Institutional approaches to examining the influence of context on HRM

This chapter reviews three related, but distinctive, institutional approaches to HRM policies within organisations. They view institutions, organisations and their HRM policies as conceptually separate, but ontologically connected. In other words, they view context and HRM as intertwined, meaning that institutions play a key role in constituting what firms are and what HRM is in different contexts. We review work on HRM within 1) the ‘varieties’ approaches of the Varieties of Capitalism and business systems frameworks, 2) historical institutionalism, and 3) the regulationist framework. We highlight the similarities amongst, and differences between, them. In contrast to some other research perspectives, these institutional approaches add value to HRM analyses by explaining key variation amongst the nature of firms and how that variation influences important outcomes, such as HRM policies and practices, employees’ skill development, job tenure patterns and social inequality. They also provide frameworks to address 1) how and why HRM changes and 2) how national and international institutions influence the types of HRM that firms adopt and their ability to achieve different objectives in contrasting locations. They, individually and collectively, demonstrate the importance of context on the nature of organizations, what HRM is, and the links between HRM and organisational outcomes.