'HRM and performance', research without theory? A literature review

Due to the increasingly intense global competition and the corresponding search for sources of sustained competitive advantage during the last thirty years, the interest in strategic management has risen, both among academics and practitioners. This evolution resulted in various organisational functions becoming more concerned with their role in the strategic management process. The Human Resource Management field has similarly sought to become integrated into this process through the development of a new discipline referred to as Strategic Human Resource Management. One of the central issues that has been studied in the field of SHRM is the HRM-performance relationship. Despite the pile of studies on this topic, it has been criticised for its lack of a strong theoretical foundation. The purpose of this literature review is to make a journey of exploration through the (S)HRM-performance literature and to map out the different theories that can be useful in understanding and explaining the complex relationship between these two variables. This 'theory mapping' should enable us to decide upon the presence or absence of theory within this research field. Our main conclusion is that this field does not suffer from a lack of theories. On the contrary, the existing theories include economical, sociological as well as psychological perspectives and all together they shed some light on how HRM might be determined and how the mechanisms within the black box might work. Moreover, conditions are proposed under which HRM can lead to higher performance. The real problems researchers are coping with can be summarised as follows: (1) the difficulties the (combination of) present theories impose on empirical research, (2) a lack of theory building with regard to the concepts of HRM and performance and their measurement and (3) the constant theoretical reorientation because of the ever returning criticism.status: publishe