“If I end up with more responsibility and less control - forget it”: A discussant's perspective

The paper by Mirvis & Lawler is an accurate, informative and thought provoking analysis and assessment of the current market for new and better tools designed to aid the cause of increased organizational accountability for human resources. Their assessment is based on two action research projects undertaken by the authors which created internal and external reporting systems, respectively, for a bank and a manufacturing firm which emphasized the firms’ management of human resources. The paper is of particular interest both because of its action research origins and the fact that in neither case did the efforts to create new information tools for human resource management meet with success in terms of ready adoption by the host organizations. The paper provides the authors with an opportunity to step back, make sense of their experience and account for the firms’ lack of enthusiasm for enhanced information tools in this area of management. I was sufficiently intrigued and motivated by the paper to develop a perspective which would help me account for the degree of resistance/acceptance of new information systems in the area of human resource management. It will be evident from my analysis that in most respects I agree with the authors but in several important areas our points of view travel along separate paths. I began to make progress when I asked myself with what degree of acceptance/rejection would I greet the introduction of either the internal system or the external reporting system described by the authors if I were one of the managers on the receiving end of these innovation efforts? To my surprise I realized that if I were one of those managers upon whom the new system were dropped I would actively resist its incorporation, and perhaps even more surprisingly, I would resist openly with little fear that there would be any cost to me personally for opposing its introduction. What’s more I would not feel even a twinge of guilt about my opposition in terms of any concern that I was putting my self interests ahead of the “rightful progress” of human resource management. What follows is my rationale. At a personal level I trust those who have demonstrated an ability and willingness to see me whole that is, to view my efforts and accomplishments against my commitments and within the context of the circumstances within which I operate. This does not mean that I require others to focus exclusively on my needs and my reality. It does mean that I do expect from those I trust the capacity to place my efforts in context at those moments when judgements regarding the quality and appropriateness of my efforts are being made. Barney & Ouchi (1981) use the term trust in a similar sense but with a different twist. For Ouchi trust is measured by the willingness of an individual to forego or sacrifice today in the belief that the system or organization has the capacity to compensate him in the future. This view of trust holds that when trust breaks down, each transaction becomes an “equity” issue whereby all parties feel the need to exact their rightful share from the current exchange with the result that two minute decisions become four hour meetings. Both views place trust in the context of a longer and broader relationship with emphasis on