مدیریت منابع انسانی و عملکرد در راه آهن هند Human resource management and performance at the Indian railways

Introduction The Indian Railways, the world’s largest commercial public sector enterprise, has been researched for different aspects relating to business and management, such as its management style, human resource management, culture, employment relations etc., in the recent past (e.g. Pereira, 2014; Pereira and Fontinha, 2015; Pereira and Malik, 2015; Pereira and Malik, 2017; Pereira and Narayanamurthy, 2016). This paper contributes to this body of knowledge by identifying the multiple stakeholders and links high performance work practices (HPWP) to different indicators of performance in the Indian Railways. There have been several attempts to explain the relationship between human resource practices and firm performance (e.g., Legge, 1995; Boxall & Purcell; 2003). In this context Almond (2011:260) argues that when it comes to the ‘relational perspective’ between the buyers and sellers of labour, certain “normative HRM theories such as the notion of ‘High Performance Work Systems’ can be seen as an attempt to institutionalise a set of ideas about what is the ‘right’ way to manage the effort–reward bargain within paid employment”. As a consequence, the construct of High Performance Work Practices (HPWP) is now rather well established, especially with reference to developed country economies (e.g., Bae et al, 2011). However, research in HPWP remains predominantly led by North American thinking and secondarily by thinking from economically developed nations. There is no guarantee that concepts and management practices that have been developed and tested in “western” economies apply in emerging economies or in economies embedded in societies with different cultural characteristics, such as Asian societies (Lynn, 2006; Tung, 2006). To take the case of India, which represents a major emerging economy, though awareness of strategic human resource management and relevant practices may exist in nascent form in India (Budhwar & Varma, 2010; Som, 2008), to date the extent to which human resource practices fit within the framework of HPWP in the country remains unaddressed.