Dr Cushen Presents Paper at CIPD Applied Research Conference

Friday, December 1, 2017 - 15:30

Last week, Dr Jean Cushen presented at the CIPD Applied Research Conference.
 
Jean presented a paper entitled ‘HRM in Annual Reports: Signalling Sustainable Value Creation’, an abstract for which you will find below. Jean is a Lecturer in the School of Business, the Programme Director of the MSc in Business Management, and a member of the Maynooth Uuniversity ‘Political Economy of Work’ research cluster. Her research explores the contemporary employment experience focusing on financialization, the labour process and human resource management (HRM).
 
Paper Abstract
This paper evaluates the voluntary HRM disclosures contained within the annual and sustainability reports of the largest publicly listed 150 companies across three developed economies; fifty companies from the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. We document the spectrum of HRM practices signalled, 36 in total, and uncover the most prominent practices by ranking their claimed importance to firm performance. We show how, where sufficient 'signal emission' exists, prominent HRM practices significantly positively correlate with firm performance; with some practices displaying a predictive causal relationship with key financial metrics. We close with recommendations to enhance the quality and importance of HRM reporting.