Exploring the roles of HRM departments in privately owned and foreign investment enterprises in Vietnam : a repertory grid approach

Research on human resource management (HRM) within Western economies has shown that HRM has significant influence on organisational performance and sustained competitive advantage. The research literature demonstrates that high organisational performance is characterised by effective performance of HRM departments. A specific aspect of this research is around the contribution of HRM to organisation and strategic management in terms of particular roles played by HRM. The roles of HRM encapsulate a number of interrelated HRM functions, identified through empirical research in Western contexts. This thesis evaluated the effectiveness of HRM departments within an Asian emerging economy context by examining the roles of HRM and perceptions of the effectiveness of these roles held by specialist human resource managers compared to line managers. The framework of human resource roles used in this study is adapted from the framework developed by Ulrich and his associates: Administrative Expert, Employee Champion, Strategic Partner/Change Agent, and Talent and Resource Manager. The study compared and contrasted HRM departments in privately-owned firms from those of foreign-investment enterprises to allow some consideration of the impact of Vietnam’s unique national culture on the evolution of HRM practice. The HRM departments of eight organisations were researched via twelve interviews with human resource managers and line managers. The interview questions were developed from a pilot study based on nine interviews with human resource specialists. The pilot study included 40 function statements of human resource roles developed by Conner and Ulrich (1996), and hence further statements were added by integrating the findings in the pilot study and research of Ulrich and his associates (2009). The main study adopted the repertory grid approach to investigate the evaluation of key stakeholders about the effectiveness of HRM departments’ performance in various roles towards enhancing organisational performance. Their assessment was presented in terms of personal constructs in individual grids that were analysed at individual and organisational levels. In the pilot study, the present research recruited six human resource managers and three human resource experts. Participants involved in the main study were human resource specialists and non-human resource specialists who have been working in privately owned and foreign investment enterprises. There were eight interviewees from privately owned organisations and four respondents from foreign investment enterprises. To select qualified participants, the present study sought from a variety of functions in privately owned and foreign investment enterprises. All respondents in the present study had at least five year experience in specific fields, such as finance, supply chain, human resources, production and others. Nine interviews in the pilot study were analysed to correct questioning and wording. Twelve interviews in the main study were analysed by following three key steps of the repertory grid approach that included the analysis of simple relationship of elements, simple relationship of constructs, and explanation of meanings of individual interview grid