A new approach to the best practices debate: are best practices applied to all employees in the same way?

Abstract

It is a known fact that the best practices approach proposes a series of HR practices that are beneficial to all companies. We, like other authors, believe that contingency factors exist that determine human resource management, and therefore do not agree with the universality of best practices. To be specific, we believe that these are used in companies, not in an exclusive manner, but rather with certain variations or in conjunction with other HR practices. The results of this work demonstrate that a set of companies does not use HR practices in the same way with all their employees, but rather that these vary in accordance with the value and uniqueness of the jobs to the companies in question.

Keywords:

• HRM
• best practices
• contingency factors
• job characteristics

Notes

Santiago Melián González and Domingo Verano Tacorante, Módulo C, Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales, Campus Universitario de Tapira, 35017, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain (tel:[phone]; e-mail: [email protected]).