I have written a few posts about HR Innovation – and what is not innovation. One topic that automatically comes up when talking about innovation is best-practices. Do we need to reinvent the wheel? Can’t we just take what works in a different company? – It has proven success, we can ask the same consultants that did it for company A to do it for us? Like this we won’t fail and we won’t need to experiment. And it is also much cheaper to get it like this.
Who hasn’t heard this? And what did you say then? – how can you disprove that a working, functioning practice (in a different company) does not work for you? – it is hard.
However, in academia for a long time, there is a controversy around best-practices. You have supporters of it as well as empirical evidence that this works. But you also have opponents to best-practices. And they also have statistical, empirical evidence. It is the old game of “you can never validate a theory, just not falsify it”. The opponents prefer a different model which is called best-fit. Before discussing further – what is the difference?
Best-practice
Best-practice means that a common, proven practice from a different company or a different organization can be copied and implemented in your own organization or company and it will work and produce similar positive results like in the other company or organization you are copying it from.
Best-fit
The best-fit model on the other hand says that not any model that works in a different company or organization will work in your own. But that it is more effective to implement practices that are linked to the contextual environment (and that can be various variables) of your company or organization.
In academia these models are on opposing sides and both claim to be the right ones. However, academia and business are not the same. So what does that mean now for HR innovation and for utilising one or the other? Well, the truth is like every so often in the middle – or at least somewhere there. There are common best-practices that can really be utilised across a wide range of companies or organisations and there are best practices that won’t work. The reasons for this sit within the specific best-practice: High-level best-practices like recognising that employee performance is directly influenced by the degree of involvement and ability are true almost anywhere. However, a working Performance Management System (consisting of process, technology, policy, application) will for sure work in one company as a best-practice, but copying it will fail for the majority of companies/ organisations. The level of the best-practice is important. Best-fit on the other hand will always work – as it is best-fit.
So why not then always use best-fit? – also an easy answer: It is expensive as you are constantly re-inventing the wheel and it is not always bringing the same fruits (meaning success) than the best-practice in the other company.
The question then is when to and when not to use best-practice and when to and when not to use best-fit. And the answer might be very different from function to function, but I will provide my professional and research based view for the HR function in my next post.
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