The devolution of human resource management responsibilities to line managers: a multi-level analysis of contextual influences

Patterns of devolution of human resource management responsibilities to line managers vary significantly, giving rise to the important question of what accounts for such variability in the assignment of these responsibilities. Building on theoretical insights from both contextual strategic human resource management and structural contingency theory, we conceptualise the combined role of both proximal and distal factors in the form of institutional, competitive, and heritage-based mechanisms in accounting for variations in devolution. Then, employing data from 5918 organisations across 35 countries, we test our ideas using multi-level modelling. We find that competitive and heritage mechanisms, as more proximal influences, offer explanatory power, while the more distal institutional factors included in our analysis do not reach significance. Our work underscores the importance of theorizing the role of multiple, co-occurring proximal and distal multi-level influences when seeking to unearth commonalities and differences in the uptake of devolution in different contexts. This study also complements the predominant managerialist view on the assignment of human resource management responsibilities to line managers commonplace in the literature.