Human resource management (HRM) has for some time been the dominant theme in people management and employee relations research, despite much debate about what it is.1 In Reassessing Human Resource Management (1992), Blyton and Turnbull refer to the ‘central uncertainty’ of HRM, noting that the ‘ways in which the term is used by academics and practitioners indicates both variations in meaning and significantly different emphases on what constitute its core components’.2 This ambiguity has persisted some 15 years after the publication of Blyton and Turnbull’s text.