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

Stanford University, Stanford CA

Investigators

Abstract

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.