Articlegreen2020

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

90 citations0/0 files storedHuman Resource Management Journal

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Human Resource and Talent Management Management Theory and Practice Organizational Management and Change

Abstract

Abstract This paper engages with Troth and Guest (2019) on psychology 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 psychologisation, not psychology per se, that is the critics' focal concern and describe how the three‐decade advance of psychologisation, along with scholastic scientism and normative promotionalism, have created severe theoretical and empirical problems in the high‐performance research programme and taken the strategic HRM field down a 30‐year dead‐end. Suggestions for a turn‐around are provided.

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References

1995THE IMPACT OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ON TURNOVER, PRODUCTIVITY, AND CORPORATE FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE.1936Principles of topological psychology.2005Bad Management Theories Are Destroying Good Management Practices 1996MODES OF THEORIZING IN STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: TESTS OF UNIVERSALISTIC, CONTINGENCY, AND CONFIGURATIONS. PERFORMANCE PREDICTIONS.1992Theoretical Perspectives for Strategic Human Resource Management 1997Human resource management and performance: a review and research agenda 2005The Handbook of Economic Sociology 2014Employee Voice and Silence

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