Does Ownership of Higher Education Institute Influence Its HRM Patterns ? The Case of Pakistan

This paper compares HRM patterns variables pertaining to HR department, HR strategy, integration, devolvement and organizational policies about long-term recruitment targets, monitoring of training effectiveness and means of communications in public and private higher education institutes (HEIs) of Pakistan. Results of the survey from fifty-two HEIs show that public and private sector institutes are similar in most of their patterns of HRM. The significant difference of age and size has made no impact at all on structure, strategy and other characteristics of HRM. The centralized structure inherited from colonial period is prevailing especially in the public owned institutes. The presence of elite classes created during colonial period is resisting to any change. Private sector has shown a tremendous growth. Individuals or group of individuals representing the elite classes owns most of the private institutes. Therefore, the private institutes are not much different from the public one. There is resistance to HRM convergence in Pakistan and the high power distance culture is shaping many HRM policies and practices.


Introduction
Humans are the integral part of every organization.Human resources (HR) are a source of sustained competitive advantage for every organization because they meet the criteria of being valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable (Wright, McMahan, and McWilliams, 1994).Activities performed under human resources management (HRM) targets towards the utilization of individuals to achieve organizational objectives.Ever since the beginning of 1990s, it has been accepted that in order to improve business performance and develop organizational culture that foster innovation and flexibility, there should be a linking of HRM with strategic goals and objectives of an organization (Schuler, 1992).Such a linking of HRM to the strategic needs of the business is called strategic human resource management (SHRM).
Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in Pakistan have shown tremendous growth over the last decade.Owing to constant efforts of Higher Education Commission of Pakistan (HEC), these institutes are gaining more and more attention both at local and international level.HEIs are supposed to be highly knowledge intensive, which enables the management of human capital even more important for them.
There is an ominous need of HRM research on empirical data in education sector -a sector is of prime importance for developing countries like Pakistan.This study is an attempt to empirically investigate the status of HRM, and compare HRM in public and private HEIs of Punjab -the most populated province of Pakistan.

HRM and Organizational Characteristics
The review about HRM and organizational characteristics reveals that research in this segment can be characterized in three main groups.First group of studies confirms the influence of organizational characteristics like size, age, ownership (sector), type, presence of HR department, HR strategy, business strategy, structure, technology, life-cycle stage, developmental stage, R&D expenditures, numerical flexibility and education of employees upon HRM (Dimick and Murray, 1978;Jackson et al., 1989;Terpstra and Rozell, 1993;Valle et al., 1999;Cleland et al., 2000;Galang, 2004;Bacon and Hoque, 2005;Kotey and Slade 2005;Ercek, 2006;and Bartram et al., 2007).Numerous studies in the US have found positive relations between presence of an HR department and HRM practices (Galang and Ferris, 1997).Second group includes studies which do not confirm the relationship of some organizational characteristics upon HRM (Tung and Havlovic, 1996;Poole and Jenkins, 1997;Budhwar and Boyne, 2004;Rodwell and Teo, 2004;Thang and Quang, 2005;and Pearson et al., 2006).Third group includes the studies in which researchers do realize a weak influence of organizational characteristics but considers some other influences more important than these variables (Budhwar and Sparrow 1997;Budhwar, 2000;and Andolsek and Stebe, 2005).

HRM in HEIs and Pakistan
HRM in HEIs is confined to developed countries.There is lack of strategic focus in HRM literature covering HEIs.Research related to HRM has been seen in the developing countries but no research has been seen in HEIs.
There is a realization of the fact that the role of faculty is becoming more complex, fragmented (Coaldrake and Steadman, 1998) and more pressured (Mclnnis, 2000).In the conference held in Paris in August 2005 on 'Trends in the Management of Human Resources in Higher Education,' it has been realized that 'workforce development has become a critical issue in enabling universities to deliver multiple agendas in complex environments' (Gordon and Whitchurch, 2007).Furthermore, Higher Education is being seen as an integrated 'project' in which the delivery of multiple agendas in a knowledge environment can only be achieved through a range of contributions from different groups of staff (Duke, 2003;Gordon and Whitchurch, 2007).HR and staff development professionals are also considering as to how they might interface most effectively with line managers, at all levels (Knight, 2005).Archer (2005) is of the view that HR departments have become more involved with strategy than day to-day line management issues.
HRM research in Pakistan is still in the state of infancy.Khilji (2001) opened the window for HRM research in Pakistan.Qadeer et al., (2010) find that public and private chartered institutes in Pakistan practice a low level of integration and devolvement of HRM.They also confirm the relationship between these variables and finds that HR department is the main player behind their prediction.From the case study analysis of an organization of the financial sector of Pakistan, Irshad and Toor (2008) suggests that organizations should adopt strategic HR measures.

HRM in Public and Private Sector
The review about comparison of HRM functions in organizations of two types of ownerships i.e. public and private is done.Organizations are frequently differentiated on the basis of 'ownership' (Scott and Falcone, 1998).Entrepreneurs or shareholders own private-sector firms.Whereas, public-sector firms are owned, funded and controlled collectively by members of political communities at different levels of government (Bozeman, 1987).Research has shown the influence of ownership on HRM policies and practices (Dimick and Murray, 1978;Jackson et al., 1989;Lawler et al., 1995;Hsu and Leat, 2000;Thang and Quang, 2005;Ercek, 2006).
After the initiation of privatization programmes in developed countries, roughly from the late 1960s and early 1970s, public-sector managers have been encouraged to emulate the workplace practices and policies of the private sector (Ferlie et al., 1996;Box, 1999).This is based on the premise that the private sector has supposedly superior administrative practices (Hood, 1991).The existing literature shows a scarcity of concrete research results in this regard (Boyne, 2002).A number of studies have been conducted to examine and compare different organizational aspects in public-and private-sector firms.
Many studies reveal that the two sectors are different.In Briton, Poole and Jenkins (1997) find a greater role for HRM departments in the public sector and mention clear inter-sector differences in responsibility for HR practices.Bordia and Blau (1998) observe that Indian private sector employees have higher pay level satisfaction and perceive higher external pay referents than public sector employees.Boyne et al., (1999) identify that the traditional style of paternal, standardized and collectivized HRM is more prevalent in public than private organizations.Ding et al., (2000) in a nation-wide survey of Chinese firms confirms that state-owned enterprises and private joint venture firms are different in HRM practices pertaining to employment, reward, social security, turnover, trade unions and workers congress.
According to Harel and Tzafrir (2001) there is more emphasis on selection and grievance procedures in public sector as against employees growth and pay for performance in private sector.They observe that public sector is moving closer and closer to a private sector model by adopting high performance work practices.Jaturanonda et al., (2006) while investigating as to how decision criteria are weighed when conducting job rotation find that in Thailand the criterion weights are significantly dependent on sector type and purpose of job rotation.Sutiyono (2007) finds that in Indonesia owing to fundamentally different approaches of HR functions, the public sector firms have far less effective HRM than their private counterpart.Wang et al., (2007) find in Chinese firms that the two sectors are different in pursuing humanistic goals but are similar in six out of seven high-performance HR practices.Some studies highlight similarities between the two sectors.Budhwar and Boyne (2004) reveal that the gap between Indian private-and public-sector HRM practices is not very significant.Contrary to the public administration research, Volkwein and Parmley (2000) find little evidence in their sample universities that the two sectors are different with respect to the levels of job satisfaction.Anderson (2005) concludes that expatriate selection in both sectors in Australia is more a matter of good luck than good management because of reliance on technical competence only.Kirkpatrick and Hoque (2005) find that in terms of the decentralization of employment relations in Briton, local-level managers in both sectors have similar levels of responsibility for employment relations issues, but those in the public sector are, significantly less likely to be able to exercise authority.Wei and Lau (2005) observe that there is no significant moderating role of ownership on the relationship between market orientation, HRM importance, HRM competency and adoption of SHRM.Hockertin (2008) observes in Swedish welfare industry that ownership makes no difference when it comes to control perceived by employees.
Most of the emerging countries or newly industrialized nations, such as the Tiger and Dragon nations, China, India, East European economies, South Africa, Latin American countries and Pakistan are now pursuing privatization policy.These countries are liberalizing their economies and opening their markets to foreign investors.In such conditions both academicians and practitioners are eager to learn about the pattern of HRM systems prevalent in these countries.The privatization initiated by the emerging countries, have serious implications for its workforce and HRM in the form of managing redundancies and employer-employee relations (Hassard et al., 1999;Sheehan et al., 2000).In such conditions, it can be expected that the traditional differences in the public and private sectors indicated in the existing Western research will exist in the emerging nations.Nevertheless, it is important to test such assumptions further in other parts of the world.

Data Collection
HEC-institutes of Punjab including Islamabad mentioned on the official website of HEC are the population of this study.There are fifty two HEIs in Punjab, thirty-three in public sector and nineteen in private sector.There is no sampling and all the institutes have been targeted in the survey.A survey questionnaire has been used for data collection.The respondents are well educated individuals; therefore, there is no need to translate the questionnaire from English to the local language.However, to provide common perception to the respondents, abbreviations and some definitions of the terminology used in the questionnaire have been provided at the end of the questionnaire.A pilot study is conducted in eight HEIs other than Punjab.The methodology is found appropriate in all aspects; however, respondents need explanations particularly related to strategy and life-cycle which have been explained to every respondent during actual data collection.In HEIs there is usually subject-wise departmentalization.Therefore, for customization and to make the terminology more understandable to our respondents, the departmental heads (DHs) have been used in place of line managers.
An executive well aware of the HRM related activities in an institute is contacted.By going through various press advertisements of HEIs for staff recruitment, it has become clear that almost all such advertisements, particularly those of public sector, are from registrars.Legal nature is seen in the registrar office instead of an HR practitioner.However, in large institutes, an assistant registrar establishment mainly deals with staff related activities.All websites of these institutes have also been thoroughly visited.This data later proved very helpful to cross check and in a few cases to complete the missing information.The registrar offices are telephonically contacted to get an appointment.The registrars either have made them available to fill the questionnaire or referred the authors to one of their assistants or to HR department (if any) and in some cases to administration department.

Variables
Organizational characteristics involved in the study are: age (number of years), size (number of employees), sector (public or private), presence of HR department, existence of HR department since incorporation, background of HR head (or in-charge of HRM activities), main emphasis of HR strategy, stage of business life cycle.Two more variables pertain to integration of HRM (measured through four sub-variables: board level representation of HR head, presence of written HR strategy, translation of the HR strategy into work programs and HR involvement in development of corporate strategy) and devolvement of HRM (measured through three sub-variables: change in the DHs responsibility, level of devolved decision-making and level of trained DHs).
Sixteen organizational policies; five of these policies pertain to long-term targets for recruitment (from disables, minorities, provincial quotas, women and fresh graduates).Another five policies are about monitoring of training program effectiveness (through performance tests, evaluation immediately after training, evaluation some months after training, informal feedback from DHs and informal feedback from teachers).The remaining six policies pertain to the means of communication (through immediate superior, trade unions or work councils, regular workplace meetings, quality circles/quality enhancement center, suggestion box (es) and an attitude survey).These policies are measured through a Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5(to a great extent).

Respondents
In most of the cases registrar offices have responded the questionnaire (61.5 %).It has been referred to HR department (17.3 %) in the institutes with formal HR departments.In case of non existence of registrar office or non availability of the registrar, it has been advised to contact administration department (9.6 %) and also to other departments (11.5%).Nature of questionnaire is such that categories of respondents are found equally helpful.

Comparison between Public and Private Sector
Before making comparisons of HRM patterns, it is important to understand that when data is collected from samples representing populations in two sectors, independent samples t-test is suitable to find statistical significance of mean differences (if any).This test confirms statistical significance of difference of a variable in two samples for the corresponding populations as well.When data is collected from entire population (i.e.without sampling) no statistical tests can be applied for comparison of means.The data in this study represents actual values of variables in the two populations; therefore, interpretations should be directly based on the actual values.This is the reason that no t-test has been applied for comparing of means of different variables in HEIs of the two types of ownership.
Insert Table 1 Insert Table 2 Age-wise distribution (Table 1) reflects that public sector institutes are relatively older than their private sector counterparts.Size-wise distribution (Table 2) reflects that public sector institutes are larger than the private sector institutes.

Insert Table 3
Table 3 reflects the Comparison between two sectors with respect to five organizational characteristics.The first variable pertains to the age of the institutes.The mean age of public sector HEIs of Punjab is 36, whereas the mean age of the private sector institutes is only 10. Public sector HEIs of Punjab are obviously older than their private sector counterpart.Second variable is about the size of organization.Again the two sectors are not similar in this regard.Mean score for the size of the organization in term of number of employees is 1035 and 318 for the public and private sector HEIs institutes respectively.
Integration is the third variable presented in Table 3 (in numerical form).The mean value for integration in public and private sector HEIs of Punjab is 1.1 and 1.8 respectively.Both these means are less than 2, the critical score for separating HEIs into low and high integrated institutes.Therefore, the two sectors are similar with respect to integration of HRM.Fourth variable of comparison presented in the table is devolvement of HRM.Again the mean scores are 17.0 and 19.4 in the public and private institutes which are not much different from the combined mean 17.9.However, mean score for the public sector institutes is less than 18 and for private sector institutes is greater than 18, the critical score for separating low and high devolved institutes.The last variable mentioned in Table 3 is present stage of business life cycle of an institute.Most of HEIs of Punjab (90.4 percent) claim that they are either at growth or at expansion stage of their business life cycle.The percentage of the public and private sector institutes claiming growth stage is 33.3 and 52.6 percent and this percentage for expansion stage is 54.5 and 42.1 percent respectively.Therefore, the two sectors are different from each other with regard to their age and size, some what different in devolvement.However, the two sectors are very much similar in integration and business life-cycle stage.
Insert Table 4 Sector wise comparison of the levels of integration and devolvement (Table 4) shows that 78.8 percent of the public sector HEIs is practicing a low level of integration as against 63.2 percent in the private sector.This percentage for the overall population is 73.1.Thus, both the public and private sector HEIs are almost behaving in the same way and majority of them are practicing low level of integration.On the other hand, 57.6 percent of the public sector HEIs is practicing a low level of devolvement as against 42.1 percent in the private sector.This percentage for the overall population is 51.9.The behavior of the two sectors in their level of integration is similar but in case of level of devolvement some what different from each other.
Insert Table 5 The comparison with respect to HR department is presented in Table 5. Majority of both public and private sector institutes are managing their HR without a formal HR department i.e. 78.8 and 57.9 for public and private HEIs respectively.Existence of HR department since incorporation is even lower (81.8 and 78.9 percent for public and private sector HEIs respectively).The third variable in the Table 5 pertains to the background of HRM in-charges.This includes both HR heads and other designated individuals like Registrars, Manager Administrations and General Managers etc. heading HR related activities.In both public and private HEIs, 50 percent of these in-charges have been recruited from non-HR departments within the institutes.This percentage of recruitment from an external HR department is very much similar, 21.2 and 21.1 percent, in public and private sector institutes respectively.Therefore, 71 percent of the institutes are similar in both sectors regarding back ground of HRM in-charges.However, the percentage of recruitment of HRM in-charges from within the HR department in private sector is more than twice than that of in public sector institutes.On the contrary, this percentage of recruitment from external non-HR departments in public sector is nearly double than that of in private sector HEIs.Fourth variable in the Table 5 is representation of in-charge HRM on the board of governors.In 60.6 percent of public sector HEIs, the answer to this question is no and 52.6 percent of the private sector institutes also responded in no to this question.The difference in the two in this variable is also not very vast.The last variable in the Table 5, the involvement of HR in development of corporate strategy in public and private sector HEIs is very much similar.78.8 percent in case of public sector and 68.4 percent in case of private sector have no such involvement.

Insert Table 6
Table 6 refers to the comparison of HR strategy.The two sectors are not similar regarding presence of written HR strategy as 75.8 percent of the public sector and 47.4 percent of the private one do not have written HR strategy.Same situation is prevailing in the two sectors with regard to the translation of HR strategy into clear work programs, the second variable.Main emphasis of HR strategy in both the sectors upon talent acquisition, 51.5 and 57.9 percent in the public and private sector respectively and the least emphasis is upon cost reduction, 6.1 and 5.3 percent in the public and private sector institutes respectively.The percentage of the institutes of both sectors having main emphasis of HR strategy on effective resource allocation is also very close to each other.It is 18.2 and 21.1 percent in the public and private sector institutes respectively.Less that one fourth of both public and private sector HEIs are emphasizing talent improvement.

Insert Table 7
The comparison between the two sectors in their mean scores of sixteen organizational policies is shown in Table 7.First five policies in the table are about long term targets for recruitment.The two sectors are very much similar in following of long term targets from women, fresh graduates and minorities.The mean score for their policies of recruitment from disabled people or from provincial quotas is somewhat different.The possible reason behind the difference in case of disabled people is two percent mandatory recruitment quota for disabled people in public sector, whereas such a quota is non existent in private sector.The difference of mean score in case of policy regarding provincial quota is mainly due to the public sector institutes of Islamabad included in the population, which have to give due consideration to the provincial quotas.
The next five policies are related to the training effectiveness monitoring.Three of these policies are formal and two are informal.The comparison shows that the two sectors are very much similar, in fact, in both the sectors, there is a very little monitoring of training effectiveness.This is perhaps because talent acquisition HR strategy is followed in most of the institutes.When there is lack of training, monitoring of the training effectiveness is obviously low.The mean scores for six policies of means of communication show the two sectors are similar to each other in five policies.However, there are more regular workplace meetings in private sector HEIs.Therefore, only three out of sixteen organizational policies mentioned above are different.

Discussion and Conclusion
Thirty one variables were compared, as integration and devolvement have been compared twice; categorically as well as numerically, therefore, actually twenty nine variables are compared.The two sectors are very much similar in most of the variables.Out of first thirteen variables the two sectors are clearly different in two variables i.e. age and size.The two sectors are some what different in three variables namely devolvement, presence of written HR strategy and translation of HR strategy into work programs.But for the remaining nine variables both sectors are very much similar.The comparison between remaining sixteen variables pertaining to organizational policies show that the two sectors are similar in following of about 82 percent (13 out of 16) of these policies.So there is not much difference between public and private sector HEIs of Punjab, Pakistan regarding their HRM patterns and organizational policies.
Although the two sectors are quite different from each other with regard to age and size, yet they are following similar pattern in HRM.This is quite consistence with earlier studies (Tung and Havlovic, 1996;Budhwar and Boyne, 2004;Thang and Quang, 2005;Wei and Lau, 2005;and Pearson et al., 2006).This means that the significant difference between them regarding age and size has made no impact at all on structure, strategy and other characteristics of HRM.
Out of sixteen organizational policies, the two sectors are different in three policies.Two policies pertain to the recruitment targets of disable persons and provincial quotas.Third policy is about regular workplace meetings.Private sector institutes claim that regular work place meeting is one of the major means of communication.But this is not claimed by public sector institutes.
The mean scores for the policies pertaining to long term recruitment of five groups are all less than three on a Likert scale of one to five.This show that overall there is no strategy to attract diversified staff.The highest value arises for disable persons (2.94).The reason for this relatively high value than other groups is due to compulsory following of two percent quota for the recruitment of disable persons in public sector organization.Otherwise the values for the remaining four groups range from 1 to 2.25.Although more women are seen in these institutes but it is not because of following any recruitment target.
The mean values for five policies about monitoring of training effectiveness are also less than three on a Likert scale of one to five.These values range from 1.55 to 2.30.In other words, there is hardly any monitoring of training effectiveness in HEIs of Punjab, Pakistan.This sector is new one and most of the institutes were established within the last decade.46 out of 52 institutes claim that they are either at growth or expansion stage and majority of the institutes are following talent acquisition strategy.All these facts logically mean an automatic lesser focus on training.Therefore, monitoring of training effectiveness is obviously very low.
Six policies pertain to the means of communication with staff.The very high mean value for communicating with staff through immediate superior indicates that most of the communication with staff in chartered institutes is being done through this channel.This is a much formalized way of communication leaving a very little space of employee participation and involvement.All the mean values for the remaining five policies for staff communication are less than three.These values range from 1.12 to 2.85.So the main dependency is upon immediate superior for staff communication.This is due 'to centralized structures, limited communication with employees, and/or unwillingness on the part of managers to give up their authority' in Pakistan (Khilji, 2004).If an organization wants to increase the satisfaction level of employees then it should gradually change its culture quite effectively.The core organizational characteristics of little autonomy, limited communication and a high power distance have to be eliminated (Khilji, 2004).Khilji (2001) has described Pakistan culture as an amalgamation of four characteristics namely Islam religion, Indian origins, British inheritance and American influences.Still another factor military intervention can be added to this list.Despite the laps of six decades, the centralized structure inherited from colonial period is still prevailing especially in the public sector.The presence of elite classes created during colonial period is still resisting to any change.Repeated military interventions are further maintaining this rigidity.Therefore, centralized decision making is obvious.Although private sector has shown a tremendous growth, yet most of them are owned by individuals or group of individuals representing the elite classes.They are following the traditional approach.That is why private institutes are not much different from the public one at both these levels.There are no signs of adoption of private-sector managerial practices, i.e. the so called 'new public management' (NPM) (McLaughlin et al., 2002) in the public owned HEIs.On the contrary, privately owned HEIs are behaving similar to their counterpart and the cultural forces are more visible in their HRM pattern.This may be only in higher education institutes, the point need to be clarified through a diversified data.
Findings of this study are consistent to Andolsek and Stebe (2005) who claim that the effects of external factors (e.g.country as an institutional environment) on the process of HRM devolution are greater than those of the internal (size, age, HR departments, HR strategies and policies and the level of numerical flexibility in the organization) factors.The difference of age and size for the two type of ownership is not playing any role on shaping their HRM.There is still resistance to HRM convergence in Pakistan and the high power distance culture is shaping many policies and practices.The divergent trends are expected to prevail in this sector until formal HR departments become an essential part of every institute.
The study is limited since it is higher education specific, and any kind of generalization could hardly be made.The criticism of top management bias also holds true for this study.The future research should include the line managers/DHs further down the chart for a comprehensive picture.Organizations which report that the person in-charge of HRM has a place on board are more than the number of organizations which have formal HR departments.This is because registrars on board are not as HR representative but as secretary to the board.This might have inflated results on integration.The overall results of integration are still low, so this factor can be disregarded.
International organizations investing in Pakistan need to develop greater understanding of local management practices.New results have been presented which would add on to the existent literature of SHRM research in HEIs; comparative HRM and research in Pakistan; and the on going convergence-divergence debate in the academic world.

Table 7 .
Comparison in organizational policies