Bilateral (Hong Kong): The professionalization of human resource management in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and the Institute of Human Resource Management (IHRM) represent the major professional institutes of human resource practice in the UK and Hong Kong respectively. Between 2008 and 2010 both bodies were involved in major restructuring of their qualifications, membership standards and continuous personnel development credentials with a view to increasing the perceived value and influence of the HRM profession. In the UK, following a strategic review leading to a vision of the future role of HR, the CIPD launched a new map of the profession built around ten professional areas of competence, eight behavioural areas of practice and four bands of professional transition, from entry-level to director. Likewise, in Hong Kong, the IHRM launched its new membership scheme which is built around the practicing standards of knowledge, experience and capability. Like the CIPD's professional map, the IHRM's professional standards model provides a framework to help navigate HR practitioners' career paths and map their development needs.
In the case of the CIPD the latest move seems to symbolise the latest development in a long period of reforming the identity of the discipline away from a reactive transactional support activity into a proactive strategic function. The IHRM's motives are similar. Moreover, in scanning IHRM events and publications over the past two years strongly suggests an agenda inspired by the 'Next Generation HR' narrative: indeed, there is a strong and growing cross-collaboration between the IHRM and the CIPD in both professional events and collaborative projects.
However, little is known about how the normative content of the new agenda will have to the stated abilities and workplace experiences of their targeted client base across all levels. In raising the aspired status of the HR practitioner, will those transactional functions be marginalised? In addition, will the new professional standards contribute to the establishment of a greater consensus as to what constitutes a universal best practice HRM?
For HRM in general, the professionalization of HR practice has been a somewhat controversial project since it involves the granting of normative institutional legitimacy to what is essentially a 'captured' management function that could, by implication, have important career-changing implications for its own membership base and also for other organisational colleagues whose future development depends on the influence that the HR function is able to yield within organisations. Therefore, in seeking to provide a detailed insight into what it means to be a qualified HR practitioner in Hong Kong and the UK and the role that the respective professional institutes are exerting in developing and maintaining these ideals this study compares the normative content, institutional impact and workplace credibility of the two sets of professional standards arising. Not only will the data provide a timely independent overview of the current status of HR practice in both national contexts but, by comparing the evidence, it will also be possible to gauge a detailed sense of whether HR is achieving international homogeneity which overrides a range of historical, cultural, institutional and economic factors.
Working collaboratively the UK and Hong Kong teams will deploy a mixed methodological approach comprising analysis of core documentation, elite interviews with senior members of the two professional institutes, survey of existing practitioners' attitudes and experiences and follow-up interviews designed to explore more deeply the explanations behind participants' experiences and expectations of HR practice. From this extensive range of empirical data the research team will be able to consider the workplace relevance of the normative content of the two professional institutes and from within a variety of industry settings and at different levels of membership.

This project will benefit all stakeholders of the practice of HRM in organisations across all sectors in the UK and Hong Kong by better understanding the current activities HR practitioners are engaged in and what levels of influence they are able to yield within organisations. Stakeholders of HRM practice are:

*the HR professional bodies
*HR practitioners
*students studying for professional membership
*other organisational stakeholders, including:
-employers
-other functional areas of management
-employees
-employee representatives (unions)

The status, activities and influence of HR practitioners is important as it has an impact on how people are managed and treated at work. It is widely recognised that all organisations that employ people perform HR activities, so the professional conduct of HR is important. This project will provide information on what HR practitioners are doing and what influence they have within organisations. It will also gain an insight into what agendas these practitioners are pursuing and the extent to which they are aligned to the most recent strategic direction being pursued by the professional bodies, as well as to founding professional principles which state the benefits for individual members (in terms of enhanced personal development), organisations (in terms of enhanced organisational performance) and society as a whole (in terms of the promotion of sustainable, progressive and ethical practices). These objectives are, themselves, closely aligned to the three strategic priorities of the ESRC.

While the stakeholders identified will benefit in different ways, the dissemination of findings from the project will enable enlightened debate among all of these on the future role of HR, the homogeneity of HR across countries and sectors, and the variety of workplace experiences of HR practitioners. One major contribution of the study will be its contribution to the development of professional HR practice in China, especially within the context of the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between Hong Kong and China.

The professional bodies themselves will benefit most in terms of gaining an insight into how closely aligned the aspirations and values that they have for their members match their members' actual experiences and values. They, along with their members, could also benefit from the creation of a diagnostic tool - based upon the questionnaire survey used at stage 3 of the project - to assess membership profile against the membership standards. The methodological implications of this element of the study could also prove to be beneficial to other managerial professions keen to learn about the status of their members, while gaining further insights into HR's collaboration with other organisational actors.

Facilitation of greater bi-lateral understanding between the two institutes - which already have made steps to collaborate on employment relations and union management training - will also be a natural outcome of the study which will add a further dimension to extant "Next Generation HR" research.

The project should provide some benefit to any of the estimated 350,000 individual HR practitioners in the UK (LFS, 2007), in terms of a greater reflection upon their own career development in relation to the profession as a whole and where they may stand in relation to their broader career aspirations. Outputs of the project - where individual HR practitioners could benefit - include submissions to the CIPD conference and to HR practitioner-oriented publications (People Management, HR magazine).

Students of HRM - particularly those undertaking courses leading to professional qualifications - will gain both by learning about the role and diversity of HR standards in an East and West context and through the practical implications of the research such as improvements to academic course content, structure and application.