Culture Fit

HR strategies need to be congruent with the existing culture of the organization, or designed to produce cultural change in specified directions. This will be a necessary factor in the formulation stage but could be a vital factor when it comes to implementation. In effect, if what is proposed is in line with ‘the way we do things around here’, then it will be more readily accepted. However, in the more likely event that it changes ‘the way we do things around here’, then careful attention has to be given to the real problems that may occur in the process of trying to embed the new initiative in the organization.

The Best Practice Approach 

This approach is based on the assumption that there is a set of best HRM practices and that adopting them will inevitably lead to superior organizational performance. Four definitions of best practice are given in Table 9.2. 

The ‘best practice’ rubric has been attacked by a number of commentators. Cappelli and Crocker-Hefter (1996) comment that the notion of a single set of best practices has been overstated: ‘There are examples in virtually every industry of firms that have very distinctive management practices… Distinctive human resource practices shape the core competencies that determine how firms compete.’ 

Purcell (1999) has also criticized the best practice or universalist view by pointing out the inconsistency between a belief in best practice and the resource-based view which focuses on the intangible assets, including HR, that allow the firm to do better than its competitors. He asks how can ‘the universalism of best practice be squared with the view that only some resources and routines are important and valuable by being rare and imperfectly imitable?’ The danger, as Legge (1995) points out, is that of ‘mechanistically matching strategy with HRM policies and practices’. 

In accordance with contingency theory, which emphasizes the importance of interactions between organizations and their environments so that what organizations do is dependent on the context in which they operate, it is difficult to accept that there is any such thing as universal best practice. What works well in one organization will not necessarily work well in another because it may not fit its strategy, culture, management style, technology or working practices. As Becker et al (1997) remark, ‘Organizational high-performance work systems are highly idiosyncratic and must be tailored carefully to each firm’s individual situation to achieve optimum results.’ But knowledge of best practice can inform decisions on what practices are most likely to fit the needs of the organization as long as it is understood why it is best practice. And Becker and Gerhart (1996) argue that the idea of best practice might be more appropriate for identifying the principles underlying the choice of practices, as opposed to the practices themselves.