What Do HR Managers Really Do?

Catherine L. Welch and Denice E. Welch ()
Additional contact information
Catherine L. Welch: University of Sydney
Denice E. Welch: University of Melbourne

Management International Review, 2012, vol. 52, issue 4, No 5, 597-617

Abstract: Abstract The contribution of the HR function in supporting international business operations has received limited attention to date, with even less attention paid to HR roles. This article seeks to address this by studying the role of HR managers on international projects. We identify five IHR roles: service provider, policy police, strategic partner, change agent; and welfare officer. We also identifyhow these roles are enacted, questioning the prevailing divide between strategic and operational roles; and adding another dimension—emotional. We also argue that role enactment is context-specific; and show how context constrains as well as enables IHR role enactment.

Keywords: HR roles; Role enactment; IHR function; International project operations; Contextualizing HR (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11575-011-0126-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:manint:v:52:y:2012:i:4:d:10.1007_s11575-011-0126-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11575

DOI: 10.1007/s11575-011-0126-8

Access Statistics for this article

Management International Review is currently edited by Michael-Jörg Oesterle and Joachim Wolf

More articles in Management International Review from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().