HUMNA RESOURCING IN PRACTICE: MANAGING EMPLOYMENT ISSUES IN THE UNIVERSITY

摘要

Participant observation in two universities is used to throw light on processes of sensemaking engaged in by managers concerned with human resourcing issues. Analysis of managerial sensemaking in the case study orgainzations is carried out using concepts form earlier sociological therorizing about human resource or personnel management, treating these theoretical ideas as resources for use in the researchers' own sensemaking. It is sown that theoretical `sense' can be made of the managerial or `lay' sensemaking in the universities in terms of a need to handle various tensions which are inherent in all employment management work in industrial capitalist societies. And it is argued that there is clear continuity between what is currently occurring and has occurred in the past. This interpretation is shown to differ from that of an alternative approach in social science sensemaking, that which uses the notion of a new paradigm of `HRM'.