Translating as Response to Paradoxes – When Implementing HRM Strategies in Service Organisations

Abstract

The purpose of this article is on the one hand to investigate paradoxes caused by the collision between rationalities of top management HRM strategies and local ones at the level of line managers, and on the other, the responses to them. A grounded-theory approach is used on empirical material from a university hospital and a dozen of high quality hotels. The study has shown that hospital HR staff and hotel directors respond to paradoxes by translating. A conclusion is that when repeatedly having to cope with these paradoxes, a special skill is developed, the skill of translating top-down strategic decisions into alternatives that fit different local conditions. The paradoxes, which the line managers responsible at the local level could otherwise not handle, are thus manageable thanks to consciously developed translating skills by hospital HR staff and hotel directors. These translations work as stimuli to strategy implementation when there is trust between translators and those who must execute the strategies, i.e. the line managers.