Strategic human resources management is irrelevant when it comes to highly skilled professionals in the Canadian new economy

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to explain the commitment behaviour of highly skilled professionals in Canadian business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies that do not have a formal and explicit managerial commitment strategy and to emphasize the need to take the organizational context into consideration when developing a theory that seeks to account for differences in employee's organizational commitment. Our contribution is to reappraise the relevance of the traditional organizational commitment definition in this organizational context, a new organizational form. We demonstrate that in the companies which are different from the traditional bureaucratic organizational forms and which employ highly qualified professionals, the employment relationship is based on a psychological contract that is not accounted for in the strategic HRM theory.

Indeed, the basic principles of strategic HRM dictate that an organization's most valuable asset is its employees; it is therefore incumbent on management to do whatever is necessary to retain its workforce, readily described as a key resource, and to use human resources management (HRM) practices as tools to elicit commitment. In a study of highly skilled workers in Canadian business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies belonging to the so-called ‘new economy’, we observed that although the competitive advantage enjoyed by these companies depends to a large degree on the creativity and innovativeness of their workforce, these companies barely have any official HRM policies, and the HR department plays a very unobtrusive role. Yet, no one could say that the employees in these firms are not committed – on the contrary! This situation has several implications in terms of career for these professionals, in terms of HR practices for the employers.

Nevertheless, until now, existing theoretical models of organizational commitment have shown little interest in highly skilled workers in general and even less in new economy professionals.

Keywords:

• business-to-business (B2B) technology services companies
• highly skilled professionals
• informal management
• new economy
• organizational commitment
• strategic HRM theory

Acknowlegdement

This research project, funded by the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture (FQRSC), was carried out under the supervision of co-author Marie-Josée Legault.

Notes

1. We have adopted the following definitions: ‘project management’ is the term used in industries where production naturally lends itself to organization into projects, that is, the successive production of deliverable objects at a given price and according to a given schedule (in the construction industry, for instance), whereas ‘management by project’ is used in sectors of the economy that have recently ‘switched over’ to this form of management, with companies adopting the processes (teams with determined durations and changing membership, a certain degree of autonomy in organizing tasks and assuming responsibility for the achievement of specific objectives), even though their production does not inherently require these actual characteristics. Logically, the term ‘management by project’ can encompass both types, and the scope of the term ‘project management’ is limited to sectors where the organization of work into projects is inherent in production or demand.