Centre for International Human Resource Management
Thought leadership through advanced research; improving organisational, team, and individual performance, and providing bespoke consultation and high-level executive education programmes.
Who we are
Our diverse team of highly knowledgeable and experienced academics and practitioners work in a wide variety of organisational contexts.
Our focus is on developing and disseminating rigorous and practical concepts relevant to the field of people management.
What we do
There are three key strands to our work: innovative research, delivering thought leadership on an advisory basis and our immersive and impactful education programmes.
Research
We partner with key players in the industry to conduct thorough, insightful and practical research, focusing on improving the performance of people and organisational processes, particularly in innovating contexts.
Thought leadership papers
Our faculty publish reports, articles and papers regularly in internationally-recognised journals. Additionally, you can read our key insights in books – find out more about our publications.
Courses
Join one of our tailor made Executive Education programmes on leadership, teams and organisational effectiveness.
Standout projects
We’re taking part in a £5 million research collaboration set to radically change the UK’s internet infrastructure to meet the needs of a revolution in technology in society.
Watch this NG-CDI presentation on ‘Governance and Risk Management’ by faculty member, Dr Philip Stiles, exploring how autonomics at scale is used to improve how we manage business risks. He also looks at how to avoid the pitfalls of emergent systems, at both technical and organisational levels.
A case study of automation in financial services in the investment banking sector – exploring risk and government issues in algorithmic trading.
A case study of digital transformation in a civil engineering firm.
We look at how the successful operation of an increasingly autonomous infrastructure must connect with the principal business functions of the company. Watch our video exploring our learnings from industry sectors treading these paths; such as financial algorithmic trading and retail logistics.
We examine how organisations prepare for the critical task of selecting and appointing members to sit on the board of directors. This a major element of organisational renewal and it is often a difficult and contested process. Our colleague Jens Jenssen has completed a study in collaboration with Egon Zehnder.
Though seemingly trivial, office politics can affect the performance of employees and organisations. The latest podcast in the Cambridge Judge Business Debate series asks how we can improve them.
Our impact
As part of Cambridge Judge Business School, we share the rich historic pedigree of the University of Cambridge.
Innovation is key to our projects and programmes, as we work with internationally recognised partners who are all experts in their fields.
Our goal is to disseminate ground-breaking research and provide exemplary educational programmes to help evolve our sector.
I thought the course was excellent! The speakers were all experts in their field with their own unique perspectives and insights to share both from an academic point-of-view and a practical one. Throughout the four half-day sessions the faculty brought the topic of high-performance teams to life with interesting real-life scenarios in business, sports and other team-based scenarios to illustrate the academic learnings and to challenge the way we think about success in teams. The format was very well-adapted to an online setting, utilising breakout rooms for peer-to-peer activities, interactive digital features to encourage student participation, and plenty of opportunities for discussion and ideas-sharing. I found the content in the curriculum very interesting and came away feeling inspired and motivated to put the learnings into practice.
News and insights from the Centre for International Human Resource Management
Read the latest news and insights from the Centre for International Human Resource Management. To stay up to date with our events, latest projects, report launches and news by signing up to our mailing list.
Cambridge Judge Business School’s Centre for International Human Resource Management is a partner in a £5 million research collaboration that is set to radically change the UK’s internet infrastructure to meet the needs of a revolution in technology in society. Breakthrough digital innovations such as the Internet of Things, 5G, and virtual reality require a transformation in how networks are developed and maintained. Jointly funded the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), and telecoms company BT, the project brings together multidisciplinary researchers from the University of Cambridge, Lancaster University (project lead), University of Surrey and University of Bristol, with specialist knowledge ranging from networking, communications, statistics and AI to industrial automation and organisational behaviour. Dr Philip Stiles, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour, will lead the Cambridge Judge Business School contribution, looking at how changes in network design and digital services will influence the nature of work. He said: This project is a tremendous opportunity to see how transformations in technology affect how organisations and the people within them adapt. The impact of major changes in digital infrastructure and the greater reliance on AI will have major implications for organisational design and culture and also on the interactions people will…
Insight
Following the money
Does performance-related pay work? Dr Jonathan Trevor explores the issues. Pay for performance matters. It's a practice that crosses sectors, affects millions of employees globally and regularly makes the headlines. But there's a problem, says Dr Jonathan Trevor, Lecturer in Human Resources & Organisations and Co-Director of the Centre for International Human Resource Management (CIHRM). It might not work. "Companies don't like to talk about this," he says. "But we need a debate on this issue, because pay for performance is widespread, and has become the dominant logic of employee reward – the notion that we can use pay as a carrot, or a stick, and drive positive employee behaviour. In reality, I believe pay is like plumbing. You only ever notice it when it goes wrong. It can be used in good or bad ways – but often it is the latter. It is often misused, or used inappropriately, as a crutch for poor leadership – especially in the financial sector." For five years, Dr Trevor acted as a retained academic advisor to The Remuneration Group, a consortium of senior remuneration directors working in FTSE 50 companies who met each year for a two-day round table and research exposition…
A major conference around the future of reward at work is to be held in Cambridge at the end of September, organised by Cambridge Judge Business School and America's leading HR professionals' association, WorldatWork. Titled 'Future Reward: Strategies for a Hyper-competitive World', the summit aims to attract broad interest with a guest-speaker programme that includes policy-makers, practitioners and academics. Dr Jonathan Trevor, Lecturer in Human Resources & Organisations at the School, is delighted that the summit is coming to Cambridge to tackle the 'thorny issues' relating to pay and workplace reward. He says the focus is on change, especially positive change for which there is no option. "It is something we have to confront, embrace and move forward, treating it as an opportunity. We won't do that by having separate, discrete conversations or by trying to grapple with it in our own way, [but] by actually coming together as a community of academics, practitioners and policy-makers and addressing these thorny issues." Dr Trevor is Co-Director of the Centre for International Human Resource Management. He is to chair the summit, and says the programme will extend far beyond the HR sector and is already raising interest across business, charity, policy-making and…