Quantifying Human Resources. Clotilde Coron
example) according to a common metric.
Box I.3. Example of the introduction of activity-based pricing in French hospitals (source: Juven 2016)
The introduction of activity-based pricing in French hospitals is a long-term process that takes several years. It required, among other things, a quantification of medical procedures and patients: how much a particular medical procedure costs and should be remunerated, or the management of a particular type of patient. However, this statisticalization has been the subject of many controversies between doctors, health authorities and patient associations. These different actors obviously have divergent interests, between reducing hospital costs and improving the management of a specific pathology. This case therefore illustrates the way in which the quantification of reality, far from being merely a neutral reflection of reality, proceeds from choices, negotiations and controversies that illustrate its sociologically constructed dimension.
Finally, this second trend takes a more critical approach to quantification. While the first trend is based in particular on the idea of quantification that can supposedly provide objectivity, transparency, neutrality and rationalization, the second trend questions this vision and these assumptions, thus questioning more generally the contributions of quantification to management.
I.4. The positioning of this work
Our book seeks to provide a nuanced and didactic perspective on the use of HR quantification. Therefore, it draws on these two currents to try to reflect as much as possible both the advantages and limitations of quantification. More precisely, we ask ourselves the question of the use that companies can make of HR quantification, but also the evolutions that the rise of quantification can represent for HR and the appropriation of these new devices by the various agents involved. In parallel, this book pays interest to the different theoretical and disciplinary trends that allow us to better understand the challenges of HR quantification.
To do this, this book mobilizes several types of sources and examples. Some of the information used comes from academic work. Another part is based on empirical surveys carried out within companies. These empirical materials are of several kinds: interviews with HR, employees, trade union representatives; participant observation as part of a professional experience as a Big Data HR project manager; company documents on the use of HR quantification; quantitative analyses conducted on personnel data.
Thus, this book aims to provide both theoretical and empirical knowledge on HR quantification. Finally, a few semantic clarifications must be added. The concepts of quantification, statistics and measurement are frequently used throughout this book. Quantification corresponds to a very broad set: all the tools and uses producing figures (or quantified data), and the figures thus produced. It therefore includes the concepts of statistics and measurement. The term “statistics” is employed when referring to the scientific and epistemological dimension of quantification, as Desrosières does, for example. Finally, the term “measurement” will be used when discussing the specific activity of quantifying a phenomenon, an object or a reality.
I.5. Structure of the book
The book is divided into five chapters of equal importance.
Chapter 1 seeks to delineate the subject by providing definitions and examples of the three major uses of HR quantification: personal and labor statisticalization, reporting and analysis, Big Data/algorithms. The next three chapters take up elements of this introductory chapter by analyzing them each from a different angle and can therefore be read independently of each other, and in the order desired by the reader.
Chapter 2 deals with the issue of decision-making. Indeed, as we have seen, the “EBM” approach sees the benefits of quantification as coming mainly from improving decision-making. Therefore, Chapter 2 examines the paradigms and beliefs that drive this link between quantification and decision-making.
Chapter 3 focuses on the appropriation of the different uses of quantification by the multiple actors involved in HR – managers, employees and trade unions, in particular.
Chapter 4 is based on the potential changes introduced by the increasing use of HR quantification, and questions the consequences of these changes for the HR function.
Finally, Chapter 5 deals with the ethical issues of quantification, particularly with regard to the protection of personal data and questions of discrimination.
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