Human resource analytics and HR practice: the microfoundations of loose and tight coupling

This thesis examines why Human Resource Analytics (HRA), despite securing symbolic legitimacy within the HR field, remains loosely coupled with everyday HR practice and under what conditions tighter coupling becomes possible. Although widely promoted as a rational, evidence-based approach, HRA often shows a persistent gap between formal adoption and substantive use. The study therefore conceptualises HRA as a contested subfield of HRM shaped by competing institutional logics, identity tensions and relational vulnerabilities. Drawing on a two-year hybrid ethnography in a multinational technology firm, the thesis uses abductive theorising to identify the mechanisms through which loose coupling is reproduced and the conditions under which tighter coupling emerges. To explain these dynamics, the thesis develops an integrated theoretical framework that critically reconstructs selected strands of institutional theory - microfoundations, practice-driven institutionalism, inhabited institutionalism, institutional logics, institutional work - and Archer’s morphogenetic approach into a coherent analytical lens. Within this framework, decision episodes are conceptualised as the situated arenas where multiple morphogenetic cycles converge around analytic artefacts, providing the meso-level unit through which the temporal unfolding of institutional work becomes empirically visible. Across twelve episodes, the study identifies three mechanisms that reproduce loose coupling (Defensive Translation, Jurisdictional Distancing and Identity Ambiguity) and three that support tighter coupling (Bridging Translation, Reconfiguring Artefacts and Symbolic Reordering). These mechanisms show that coupling is a recurrent configuration of institutional work involving identity work, translation, boundary negotiation and legitimacy judgements. The thesis advances theoretical understanding by specifying how micro-level interpretive, affective and socio-material dynamics accumulate into meso-level coupling patterns. It offers practical insight by demonstrating that technical investment alone is insufficient: the effective adoption of HRA depends on translation across professional boundaries, artefacts that support everyday routines and attention to identity and relational vulnerabilities. Beyond HRA, this study also extends to other professional fields undergoing technological or data-driven transformation, providing transferable insights into how newly introduced forms of analytics are differentially adopted, resisted, or embedded within established practice. Overall, the thesis provides a theoretically robust and empirically grounded account of how analytic practices are inhabited, negotiated and transformed at the organisational level, illuminating both the promise and the persistent limitations of HRA.