The Place Makes the Perspective! The Context of Unitarist HRM Education in Austrian Universities | WIP Seminar with Julia Brandl

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Meeting ID: 845 2962 1872

Abstract: Despite concerns with unitarist tendencies, the adoption of unitarism in HRM education remains little understood. We use a practice perspective to explore the adoption of unitarist HRM courses in Austria, a setting where unitarism has been less pronounced in the past. The analysis of 452 course descriptions and related teacher profiles from 27 universities shows that HRM course perspective is strongly associated with the particular university, but only weakly linked to course or teacher characteristics. Unitarist HRM courses are more likely offered in Universities of Applied Sciences than in traditional universities, and within the group of traditional universities, in places with fewer HRM courses and less diversity of perspectives across courses. Based on these results, we suggest that the rise of unitarist education may be better understood as a consequence of the positioning of universities within the HRM education field than a result of business school formats or HRM scholars’ education backgrounds.

Bio: Julia Brandl's research is concerned with strategies for handling shifting priorities and uncertainties related to managing people and employment issues in work settings. She seeks to stimulate discussions that help to develop arrangements that align plural HRM goals and facilitate learning. She mainly works with Économie des conventions (EC), institutional theory and paradox.

Our CIRHR Work-In-Progress Seminar series allows members of our community to discuss early-stage research.