Corporate Scandals as Punctuating Events That Change Human Resource Roles
Farndale, E., Paauwe, J., Boselie, P. & Horak, S.
(2024). Corporate Scandals as Punctuating Events That Change Human Resource
Roles. Journal of Management, inpress.
Link:
https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063231226137
Abstract
Corporate scandals disrupt the landscape for organizational leaders and
employees, providing a burning platform that creates new momentum for change.
Here, we explore the implications for the human resources (HR) function as
organization-level responses to scandals cannot occur without individual-level
changes in employee behaviors—the domain of HR. We apply event systems
theorizing to uncover the nature of the scandals through notions of strength,
space, and time to better understand the range of possible outcomes for HR
function roles. Empirical data are
presented from in-depth qualitative case studies carried out in five large
multinational corporations in the pharmaceutical, chemical, and financial
services industries. Subsequently, we uncover how organization-level scandals
punctuate the equilibrium of organizational operations, facilitating a
recalibration of the balance between the potentially competing institutional
logics of moral legitimacy and business priorities. We furthermore challenge
universal HR role typology theoriz ing regarding the direct influence of
external stakeholders on the role that HR can adopt inside organizations.
Overall, we demonstrate that organizational responses to corporate scandals
require individual-level and collective employee behavior change, placing the HR
function at the intersection of managing risk, compliance, and legal
requirements.
Keywords
Event Systems Theory; HR Function Roles; Corporate Scandals; External
Stakeholders; Compliance; Employee Behavior