Bilateral (Hong Kong): The professionalization of human resource management in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom

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The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the Institute of Human Resource Management (IHRM) represent the major professional institutes of human resource practice in the UK and Hong Kong respectively. Between 2008 and 2010 both bodies were involved in major restructuring of their qualifications, membership standards and continuous personnel development credentials with a view to increasing the perceived value and influence of the HRM profession. In the UK, following a strategic review leading to a vision of the future role of HR, the CIPD launched a new map of the profession built around ten professional areas of competence, eight behavioural areas of practice and four bands of professional transition, from entry-level to director. Likewise, in Hong Kong, the IHRM launched its new membership scheme which is built around the practicing standards of knowledge, experience and capability. Like the CIPD's professional map, the IHRM's professional standards model provides a framework to help navigate HR practitioners' career paths and map their development needs. In the case of the CIPD the latest move seems to symbolise the latest development in a long period of reforming the identity of the discipline away from a reactive transactional support activity into a proactive strategic function. The IHRM's motives are similar. Moreover, in scanning IHRM events and publications over the past two years strongly suggests an agenda inspired by the 'Next Generation HR' narrative: indeed, there is a strong and growing cross-collaboration between the IHRM and the CIPD in both professional events and collaborative projects. However, little is known about how the normative content of the new agenda will have to the stated abilities and workplace experiences of their targeted client base across all levels. In raising the aspired status of the HR practitioner, will those transactional functions be marginalised? In addition, will the new professional standards contribute to the establishment of a greater consensus as to what constitutes a universal best practice HRM? For HRM in general, the professionalization of HR practice has been a somewhat controversial project since it involves the granting of normative institutional legitimacy to what is essentially a 'captured' management function that could, by implication, have important career-changing implications for its own membership base and also for other organisational colleagues whose future development depends on the influence that the HR function is able to yield within organisations. Therefore, in seeking to provide a detailed insight into what it means to be a qualified HR practitioner in Hong Kong and the UK and the role that the respective professional institutes are exerting in developing and maintaining these ideals this study compares the normative content, institutional impact and workplace credibility of the two sets of professional standards arising. Not only will the data provide a timely independent overview of the current status of HR practice in both national contexts but, by comparing the evidence, it will also be possible to gauge a detailed sense of whether HR is achieving international homogeneity which overrides a range of historical, cultural, institutional and economic factors. Working collaboratively the UK and Hong Kong teams will deploy a mixed methodological approach comprising analysis of core documentation, elite interviews with senior members of the two professional institutes, survey of existing practitioners' attitudes and experiences and follow-up interviews designed to explore more deeply the explanations behind participants' experiences and expectations of HR practice. From this extensive range of empirical data the research team will be able to consider the workplace relevance of the normative content of the two professional institutes and from within a variety of industry settings and at different levels of membership.