Inter-organisational human resource management and network orientation of worker representatives: a practice-based perspective

Abstract

We develop a practice-based framework of inter-organisational human resource management that puts multi-employer work arrangements in inter-firm networks at its centre. By reinterpreting existing knowledge on multi-employer work arrangements and how they are managed, we delineate four processes in the assemblage of inter-organisational HR management. To illustrate the usefulness of our framework, we explore the question of whether and how an inter-organisational HR management develops in four exemplary cases of multi-employer work arrangements. These cases reveal that the quality and degree of inter-organisational HR management varies considerably, also depending on whether worker representatives show network awareness and orient their activities towards inter-organisational relations.

‘Human resource management and the worker’: employee voice in management

“…Financialisation, with the pressure that it puts on wages, fosters managerial practices that reduce worker voice: there is no room here to consider employees’ interests, especially in the area of wages (see Gouzoulis et al, 2024). Similarly, network organisations that lead to fragmented workforce organisation provide a context in which employees, de facto, cannot organise their collective voice (see Helfen et al, 2024). ‘ Distance alters actors’ interdependence and their perceived and actual power in addressing conflict’ (Riordan and Kowalski, 2021: 580).…”