Learning to manage: development experiences of hospital frontline managers

In high performing human resource management (HRM) systems, much responsibility for managing employees and associated processes is typically devolved to frontline managers (FLMs). Research indicates that undeveloped FLM HRM ability can impact performance, particularly in health‐care organisations. W...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Human resource management journal 2016-11, Vol.26 (4), p.505-522
Main Authors: Kellner, Ashlea, Townsend, Keith, Wilkinson, Adrian, Lawrence, Sandra A., Greenfield, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
AMO
front line managers
high performance
HRM system
Human resource management
learning and development
Succession planning
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Summary:In high performing human resource management (HRM) systems, much responsibility for managing employees and associated processes is typically devolved to frontline managers (FLMs). Research indicates that undeveloped FLM HRM ability can impact performance, particularly in health‐care organisations. We present the incidence and characteristics of HRM‐oriented learning and development programs for FLMs in hospitals with high performing systems of HRM, and experiences of FLMs directly participating in them. We combine data from 50 Australian hospital accreditation reports with interviews from eight ‘high performance HRM’ cases. We find: almost all high performers develop FLM HRM ability; development programs are extremely diverse between hospitals and succession planning is deficient. While primarily focused on understanding ability, the study contributes to the ability, motivation, opportunity framework, proposing a model and new interrelationships between these variables in the FLM context.
ISSN:0954-5395
1748-8583
DOI:10.1111/1748-8583.12119