Hughes, E. orcid.org/0000-0002-4539-0845 and Dundon, T. (2025) A Multi‐Level Systems Perspective on (Un)sustainable HRM in Adult Social Care. Human Resource Management. ISSN 0090-4848
Abstract
This paper contributes to sustainable HRM theory, policy, and practice by applying and extending systems theory. A framing is developed and applied by triangulating data from 85 interviews with workers, managers, and other stakeholders (e.g., unions, employer representatives, charities) in adult social care, along with qualitative and quantitative secondary data sources. The findings highlight three main (un)sustainable HRM challenges shaped by inconsistencies between employment in the public and independent sectors: constrained system resources, disconnected career structures, and uneven voice patterns. The article contributes to HR theory by re-framing “(un)sustainable HRM” to include how actors are constrained and/or supported by multi-level relationships between systems and sub-systems. The research advances policy and practice by proposing how more sustainable HRM approaches could be implemented.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | social care; sustainable HRM; systems theory; voice |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Work and Employment Relation Division (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 25 Mar 2025 14:21 |
Last Modified: | 25 Mar 2025 14:21 |
Status: | Published online |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/hrm.22298 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:224807 |