HR Business Partnering - Partnering construction between HR Business Partners, HR Partners and Line Managers - A Case Study at SKF

Abstract

Over the last decades, interest has increased enormously in HR Business Partnering. Recent critics have stated that the partnering between HR and business is not clearly defined and is subject to different expectations and interpretations. Referring to the reviewed literature for this study, there is a lack of theoretical perspectives on partnering construction between the participants. Taking this criticism as a starting point, this paper takes a social constructionism perspective to explore how HR Business Partnering is constructed. The study is conducted as a single case study at the company SKF and addresses HR Business Partnering construction. In this context, the research problem is that the elements of relationships and cooperation between participants are unclear and ignored within the HR restructuring project at SKF. Subsequently, the research purpose of this paper is to study the expectations and descriptions of the participants, who are HR Business Partners, HR Partners and Line Managers. My findings present that partnering between HR and business is addressed on two levels. First, the organisation merely develops partnering through structures and written documents. Secondly, participants construct partnering on an informal level through relationships, networks and agreements. Hence, partnering construction is not only a matter of clear defined documents, it also requires considering participant’s informal approaches in order to improve the construction of HR Business Partnering.