This webinar develops insights from the presenter’s 2024 HRMR paper “Conceptual and methodological issues in international and comparative HRM: transferring lessons from comparative public policy”. Divided into three main sections, it begins by briefly elaborating on six dichotomies identified in the paper’s three headline disciplines: 1) conceptual/methodological, 2) international/comparative, 3) convergence/divergence, 4) standardisation/localisation, 5) transfer/diffusion, 6) feasibility/adaptability. It then uses comparable case study evidence of the United Kingdom’s 2024 election debate on National Service to detail the iterative purification process necessary to conceptualise and contextualise comparable phenomenon within an international context. By exploring the historical, spatial, and developmental reasons why countries adopt national service, the mini-case study also examines the related prospects for lesson learning and policy transfer, before converting them to an HR context. Finally, the webinar concludes by revisiting the issue of case selection across the single, small-N, and large-N study possibilities, both within and across subject disciplines.

About the speaker:

Paul Higgins is an associate professor within the Faculty of Business and Law at Anglia Ruskin University. His research interests straddle the public policy, HRM, and leadership domains. He is currently conducting research exploring 1) the changing quality of life conditions at local authority level across England over a twenty-year period, and 2) an international comparative study of HR professionalisation.

As an international partnership, the IHRM series welcomes speakers from all over the world and multiple time zones. This session will be recorded to share with registrants who are not able to attend the live session.

The event is free and open to anyone who is interested, but you must register to receive the zoom link to attend. This link will be emailed to you before the event.