The emergence of a new HRM routine: Balancing between ostensive and performative aspects

This paper elaborates on the results of a multiple-case study of two distinct organisations: one in the private and the other in the public sector. We aimed to examine how new HRM policies were enacted in organisations where conventional HRM hiring routines were modified during the enactment process. Questions, how ostensive aspects of routines constrain and/or enable members in this process, and how ostensive aspects of routines are modified and evolve into new routines, guided our research. Results show that in the public organisation ostensive aspects indeed hamper the development of the new HRM routine, but organisational members are keen to make use of the constrictive aspects of routines to create a better fitting policy. In the private organisation we observed the opposite. Namely, that the lack of ostensive aspects of routines while implementing the new HRM routine, leads to a power play in which roles are defined, responsibilities shifted, and finally lead to novel ostensive aspects that inspire the new routine to work. Our findings indicate that members actively change ostensive aspects of routines by taking initiative, claiming power segments, and behaving proactively to enact the policy, but in different ways depending on how the existing routine was performed in both organisations in the past.