Samenvatting

The research goal of this dissertation is to make configurational HRM usable for science and practice by developing a simulation model and serious game. These tools offer HRM professionals the opportunity to design a multiyear HRM configuration that shapes employee behaviour, while enabling HRM research to get access to a level of detail that was not achieved earlier, contributing to the current state of the art knowledge on strategic HRM. To shape employee behavior in such a way that it contributes to overarching organizational goals, organizations often deploy a set of human resource management (HRM) practices. If the set of individual HRM-practices is designed correctly, they amplify each other in shaping the desired behavior. However, while there is wide agreement on the importance of combining HRM-practices in a configuration that reflects the organizational strategy, we notice a lack of consensus on which HRM-practices need to be combined given a specific strategic goal and organizational starting point. Furthermore, we did not find an agreement on how to design HRM configurations that shape the desired employee behavior within organizations in multiple years. As a result, HRM professionals that design HRM configurations are left empty handed. While the configurational approach has the potential to provide new insight on how HRM shapes employees’ behavior, applying the configurational mode of theorizing to HRM remains challenging. We explain this challenge by the level of theoretical and practical detail that is needed, by the application of the holistic principle when studying HRM configurations, and due to methodological issues. Traditional methods do not align to the dynamic assumptions and the large number of variables included in configurational HRM. In this dissertation we pose that the time is ripe to unlock the deserved value of configurational HRM for theory and practice. We do so by specifying the underlying assumptions and dynamic implications of the configurational mode of theorizing in HRM, and by defining and adding the needed level of detail. In the current research, configurational HRM is made applicable with the use of a simulation model and serious game. -172- Five sequential steps are taken to make configurational HRM applicable. Firstly, key principles of configurational HRM are identified. Secondly, to ground the simulation we look at the manifestation of ideal type HRM configurations in theory and practice. Thirdly, we collect the solidified practical knowledge of HRM professionals on the alignment of HRM-practices. Fourthly, an initial simulation model is created and tested. And finally, we solidified the simulation model for practice and research by implementing it in a serious game for HRM professionals. Taking these five steps, we have specified configurational HRM to an unprecedented level of detail that allows us to address its complexity empirically and theoretically. We claim that with the results of this research we have opened the scientific and empirical “black box” of configurational HRM. Furthermore, the simulation model and serious game provides HRM professionals with a tool to design firm specific HRM configurations in an interactive and fun way. While prior studies did already acknowledge the importance of alignment when designing HRM, the simulation model and serious game specify the general concept of alignment to a level at which HRM professionals and researchers can start selecting, designing, implementing and researching HRM configurations. The tools provide HRM professionals with a method to grasp, maneuver through the complexity of, and explore the implementation of multi-year firm specific HRM.