HRM Guide publishes articles and news releases about HR surveys, employment law, human resource research, HR books and careers that bridge the gap between theory and practice.
This guide is based on Human Resource Management in a Business Context,
and includes links to extra articles, notes, tips and exercises.
HRM has been addressed by a number of writers from a 'discourse'
perspective. Discourse involves language, but language is not neutral: it has power. By saying,
you are doing. Thus the talk of HRM is not just words, it is also action.
The proponents of this view have latched on to the frequently-quoted
dichotomy of 'rhetoric and reality' as a particular matter of concern. According to Poole (1999:302):
"A discursive analysis would involve an analysis of the situations that
provoked the discourse of HRM, the consequences to which it gives rise, the practical field
in which it is deployed, who is accorded the right to speak, the institutional sites from
which discourse derives its legitimation, the position in which it places its subjects, what is
recognised as valid, and who has access to the discourse ..."
The theoretical underpinning of this approach comes from the work of Foucault and
Barbara Townley has been a significant exponent of his postmodernist notions in her analyses
of HRM.
But is postmodernist discourse analysis on the way out? In the second edition of Human Resource Management,
Rhetorics and Realities Karen Legge (2004:3) states that:
"...the discussion of HRM as a post-modern/postmodern phenomenon
... has now a slightly passe´ feel. Postmodernism, in a similar
manner to managerial consultancy fashions ...
has fallen somewhat out of fashion in the analysis of HRM."
"With some honourable exceptions (for example, Keenoy,
1999; Special Issue, Organization, 1999), there has been a retreat from
postmodernist approaches to HRM, although some discourse analysis, largely
from a critical theory perspective, lingers on ..."
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