Resumo

Considering the importance of promoting the well-being of people, understood as essential organizational competence, the creation and maintenance of healthy and productive work environments has been a priority for organizations. In this context, the Human Resource Management (HRM) practices have assumed a special connotation in the valuation of human resources, gaining increasing attention of the researchers of the area.

Thinking about the strategic nature of HRM practices for organizations, we focus on the following research question: how to describe the scenario of the current scientific publications on HRM practices in organizations in order to trace the itineraries of international production and discover new research possibilities? Thus, this work has proposed to draw the panorama of recent international high-impact scientific production relative to the HRM practices, revealing the current itineraries and identifying new possibilities of research.

Martín-Alcázar, Romero-Fernández and Sánchez-Gardey (2005) indicate that HRM strategies define the guidelines that serve as the north for workforce management, while policies seek to coordinate practices for consistency and follow in the same direction. Finally, the practices are at the end of the operation, assuming the lowest level among the three, and represent the actions themselves, being the main protagonists in achieving results (Legge, 2006).

A systematic review of the literature was carried out in the Web of Science database, which resulted in 121 articles, composing the review corpus. From that point on, bibliometric analyzes, bibliographic coupling and co-citations were performed and word clouds were created to identify the constructs most associated with HRM practices. The content of the five most cited articles was also analyzed and subsidized the proposition of an agenda for further studies.

We have identified four major themes (clusters) in which the subject, HRM practices, has been studied in the last 5 years: how HRM practices influence both employee and organizational performance; how HRM practices influence the positive results of organizational innovations, both internal and external; the application and effects of HRM practices in different countries; the relationship of HRM practices in the organization with the behavior of employees towards the environment. We also found a tendency of the researchers to relate the HRM practices with constructs of organizational behavior.

We hope that the results so far collected contribute to the creation of new lines and research agendas in the theme, arising from the gaps outlined. In addition, students and researchers can identify centers of excellence and reference readings to develop their research, establishing partnerships. With respect to the managerial implications, the trajectories of research traced can inspire managers to bring the results of the empirical researches listed here to the organizational practice, recommending an increasingly participatory and effective human resource management.

Legge, K. (2006). Human resource management. In Ackroyd, S., Batt, R., Thompson, & P., Tolbert, P. (Eds.). The Oxford handbook of work and organization. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Martín-Alcázar, F., Romero-Fernández, P. M., & Sánchez-Gardey, G. (2005). Strategic human resource management: integrating the universalistic, contingent, configurational and contextual perspectives. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 16(5), 633-659.