Repositioning human resource management in the new economy. (Articles).

This special issue is the outcome of an all-too-rare collaboration between practitioners of HRM and HRM academics. In June 2000 I attended the Lugano meeting of the European Human Resource Forum, a sister organization to The Human Resource Planning Society. This annual get-together is unusual in that its participants take the time off to reflect on the state of the art of their function and role, without a predetermined agenda. In June 2000 everyone was talking about the organizational revolution heralded by the dot.coms and consequences for HRM (little did we know then that the NASDAQ had already peaked and we were on a slippery slope). That was exciting. No one in the academic circles I frequent was talking about dot.coms back then. Or, to put it more squarely, as often happens in HRM discourse, we academics were looking: to the practitioners to clue us in as to what was going on.

So, with the help of John Herbert, the Forum's Director, I set out to bring the two camps -- academics and practitioners -- under one roof, to debate the brave new world brought about by the dot.coms. That happened in March 2001, under the auspices of the University of North London (now London Metropolitan University). By then the economic climate had changed and the crisis triggered by the new economy became apparent. In a mere few years we moved from gasping about the miracles of a new age to pondering what it was all about. The "new economy" is not confined, of course, to the dot.coms. Its antecedents go back half a century to the post-WWII economic-political order and the invention of the computer; and the ramifications are here to stay, as the advent of globalization and advances in information technology promise.

The five original articles here provide an insight into this sea change. We deliberately kept the spirit of exchange between academics and practitioners, by setting two conceptual papers alongside two case studies. The first contribution by Bob DeFillippi sets the scene. Drawing on the latest thinking in information technology and knowledge-based organizing, he charts the issues faced by teams, projects, and communities, and their implications for people management. The second article, by Frank Verkinderen and myself, is an account of a typical dot.com of the first wave, which showed great promise and then rapidly collapsed. We learn about the vision, the strategy (or lack of it), the challenges of organizing, of keeping pace with technology developments and market expectations. And we take a hard look at what went wrong and why. The third article is a case study of an old-economy business that embraced new-economy ideas and has been doing quite well. Oticon, a market leader in hearing aids, is by now a textb ook case. Henrik Larsen reviews 10 years of radical changes and brings us up to date on the latest developments, with a particular stress on implications for careers. The fourth article, by Michael Arthur and Polly Parker, continues the theme of careers and the challenge careers pose to HR, in the context of a fast-moving technology, a globalizing labor market, and the rise of a new generation of employees. Finally, Charles-Henri Besseyre des Horts draws the threads together in a reflective article, providing some tentative answers to the cardinal questions posed.

Throughout the production of this special issue I greatly benefited from the advice of Paul Swiercz, the outgoing editor of this fine journal. Thanks also go to Yehuda Baruch and Rene Schalk, who reviewed the whole collection and provided helpful critiques. And special thanks go to Bill Stopper for guiding me through the last hurdles and to Jim Walker for his final endorsement.

I hope you find this special issue of interest and value in your work. Your comments would be most welcome.

Yochanan Altman

London, November 2002

y.altman@londonmet.ac.uk www.globalhrm.org.uk