Theories supporting the role of hrm in emerging technologies - Dissertation Example

Institutional theory is somewhat akin to the role theory, which argues that individuals respond to normative pressures as they seek approval for their performance in socially defined roles (Chuler, Jackson and Luo, 2004, pp.15). Institutional theory likens organizations to the individual as they function as social entities that also look for legitimacy and social acceptance. Organizations, in this perspective, are expected to conform because this is the only way that they are recognized and approved – variables that support their survival in environments that have multiple constituencies that control their needed resources (Chuler, Jackson and Luo, pp.15). In applying the institutional theory, there are the cases of multinational corporations and the emergent internationalization of management.

This theory is particularly significant in understanding the HRM practices of these organizations because of the view that socially constructed beliefs, rules and norms affect and exert influence over organizations and that, today, organizations (and their suborganizations) are under pressure to align their operations and adapt with their institutional environment (Stahl and Bjorkman, 2006, pp.463). Multinational companies are spread across locations with diverse environments. Institutional theory focuses on the variables that forces HRM practices to adapt to this condition.

The institutional variables that exert influence over an organization and its employees come from the institutional factors both from the parent organization and the local environment in which its subsidiary operates. According to Stahl and Bjorkman (pp.465): In the local context, the labour laws and regulations restrict the range of possible HRM practices, local managers have taken-for-granted views about management practices that influences the policies and practices that they suggest for the subsidiary, strong local professional norms may exist, and processes of institutionalization might also take place among MNCs (multinational companies) in the local country.

Hence, cultural-cognitive and normative institutional processes enfolding in the local context may play important roles in explaining HRM practices. Understandably, numerous studies that cite institutional theory and its relations with HRM practices were undertaken since the 1990s. The body of literature available today demonstrates how the theory supports the role and function of HR for modern organization. For instance, Walter Powell and Paul DiMaggio successfully demonstrated that organizations evolve because they are driven by coercive mechanisms, mimetic and normative forces.

Their work argued that these pressures force organization to move to one direction, making them more alike in the process. On the other hand, Greenwood and Hinings used institutional theory to demonstrate the details that were lacking in Powell and DiMaggio’s work. Specifically, they addressed other variables such as the uniqueness present in organizations as a result of diversity in interests as well as the role of human agency. What they were able to suggest was a condition wherein organizations are embedded in an institutional context.

What this means is that institutional pressures such as organizational context, intra-organizational relationships and decision-making of individuals within the organization, makes change difficult. By proposing that organizations remove themselves from their respective institutional con