Book review: The ideological evolution of human resource management: A critical look into HRM research and practices

Once again, the Critical Management Studies series has brought out a book worth reading. Several journal publications and special issues have proved that Human Resource Management (HRM) is ideological, but a systematic overview of the ideological nature of HRM was missing. This book fills this gap. The conceptual part stands alone; the methodology is clear and findings are interesting.

Itani starts by making a clear distinction between Critical Theory and critical theory, arguing that Critical Theory (with capital letters) refers to a ‘philosophical and ideological […] continuum from German idealist philosophy to Marxist theory’ (p. 2), which leads to the Frankfurt School. The author shows that there is no statement free from ideology in science, and even to quote Gramsci, ‘ideologies are science’ (p. 11). He goes further – social science does not to discover ‘truth’, rather it creates ‘truth’. Consequently, when we investigate the history of science, we can identify groups of scientists who agree on what problems science should solve and more or less how these scientific problems are to be solved. These scientific communities and their ideologies create paradigms.

While the author states that HRM remains meta-theoretically underdeveloped, which means that theories in HRM are less paradigmically reflected, Itani presents Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) matrix as possible frames of reference in organization studies, which might be an umbrella discipline of HRM. To my great surprise, Itani mentions the lack of multi-paradigm studies in the field of HRM and states that HRM is largely dominated by positivist research, which is a far less surprising statement. Unfortunately, this line of thought is not developed further, although it remains an interesting detour.

The author then clarifies the five forms of ideology from Giddens (1979):

He uses these forms of ideology for the methodology to discover different forms and gives a comprehensive summary of all five forms. He even lists the related concepts, which makes them even more comprehensible for the readers, who were not familiar with these ideological constructs.

Historical accounts about the early steps toward Critical Theory, the birth of the Frankfurt School, with special emphasis on Horkheimer and Habermas, lead the reader beyond Critical Theory. The succinct description of theories and thinkers makes it possible to understand the main arguments of Critical Theory and its impact on management thought. I am especially grateful for the insights about Adorno’s criticism of the culture industry and consumerism; I wish more people were aware of this, as it is even more important to our contemporary life and consumption of ‘culture’ than it was when Adorno first published his ideas about it.

Itani found a creative solution as to how to include the ideas of Foucault. Although he mainly concentrated on the Frankfurt School, he adds Foucault as if he would somehow ‘enrich’ Critical Theory. What a nice solution. Foucault undoubtedly had a large impact on organization studies, and his thoughts were easily adoptable to modern organizations. Indeed, Bentham’s perfect prison (the Panopticon, as it was presented in Foucault, 1977) has already had an explicit application in HRM by Townley (1994). But Itani does not limit his description only to Foucault’s genealogical period but also his archaeological period and their impacts on organization. It is worth mentioning that Nietzsche’s genealogy and its impact on Foucault are also part of the Foucauldian presentation. We are quite far already from the Frankfurt School.

After this historical overview, Itani arrives at a short summary of Critical Management Studies, which is well written; he gives a brief summary of Critical HRM, and he does not forget to write about the criticism of Critical theory. With all these, the first 83 pages of the book can be easily used as supplementary reading (or maybe even compulsory reading) for a Critical Management Studies course, or a Critical HRM course, which deals with these theoretical bases.

The second part of the book presents the methodology and findings of Itani’s research. Human Resource Management journal (which was previously Management of Personnel Quarterly), which is the leading journal of HRM (high on Financial Times list and ABS list too), is analysed to see whether the articles contain ideology and what forms this takes. Itani does not analyse all articles, but only the most cited one. Unsurprisingly, they all contain some sort of ideology. He divides the examined decades into five periods, and the five forms of ideology defined by Giddens (1979) are systematically identified. Probably the most interesting result is that the 1994–2001 period was the most heavily ideologically laden – by all five forms of ideology. Let us keep in mind that our contemporary HRM textbooks all build on these publications, and more recent academic sources are only sporadically present in textbooks. This is one more reason why this book can be used as complementary material for mainstream and critical HRM courses.