The Institutional Antecedents of the Assignment of HRM Responsibilities to Line Managers

• Author: Chris Brewster,Paul J. Gollan,Michael Brookes
• Date: 01 July 2015
• Published date: 01 July 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21632

Human Resource Management, July–August 2015, Vol. 54, No. 4. Pp. 577–597

© 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21632

Correspondence to: Chris Brewster, Henley Business School, HBS 137, Whiteknights Campus, University of

Reading, Reading, RG6 6UD, United Kingdom, Phone:+44 (0) 118 378 5249, E-mail: c.j.brewster@henley.ac.uk.

THE INSTITUTIONAL ANTECEDENTS

OF THE ASSIGNMENT OF HRM

RESPONSIBILITIES TO LINE

MANAGERS

CHRIS BREWSTER, MICHAEL BROOKES,

AND PAUL J. GOLLAN

This article uses large-scale international data to examine how much autonomy

organizations have to assign human resource management responsibilities to

line managers, as indicated in the prescriptions of the literature. We use data

from 11 countries to explore the impact of a variety of internal characteristics

of organizations and the kind of economy in which they operate. We fi nd that

around half of the organizations assign HRM responsibilities to the line and that

organizations appear to have considerable latitude in making choices in this area.

Organizations in the Nordic economies are most likely to assign responsibilities

for HRM to the line and those in the liberal market economies are the least

likely to do so. In any economy, larger organizations, unionized organizations,

and those with strategically positioned HRM departments are the least likely to

allocate responsibilities for HRM to the line. We discuss the implications of our

fi ndings for future research and for practice. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: line managers’ role in HRM, organizational choice, varieties of

capitalism, HRM identity, HRM function

2001; Wright, MacMahan, Snell, & Gerhart,

2001) and certainly one that especially dis-

tinguishes strategic HRM, the attempt to

link the management of people with the

organization’s objectives (Fombrun, Tichy, &

DeVanna, 1984; Hunt & Boxall, 1998; Schuler

& Jackson, 2007; Wright & MacMahan, 1992).

This article examines the contextual factors

that might influence the decision to allocate

HRM responsibilities to line management.

In particular, it considers five organizational

Introduction

The assignment of responsibilities

for human resource management

(HRM) to line managers outside the

HRM department has been argued

to be one of the defining character-

istics that distinguishes HRM from person-

nel administration (Kulik & Perry, 2008a,

2008b; McGovern, Gratton, Hope-Hailey,

Stiles, & Truss, 1997; Perry & Kulick, 2008;

Wright, 2008; Wright, Dunford, & Snell,

578 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, JULY–AUGUST 2015

Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

Organizations are

embedded in their

local economy,

and we find that

organizations in the

Nordic countries are

most likely to assign

responsibilities to

line managers, and

organizations in

the liberal market

economies the least

likely.

considerable gaps, in the HRM/line debates

the “line” encompasses all other managers

outside the HRM function. This, of course, is

a very varied group. It includes at a minimum

the senior executives, middle managers, and

frontline managers dealing directly with

employees carrying out the organization’s

business (Farndale & Kelliher, 2013). The

implications will be different. Thus, it may

well be that “top line executives believe that

a number of HR activities are critical to the

firm’s competitive advantage” (Wright et al.,

2001, p. 118), while other managers are more

concerned with effective administration of

HRM. Middle managers are “linking pins”

in the realization of HRM strategy (Currie &

Proctor, 2001). In some cases at least, front-

line managers appear to be less likely to

have any involvement in HRM (Maxwell &

Watson, 2006).

In this article, we adopt the widest defini-

tion: line managers are those managers not

in the HRM department. But on such a defi-

nition, why should such people be involved

in HRM? This is in a way a strange question.

It is difficult to see how managers, the peo-

ple who are responsible for getting things

done through others, could not have human

resource management responsibilities. That

has always been part of the managerial role

(Papalexandris & Panayotopolou, 2005). It

is line managers who deal on a daily basis

with allocating roles and monitoring the

performance of their subordinates (McGuire,

Garavan, Saha, & O’Donnell, 2006). It is dif-

ficult to see how line managers would not be

involved in human resource management.

Nevertheless, as organizations have devel-

oped separate specialists and departments

specifically for handling HRM, the allocation

of responsibilities between the parties is likely

to be contentious and contested, with accu-

sations of “bureaucratic overhead-cost HRM

departments” trying to “police” the activities

of wealth-creating line managers; and “line

management mavericks” refusing to accept

appropriate policies (Wright et al., 2001). The

exact allocation of responsibilities is therefore

a matter for empirical investigation.

The importance of understanding these

allocations has been emphasized by a series

factors: organizational size, the nature of the

workforce, the extent of unionization and the

location of collective bargaining as well as the

strategic nature of the HRM department. We

specifically also consider the nature of the

economy in which organizations are located

on the understanding that how organizations

manage their HRM may be embedded in the

local business system. We use the compara-

tive capitalisms literature to assess differences.

We control for sector and industry. Drawing

on a large-scale survey, we find that sector

and industry and the proportion of manual

employees have limited—if any—effect on the

decision to allocate HRM respon-

sibilities on the line. However, the

extent of unionization and the

strategic role of the HRM depart-

ment have significant effects,

though not always in the direc-

tion suggested in the literature.

Organizations are embedded in

their local economy, and we find

that organizations in the Nordic

countries are most likely to assign

responsibilities to line managers,

and organizations in the liberal

market economies the least likely.

Given the limitations of the sam-

ple and survey method, we argue

that further research is needed on

how the decision is made to del-

egate HRM responsibilities to line

managers.

The first question to be

answered, however, is who are

these line managers and why

should they be involved in HRM?

While the identification of HRM specialists

may be complicated by trendy modern titles

(Talent Management Consultant, etc.) and

the scope of the HRM section’s responsibili-

ties may vary, it is, in most cases, fairly clear

who is in the HRM department and who is

not. Who, however, are the line managers?

Strictly speaking, the term line manager cov-

ers those people in the management who are

directly responsible for production or services,

that is, managers who are not responsible for

service functions such as marketing, finance,

or HRM. Clearly, given that this would leave