributions to a th...

Theoretical Substantiation of Human Resource Management From the Perspective of Work and Organisational Psychology

In the article it is tried to substantiate further developments in human resource management with reference to the competency approach in work and organisational psychology. First the objectives of scientific and applied research in work and organizational psychology are lined out. Then the competency approach is discussed as a helpful concept to different challenges of human resource management. With reference to this assumption three different theoretical and methodological perspectives are...

A Plea for a Behavioral Approach in the Science of Human Resources Management

The aim of science is to develop true theories. From this it follows quite naturally that the Behavioural Approach is the only plausible approach in a Science of Human Resources Management. The Behavioural Approach derives its propositions from the best theories from the social and behavioural sciences. It is problem-oriented in the strictest sense and thus escapes discipline-specific narrow-mindedness. It integrates the knowledge bases necessary for good practice. The behavioural approach to...

Personnel Economics: An Economic Approach to Human Resource Management

The theoretical idea of personnel economics is to apply simple economic principles to the field of human resources management. Personnel economics as a research field has grown rapidly since the first text book on "Personnel Economics" was published in 1998. The development is driven by new theoretical insights based on institutional and behavioural economics and new empirical methods and data sets. Those new theoretical insights are very fruitful to analyze reasons and consequences of variou...

Political [Personnel] Economy - a Political Economy Perspective to Explain Different Forms of Human Resource Management Strategies

A political economy approach to explaining the existence of different human resource strategies is developed in this article - in short: a political personnel economy. The starting point is a critical analysis of the abstinence of politics and power and the resulting explanation deficiencies of traditional microeconomic approaches and of the transactions cost theory. The Marxian labour process theories also discussed in this article, while certainly "political", primarily exhibit problems rel...

Pourquoi Pas? Rational Choice As a Basic Theory of Hrm

A broad spectrum of theories from different disciplines is portrayed in contemporary HRM. Theories from psychology, sociology and economics correspond to the variety of problems addressed in HRM which are again situated at different levels of analysis, namely on the individual, group and organizational level. A narrow focus solely on economic approaches, as sometimes suggested in personnel economics, is therefore not sufficient. Instead, the contemporary "rational choice" approach may serve a...

Organisation, Management, Unternehmensfuhrung. Theorien Und Kritik

Principles of Economic Sociology