HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 13 NO 4, 2003 3

Foreword

John Purcell, Editor, HRMJ

The ® rst two articles in this edition look at labour scarcity and the way ® rms cope

in attracting, motivating and keeping employees. The contexts are very different

but in each the people are the critical resource for firm survival and in the

industries and occupations covered labour turnover rates are high. Marchington,

Carroll and Boxall studied small, owner-managed road haulage companies in the

north west of England. Horwitz, Heng and Quazi were concerned with knowledge

workers in a variety of industries in Singapore. In the road haulage cases formal HR

policies were not available, yet these successful ® rms had all survived for 20 years or

more by developing an astute combination of well-tried, locally determined, practices.

These were suited to each ® rm and supported by networks in the product and labour

markets, providing some stability in an unstable sector. These helped maximise loyalty,

motivate the drivers and attract appropriate recruits. In the knowledge intensive ® rms

in Singapore, with more formal, designed HR policies, the research shows which policy

mix was likely to be more successful than others in recruiting, motivating and retaining

employees. One in¯ uential factor, not often taken into account, was job design, or what

the authors call j̀ob crafting’, where individuals are given more space to manage their

own work and their relationships with others.

The Marchington et al article is important not just for the evidence of `lived’ HR

practices but because it uses ± and signi® cantly develops ± the critically important

theory of resource-based strategy, known as RBV, and applies it for the ® rst time to an

industrial sector rather than just to a single ® rm.

A different form of transport, railways in the Netherlands, is the focus of the article by

van der Velde and van der Berg. Here the concern is what contributes to creating

employees’ willingness and ability to accept functional ¯ exibility in their jobs ± that is,

undertaking a wider range of tasks in a greater variety of settings. The study

demonstrates that giving organisational support to employees and providing them

with greater autonomy in their jobs is important in generating a willingness to

be ¯ exible.

Downsizing is a surprisingly under-researched topic yet it is one of the most stretching

and dif® cult policy areas in HRM. Sahdev studied four UK organisations which had

downsized recently. Two were in the private sector, one was a regulated privatised

company and one was in local government. She produces a model based on this

research which emphasises the context in which downsizing occurs. This focuses on

two key factors: the frequency of downsizing (it is rarely a one-off event) and whether

it is triggered for reactive or proactive reasons. There are important lessons for HR

practitioners here.

Finally, in a very different article of particular contemporary importance, Hall,

Hoffman, Marginson and MŸ ller look at the operation of European Works Councils

4 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, VOL 13 NO 4, 2003

(EWCs). Their focus is UK- and US-owned companies which thus operated in a

national setting with little tradition of worker consultation. This allows them to study

the impact of national influences on how the EWC is managed by company

headquarters and by the worker representatives, especially those in positions of

leadership. While company structure ± the degree of integration between subsidiaries

in Europe or their separation into national companies ± is an important in¯ uence, one

of the key ® ndings will be disturbing to UK practitioners. This is the evidence that the

lack of experience in domestic or national works councils limits the role and leadership

that UK worker representatives play and leads to restrictive attitudes on the part of UK

headquarters management. Thus, the IR culture of the country of location is an

important in¯ uence. Whether the implementation of the Information and Consultation

Directive in March 2005 will begin to change attitudes in the light of experience is

something this journal will wish to study, but the authors have their doubts.

Foreword