Event Details

The OWT research seminar is presented by Professor Steve Vincent from Newcastle University. This seminar will be a blended one with an opportunity for you to attend in person in LUMS WP B007 or accessing it online via Teams. There will also be tea and coffee provided. Teams Meeting ID: 369 775 620 777 Passcode: ESDNV4

This presentation will discuss the contribution and potential contributions of critical realist scholarship (CRS) for the development of HRM theory, research, and practice. CRS, which is founded on a radical humanist philosophy of science that was substantively developed by Roy Bhaskar, will be used as “underlabourer” to meta-analyse and de/reconstruction the field of enquiry. The critique will consider the potential of HRM, or what HRM is and might be like, under different contextual conditions. Mainstream HRM theory, with its pragmatic and prescriptive intentions, will be framed as a potentially useful set of ideas that may guide management practice. However, such prescriptions are known to be enacted in particular and/or partial ways and within contexts that contain a plethora of other causal mechanisms and social forces, which often combine inhibit the realisation of more humane versions of HRM. Consequentially, and alongside a general need for ongoing critique of HRM, a core problem for CRS informed studies is to identify, study and imagine those contextual conditions are more likely to enable more humane versions of HRM. In light of this need, the practices and content of HRM will be considered as an ongoing professional project that has various future possibilities.

Steve Decent’s research interests include organisational forms and their consequences for employment; critical perspectives on Human Resource Management; professional self-employment; skills and soft skills; and various diversity-based issues. He uses critical theories, such as Labour Process Theory, Critical Realism, and Bourdieusian Sociology, to consider the implications for critical perspectives for applied social research about contemporary work and organisational issues.