Human Resources Management in Schools Understanding the Implementation Gap through the Lens of Discourses

Introduction Human resources management (HRM) is increasingly viewed as a means to enhance school effectiveness via teacher quality improvement. (e.g. Heneman & Milanowski, 2007). HRM refers to all policies, procedures and practices that are explicitly targeted at attracting, retaining, functioning, developing and rewarding teachers in such a way that it results in optimal teacher performance as well as in optimal school performance (DeArmond, Shaw & Wright, 2009). While HRM policy and practices are more or less generally accepted and executed in profit organizations, in schools it is a relatively new policy domain (OECD, 2005) which proves hard to implement in a systematic and functional way (Smylie, Miretzky, & Konkol, 2004). Despite the increasing importance of HRM for schools and the fact that implementation often stagnates, research on HRM in education is scarce and mostly focus on single HRM practices like performance pay (Heneman et al, 2007; Smylie, et al., 2004). Our paper fulfills this need by examining the implementation gap of HRM policy in Dutch schools, using a discourse perspetive Discourses refer to the way actors interpret the policy, its necessity, its goals and features, and its intended as well as unintended effects (e.g. Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002). Successful implementation of policies depends at least in part on congruency between the objectives and ideas behind these policies and the ways in which actors who are involved in the policy implementation process perceive and interpret these (Yanow, 1996). The central research question within this paper is: To what extent can the implementation gap of HRM be explained by contradictions within or between discourses of different stakeholders of this policy?

Context of the study The study is conducted within the Dutch Vocational Education and Training sector (VET), which is comparable to that of most other western countries where large educational reform is taking place and where schools are held more and more accountable for student outcomes and consequently for teachers quality and HR practices (OECD, 2005). About a decade ago, ECS started to stimulate schools to implement HRM policy, as a means to enhance teachers performance and professional development in line with school development. The HRM concept has evolved over time and is increasingly inspired by the business sector (ECS, 2007). Despite all investments, the implementation of HRM keeps lagging behind expectations (ECS, 2010).

Theoretical framework The implementation of HRM in education can be viewed in the light of the broader tendency to import management principles, which have emerged in the business context, into education (OBrien & Down, 2002). The current dominant managerial discourse on education is characterized by a customer-oriented ethos, concern for efficiency and cost-effectiveness (Gewirtz & Ball, 2000). Different authors have stressed teachers resistance towards the managerial discourse on education; the increased amount of curriculum control is associated by teachers feeling deskilled (Ingersoll, 2003); accountability procedures may be experienced as an intensification of teachers work (Burcheilli, 2006); teachers strive to be rewarded for enhanced performance can increase competition among teachers and decrease collaboration (Merson, 2001).

Implementation of HRM can be viewed as a way of, what Giroux (2000) calls, corporatizing public education. Stagnation may occur as a result of local stakeholders resistance towards this approach. To examine this, we analyzed the discourses through the lens of two dominant discourses on the function of HRM which are derived from HRM and management literature, namely a control and a commitment approach. The Control-HRM approach refers to a focus on performance and increase in profit and the Commitment-HRM approach refers to a focus on engagement and development (e.g. Arthur 1994; Khatri, Bajeva, Boren, et al., 2006). The basic assumption of the control approach to HRM is that people are incapable of self-regulating behavior and cant be trusted and manifests itself in practices like monitor and evaluation systems. Commitment-based HRM on the other hand is associated with the basic assumption that people are capable of self-regulation and, given the opportunity and development experience, they will seek responsibility and exercise initiative and is translated into practices like task differentiation and employee participation. The controlcommitment distinction is mainly analytical and in practice the control-commitment distinction should be considered as a continuum rather than as strictly separated concepts.

Method We first reconstructed ECS policy theory i.e. elucidate the logic behind the policy program (Hoogerwerf, 1990) - by analyzing policy documents and by interviewing three policymakers of ECS. After this we examined to what degree discourses of school management and teachers resembled or differed from that of ECS. Three schools are included in our analyses. School management is interpreted as the board, line managers and the HRM department. We first read local HRM policy plans and mission

statements and then held semi-structured interviews with different representatives of stakeholder groups in which we presented the reconstructed policy theory of ECS and asked whether they agreed or disagreed on the accompanying assumptions. Interviews with Board members (n=3) and HR managers (n=4) were held individually. Line managers were interviewed in groups (n=5; n=6) and individually (n=3). The discourse of teachers was analyzed by first reading relevant research reports on teachers attitude towards their jobs, schools and policy and interviews in groups (4 groups of 15 teachers on average) and individually (n=7).

Results Because of the word limit, we cannot go too much into detail here. The paper which we like to present includes an extensive analysis of each stakeholders discourse in terms of perceived underlying problem and causes; assumptions about how to solve the problem; normative beliefs and conditions for successful implementation. It also includes citations.

Conclusion and discussion Our results reveal that local stakeholders (management and teachers) not disagree with the control approach to HRM of government but perceive that a commitment orientation needs to be added for HRM to be effective in enhancing teachers motivation to perform optimally and continuously develop themselves. It appears that it is school managements move to embed ECS main ingredients of HRM policy into school level HRM policies in which commitment strategies can be integrated. It seems that HRM implementation mainly stagnates at this point and that a learning process is taking place at the level of the school board and line management about their role; specifically about what aspects of the human resources have to be controlled (like

professionalization of teachers in the light of new educational concept), and what aspects (like the way teachers or teams want to professionalize themselves) can be left over to the individual teachers and teams.

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