The real problem: The deadly combination of psychologisation, scientism, and normative promotionalism takes strategic human resource management down a 30‐year dead end

• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Date: 01 January 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12278
• Author: Bruce E. Kaufman

PROVOCATION PAPER

The real problem: The deadly combination of

psychologisation, scientism, and normative

promotionalism takes strategic human resource

management down a 30-year dead end

Bruce E. Kaufman

1,2

1

Department of Economics, Georgia State

University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

2

Centre for Work, Organization and

Wellbeing and Department of Employment

Relations & Human Resources, Griffith

University, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

Correspondence

Bruce E. Kaufman, Department of Economics,

Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303.

Email: bkaufman@gsu.edu

Present address

Bruce E. Kaufman, Department of Economics,

Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303.

Abstract

This paper engages with Troth and Guest (2019) on psy-

chology in HRM. I argue they misframe the central issue in

debate. The real problem is not psychology per se but

psychologisation—the drive to reduce explanation of macro-

level HRM outcomes to individual-level psychological-

behavioural factors and individual differences. Accordingly,

the most visible and harmful effects of psychologisation are

in strategic HRM and the HRM-performance literature but

Troth and Guest's defence of psychology does not cover

them. I use this response to re-establish that it is psycho-

logisation, not psychology per se, that is the critics' focal

concern and describe how the three-decade advance of

psychologisation, along with scholastic scientism and nor-

mative promotionalism, have created severe theoretical and

empirical problems in the high-performance research pro-

gramme and taken the strategic HRM field down a 30-year

dead-end. Suggestions for a turn-around are provided.

KEYWORDS

AMO model, high-performance work system, industrial relations,

strategic HRM

1|INTRODUCTION

I appreciate the opportunity to provide comment and perspective on Ashlea Troth's and David Guest's provocation

paper, “The Case for Psychology in HRM Research”(2019). Their four-part purpose is to rebut criticisms of

Received: 14 April 2019 Revised: 13 December 2019 Accepted: 14 December 2019

DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12278

Hum Resour Manag J. 2020;30:49–72. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hrmj © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 49

psychology in HRM, outline its positive contributions, propose a broader multidisciplinary/multimethod research

framework for HRM, and call on researchers from other disciplines and fields to shift from criticism to constructive

contribution. The HRM/psychology critics, Troth and Guest say, harm the field's progress with exaggerated,

misdirected, and partisan attacks. In the introduction (p. 1), they cite five papers guilty of “gross generalisations,”

starting with Godard (2014) and followed by Harley (2015), Siebert, Martin, & Bozic (2015), and two papers by Kauf-

man (2012, 2015a).

My evaluation is that Troth and Guest (2019) accomplish none of their four purposes, make their own over-

generalisations and partisan digs, and steer the debate in an unproductive direction. The real problem in the HRM

field is not with psychology but the process of psychologisisation—the drive to reduce explanation of macro-level

HRM outcomes to within-person psychological/behavioural constructs, processes, and states and their cross-person

differences. The most visible and harmful effects of psychologisation are in strategic HRM and its HRM-performance

research programme, but Troth and Guest scarcely mention them. Accordingly, I use this response to put the macro-

level part of the psychology–HRM debate back on the table, articulate the most troublesome issues, and in the pro-

cess endeavour to strengthen strategic HRM's theoretical foundation.

The conclusions are threefold. First, psychologisation has progressively worsened in strategic HRM; second, the

three complementary forces of psychologisation, normative promotionalism, and scholastic scientism have seriously

deteriorated the HRM-performance research programme; and third, the 30 years of strategic HRM research invest-

ment have yielded little new knowledge contribution of scientific or managerial value. The paper ends with several

suggestions for resuscitating the strategic HRM research programme.

2|TROTH AND GUEST: A READER'S GUIDE AND CAVEAT EMPTOR

Troth and Guest title their paper “The Case for Psychology in HRM Research”and say they are responding to criti-

cisms that a “psychological perspective either threatens progress in HRM research or sends it in the wrong direc-

tion.”This way of framing the debate sets up a non-issue and straw-man distraction. The title phrase “case for

psychology”implies one or more critics have argued the “case against,”but Troth and Guest provide no examples or

evidence.

This surmise is reinforced by letting the critics speak for themselves. None are broad-brush psychology

rejectionists. Godard (2014, p. 2), the most trenchant psychology critic, allows that “psychology has always played an

important role in some areas of HRM (e.g., selection and testing),”Siebert, Martin, and Bozic (2016, p. 278) state,

“Psychology and OB have their place, and so does functionalism, which we have been at pains to emphasize through-

out this article,”and Kaufman (2012:26) argues, “Strategic HRM suffers from too much psychologizing and not

enough economizing.”

The central issue for critics (Godard, 2014; also Shields & Grant, 2010; Kasyanenko, Nevado, Rimmer, & Soares,

2014) is not psychology per se but the expanding psychologisation of HRM at ascending meso (group), macro (organi-

sation), and national, international, and comparative levels. Psychologisation connotes, first, a trend over time and sec-

ond, an increase in the relative importance of psychology and, specifically, micro-individualist industrial-organisational

psychology (IOP) and its close business school offshoot organisational behaviour (OB).

Critics believe HRM by its nature spans a number of causal forces, institutions, disciplinary knowledge areas, and

normative interests and therefore needs to be researched and taught as a pluralist multidisciplinary field (Budd,

2019). Thus, when Troth and Guest (2019) advocate at the end of their paper an expanded multidisciplinary, multi-

method, multilevel, stakeholder framework for HRM research, they are preaching to the industrial relations/social

science choir who have long advocated and practiced this approach (e.g., Batt & Banerjee, 2012; Budd, 2004;

Kochan, 1998) and should instead focus on persuading their behavioural science colleagues who have a much thin-

ner record in cross-disciplinary/cross-level HRM research (e.g., employee voice, per Morrison, 2014; Chamberlin,

Newton, & LePine, 2018).

50 KAUFMAN