An approach to researching managerial labour markets

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Abstract
The present paper outlines an approach to researching managerial labour markets, focusing on the processes of human resource management (HRM) as integrated with corporate strategy and shows how this relates to corporate financial performance. The study is based on a sample of 49 companies, largely from the engineering and electronics sectors, drawn from a wider sample of 60 UK firms. The performance data were for a ten-year period (1978-1988) and the interviews were conducted, in the late 1980s, with senior management representatives of the companies, covering the HRM practices for the same period, retrospectively. The paper contributes substantive findings relating to the HRM - corporate-strategy - financial performance linkages and also contributes methodologically by combining quantitative and qualitative forms of analysis. By using sector-based samples of firms displaying distinctive patterns of financial performance we were able to adopt sector-adjusted performance measures. By compiling case-studies we were also able to put qualitative flesh on the bones of our statistics and to develop an inductively derived conceptual language for the comparison of cases.