An HRM Perspective on Employee Participation

Abstract Since the 1980s, human resource management (HRM) has become the most widely recognized term in the Anglophone world referring to the activities of management in organizing work and managing people to achieve organizational ends. HRM itself can be subdivided into three domains: micro HRM, strategic HRM, and international HRM. This diversity in HRM leads to a major problem if one is asked to describe an HRM perspective on employee participation. The response to this challenge is to emphasize the value of taking an ‘analytical approach’ to HRM. This article applies an analytical HRM approach to the study of contemporary patterns of employee representation and participation. It describes the trends in employee-voice practices and the larger organizational patterns of which they form a part. The focus is mainly on the Anglo-American world, but some comparisons are also made with practices outside the Anglophone sphere to illustrate what is distinctive.