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Attuned HRM Systems for Social Enterprises

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Abstract

This paper is motivated by a puzzling observation made when conducting a case study of ProCredit (PC), a well-known social bank. The HR practices that this social enterprise (SE) adopted to cultivate mission identification were unfavorably impacting its retention rate. Building on prior research and our analysis of the case, we argue the need for SEs to embrace HRM systems that are both mission-identification proactive and employee-retention preemptive. It theorizes that these HRM systems should be attuned to the labor market conditions (e.g., market segmentation and competition for employees) that frame how SEs develop and sustain Person-Organization (P-O) fit. Attuned HRM systems are adapted to labor market conditions and tuned to support SEs’ adeptness to operate against the grain of country and industry norms.

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Notes

  1. PC was founded by merging the banks that its founders (The German Consulting IPC), working as consultants, had founded starting in the 1990s.

  2. The authors are thankful to one of reviewers from identifying this challenge.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Royston Greenwood and other participants in the” 7th Austrian Early Scholars Workshop in Management”. The paper also benefitted from comments by Jean Luc Cerdin and participants a brown bag session at University of Massaschusetts, Boston (April, 2019).

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Appendix

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See Tables 6, 7.

Table 6 Glassdoor comments collected (*)
Table 7 Sample quotes. Sustaining social-commercial logic hybridity

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Dorado, S., Chen, Y., Prado, A.M. et al. Attuned HRM Systems for Social Enterprises. J Bus Ethics 178, 829–848 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-021-04821-4

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