Our project in the media

People Power Podcast

27 May 2024

We got invited to participate in an episode of the People Power Podcast by Glenn van der Burg. So, Eva Knies, Julia Penning de Vries and Roos Mulder went to Hilversum to record the episode and talk about our project!

In the podcast we talked about what our project entails, focusing on what the dark side of people management is, why it’s so interesting and relevant to study and how we plan to do study it.

As the project has been underway for about a year now, we also shared some insights from our, and earlier, research with the help of some examples. Roos has recently conducted interviews in which many insights and interesting examples of the dark side surfaced, which confirmed the too much of a good thing effect does occur in practice. An example she gave is that supervisors sometimes provide their employees with too much autonomy. Autonomy is seen as a good thing and in hospitals the consensus is to provide nurses with more of it. However, it turns out that when a nurses are given too much autonomy in their work it can actually lead to more stress or a feeling of a lack of support.

To top it off, we ended with some advise for practitioners on how to prevent the dark side from manifesting. What we found was important is taking the time to reflect and have open conversations with your employees: was there a situation in which you meant well but and employee had an adverse reaction to it? Reflecting on what happened and talking it through with the employee can help determine where the optimal level of support lies and how to not go beyond that point.

Column in ‘Tijdschrift voor HRM’

15 April 2024

Eva Knies, Sandra de Kruijf and Jasmijn van Harten recently wrote a column, based on our research project, for the Dutch ‘Tijdschrift voor HRM’. In our column, titled ‘The Dark Side of HRM’, we talk about the bright and dark side of Strategic Human Resource Management, questioning whether more HRM is always better. We argue that too much support, no matter how well-intended, can sometimes actually hinder rather than improve employee performance and wellbeing. Our column contains some examples of how this support can have unwelcome consequences for employees and organizations, and a sneak peak of what our research project will focus on the coming years.

Interested in the column? You can read it via the link below!
(Column is written and published in Dutch)