People management policies and practices: strategic and institucional approaches

Abstract

Research in People Management has predominantly adopted strategic and behavioral frameworks and, more recently, the resource based view (RBV) and systemic approaches, while only a few works have been developed under different theoretical perspectives. In this research, managerial policies and practices are studied in an organizational network in order to investigate the infl uence of institutional factors such as legislation, shareholders, the organization’s historic heritage and market conditions over the design and implementation of People Management practices. The results show that, besides organizational strategy, institutional aspects may determine People Management policies and practices,providing evidences of advantages derived from incorporating institutional approaches in the studies of this fi eld.