Addressing Contextual Pressures and Challenges in Social Care: The Prospects of Multi-Actor Engagement With Strategic HRM
Alina Baluch, Dora Scholarios, Ian Cunningham, Philip James, Eva Jendro, Stewart Johnstone
Human Resource Management · 2025 · Volume 64 · Issue 6
Abstract
Drawing on an exemplary case of strategic HRM in a nonprofit social care provider responding to a recruitment and retention crisis, this article offers evidence for a multi-actor, recursive model of HRM implementation. We examine how multi-actor engagement with strategic HRM reinforces or modifies intended HRM, and how this engagement is shaped by external and internal contextual pressures in nonprofit social care organizations. Through an in-depth qualitative study, we shed light on the internal process dynamics that not only engender a shared understanding of intended HRM strategy and practice among key organizational actors (convergence) but also allow for local deviation (divergence) that forges a more adequate response to workforce challenges. Our study contributes to theory on the social dynamics of HRM implementation within wider institutional contexts while highlighting the limits of a business-oriented HRM system for delivering a sustainable workforce within social care.
Keywords
HRM implementation, HRM systems, nonprofit organizations, recruitment, retention, selection, social care, strategic HRM
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