Customer Reviews

No Best Way: An Evolutionary Perspective on Human Resource Management

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To the extent that the core knowledge in the business sciences has been amassed void of an infusion of biological and evolutionary-based theorizing, Stephen Colarelli deserves credit for attempting a daring endeavor namely to seek ways of Darwinizing his area of expertise.

This book reflects the author's belief that problems of theoretical coherence, utilization and effectiveness of HRM practices can best be addressed by an evolutionary perspective, including sociocultural evolution and evolutionary psychology. The title reflects the view that successful HRM practices must emerge in the context of the organization and its environment; there is no one best way. The author's aim is to show that the mechanical perspective in HRM, which presumes that expert-designed interventions will produce intended outcomes, has outlived its usefulness and discusses ways an evolutionary approach can be applied, specifically in hiring and training. The work includes extensive notes and references. This is not a how-to book and not for practitioners who are looking for answers, now!. It's a very well researched work that presents penetrating, mind-expanding insights, incorporates an historical perspective, and offers unconventional ideas.

This book starts with the nihilistic premise that much of what is done by applied psycholgists in the workplace doesn't work well and has not been widely adopted. Therefore evolutionary psychology is needed. The problem is that in actuality much does work and has been adopted. Where it has not, there are a host of explanations that are much simpler and more probable than evlutionary nonsense contained herein (e.g., unstructured interviews require no special training but developing a test does).

What is worse is that a lot of the prescriptions (e.g., random selection) are contraindicated by over one hundred years of data based on millions of participants. But for Colarelli this is not a problem, as the author clearly either does not understand the research in personnel psychology or ignores it at his convenience.

The book was reviewed in Personnel Psychology by Mark Wilson with the abstract reading: "The central point of the book is that industrial-organizational psychology (I-O) requires decision makers to act in ways that are not in agreement with how they have evolved to behave and make decisions. The discussion of how humans behaved several thousand years ago will remain nothing more than speculation and has no place in a serious science of behavior until someone invents a time machine. We are constantly told that "traditional methods" are preferred to the I-O approach, especially in the private sector. A reasonable alternative hypothesis as to why decision makers do not want to use data-based decision making is because they fear it will reduce their power to control the organization. Authors have every right to speculate on anything they want when they write a book. This author includes a lot of speculation and not much research to illustrate his points. The premise is bad, he does not deliver on what he says he is going to cover, and the book is hard to read without throwing it across the room several times."