I will argue that IHRM (like business and management studies in general and human resource management studies specifically) has operated from an elitist base: that has not only led to a distortion in our research but has led to some unwanted, negative and even nefarious outcomes. This has been caused by our focus on the interests of owners of businesses (when the vast majority of people are not owners); on large international organizations (when 95 percent of people work in small local ones); on managers and executives (when 80 percent of people are neither); on talent management (when 95 percent of people are not classed as talent); on western organizations (when most of the world does not fit into that category); on employed people (when increasing proportions of workers are outside employment); on indigenous populations (when increasing numbers are migrants); etc. What this means is that we have largely ignored the problems and issues of most people in the world. I will suggest that focusing on the non-elite will avoid contributing further to the negative impact our work has created so far and positively address some of the grand challenges that the world is facing.
Occurrences
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Thursday, September 15, 2022