Compliance Police or Business Partner? Institutional Contradictions and Contested Legitimacy in Human Resources

这是一项关于竞争性机构需求对职业角色和实践的影响的研究。该研究小组将研究人力资源（HR）部门和从业人员的努力，以科普有助于其公司的竞争优势和确保其符合各种法律的规定之间的紧张关系。对人力资源经理的定期调查发现，人力资源部门在实现公司所希望的战略角色方面几乎没有取得进展。这个研究小组的理论认为，这种缺乏进展可能是由于相互竞争的制度需求之间的根本冲突。他们将探讨这种冲突如何塑造实际的人力资源实践和人力资源专业人员在组织中发挥的作用，以及这种塑造可能产生的影响。从经验上讲，该项目依赖于人种学观察，访谈和人力资源专业人员在对比的领域设置的内部普查：一个高性能和低性能的工作场所的可取性。选择公司进行研究还考虑到其行业的平等就业机会申请率（每1,000名雇员提出的索赔），根据为该项目创建的独特数据库。就更广泛的影响而言，研究结果应该适用于许多受到提高竞争力的目标与确保遵守法规的努力之间的紧张关系影响的职业：例如，会计师以及处理萨班斯-奥克斯利法案的首席执行官或汽车设计工程师在立法安全目标和燃油效率之间进行权衡。此外，该项目将建立一个按行业分列的平等就业机会委员会申请率的独特数据库。这些数据将每年更新，并提供给所有感兴趣的研究人员。最后，在一定程度上，该项目揭示了组织用来解决歧视和不公平待遇投诉的内部程序，其调查结果将提供一个明智的观点，如平等就业机会委员会等机构如何更有效地确保内部合规，从而减少与索赔处理和执行相关的负担。

This is a study of the effects of competing institutional demands on the roles and practices of a profession. The research team will examine Human Resource (HR) departments and practitioners' efforts to cope with the tensions between contributing to their company's competitive advantage and ensuring its compliance with various legal mandates. Periodic surveys of HR managers find that HR has made little progress toward fulfilling a hoped-for strategic role in firms. This research team theorizes that this lack of progress may result from a fundamental conflict between competing institutional demands. They will explore how this conflict shapes actual HR practices and the roles that HR professionals play in organizations as well as the effects that such shaping may have. Empirically, the project relies on ethnographic observation, interviews, and an internal census of HR professionals in contrasting field settings: one high performer and one low performer in terms of workplace desirability. Selection of the companies to study also takes into account their industry's EEOC filing rate (claims filed per 1,000 employees), based on a unique data base created for this project. In terms of broader impacts, the results should be applicable to numerous professions affected by tensions between their aims to enhance competitiveness and efforts to ensure compliance with regulation: for example, accountants as well as CEOs dealing with Sarbanes-Oxley or automotive design engineers making tradeoffs between legislated safety targets and fuel efficiency. Furthermore, the project will create a unique database of EEOC filing rates by industry. These data will be updated annually and made available to all interested researchers. Finally, to the extent that the project uncovers the internal processes organizations use to address discrimination and unfair treatment complaints, its findings will offer an informed point of view on how agencies such as the EEOC can more effectively ensure internal compliance and, thus, reduce the burden associated with claims processing and enforcement.