Human Resources Management in Portugal

trends of three decades of research

Abstract

The field of human resources management (HRM) has evolved over the last century, both in terms of theory and application, anchored in lines of force that ended up contributing to the delimitation of the field’s evolutionary boundaries. It was in the early twentieth century that labour relations and trade union movements influenced the research content of HRM, the designations of the activity and the emphases of the management practices themselves. It is thus in the current time that the globalization of activities and businesses in which the contingency of the theoretical options and interventions reveal the decisive weight of contextual factors. The management of human resources is an object of study with growing interest, and in recent decades there has been an effort to understand and theorize the set of management practices, of which the great proliferation of academic courses (undergraduate and postgraduate courses, graduate courses, master's degrees and doctorates) and a more professional nature (learning actions, technical training and retraining on HRM practices) are objective evidences. The present work seeks to analyse emerging trends in research on this theme over the last 30 years produced between 1986 and 2016 in Portuguese teaching and research institutions, as well as to map the major influences on the evolution and consolidation of HRM practices expressed in the themes of the APG (Portuguese Association of Managers and Technicians of Human Resources) meetings, which have been occurring over the last 50 years in Portugal, and their effects on the theoretical problematization of this theme. Intent on knowing the scientific production in Portugal regarding the GRH, we carried out a survey on master and doctorate theses’ titles by resorting to a set of library and university databases (e.g., PORBASE - Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, RCAAP - Repositório Científico Portugal Open Access, Colcat, Lusíada Base Knowledge Portal) using as keywords "human resource management" and "theses". The data currently under analysis shall allow us to trace the trends of the last 30 years in terms of scientific production in Portugal. Our reflection shall focus on the following topics: aspects associated with the concept of HRM, the evolution of HRM in Portugal, and reflections on the adjustment (or lack thereof) between research and practice, as well as possible future research trends and needs.