Nonhuman Resource Practices: Control, Conformity and Contestation

Abstract

The aim of this chapter will be to consider how human resource procedures, policies, systems and documentation are deployed to control others and achieve conformity to organisational goals. As an insider ethnographic account it is also possible to demonstrate how the interpretation of these policies, practices, systems and documents are contested. This will involve the exploration of counter networks and the idea of hegemonic and ante-narrative (see Vickers, Beyond the hegemonic narrative – A study of managers. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 21, 560–573, 2008) This chapter will draw upon and inform Actor-Network Theory (Latour, The pasteurization of France. Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1988; Latour, Reassembling the social – An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005; Callon, Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of Saint Brieuc Bay. In Law, J. (Ed.) Power, action and belief (pp. 196–233). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986; Law, On the methods of long‐distance control: Vessels, navigation and the Portuguese route to India. In Law, J. (Ed.) Power, action and belief (pp. 234–263). London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984) in relation to HR and critical HR literature (Watson, HRM and critical social science analysis. Journal of Management Studies, 41 (3), 447–467, 2004; Delbridge and Keenoy, Beyond managerialism? International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21 (6), 799–817, 2010; Vickers and Fox, Towards practice-based studies of HRM: An actor network and communities of practice informed approach. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 21 (6), 899–914, 2010).