The Future of Employee Involvement in Human Resource Management: Idiosyncratic Deals and the HR Architecture of the Firm

This Delphi study aims to assess the impact the employment mode has on employee expectations regarding the future number of task, career, flexibility and financial incentive i-deals in order to shed light on the future of employee involvement in HRM. After developing hypotheses through reviewing extant literature, employees were invited as experts and asked to assess their own human capital and give their expectations regarding the future number of i-deals they expect. For this, the Delphi method, a consensus-based, multi-round forecasting technique was used. The quantitative data and subsequent statistical analysis shows no significant differences between the individual employment modes regarding leverage from human capital or likelihood for task, career, flexibility or financial i-deals to occur. From the qualitative expectations of the experts, the pattern emerged that some expect to receive i-deals in the future, but standardised practices, structural limitations and proactive HR policies often keep i-deals from occurring for a broader mass. The experts’ remarks made apparent that they consider leverage gained from human capital as an important factor during negotiations. I-deals can interact with, for example job crafting or themselves, since they can develop human capital over time and therefore provide employees with more bargaining power.