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tment, improving quality and developing the human resource, whereas "hard" HRM is contingent and calculating in its utilisation of the human resource (Hendry and Pettigrew, 1986; Storey, 1992). Both approaches embrace notions of flexibility, and are not mutually exclusive. The segmentation of different elements of the workforce into particular "cores" or "peripheries", however defined, may result in different approaches being used for different groups in the same organisation.
Others claim that HRM can lead to specifically measurable business outcomes (for example, Huselid, 1995). Equally, HRM has its critics (notably, Sisson, 1994; Legge, 1995) both of whom view HRM as a rhetorical guise to enhance managerial legitimacy where the management of labour has been intensified and commodified within an enterprise culture (see Keenoy and Anthony, 1992). The overall conclusions drawn from WERS are that in most workplaces the broad approach to management was "one of retaining control and doing what they could to control costs" (Cully et al., 1999, p. 295), with high commitment management practices adopted on an ad hoc basis. Clearly, then, "soft" HRM is a long way from gaining currency in Britain.
Within the HI most HRM research has focused on the hotel sector regarded as the sub-sector most likely to display "good practice". Yet researchers, with the notable exception of Hoque (1999a, b), have converged on a less than favourable analysis of the state of HRM including Price (1994), Kelliher and Johnson (1997), Worsfold (1999) and McGunnigle and Jameson (2000). Although practices observed in the hotel sector are not necessarily generalisable to the hospitality industry as a whole, Worsfold (1999) concludes that the poor uptake of HRM in the majority of hotels is no worse than in other manufacturing or service industries. More comprehensive reviews of the hospitality industry have also tended to support the "poor state" scenario (Lucas, 1995, 1996; Goldsmith et al., 1997; Wood, 1997).
In taking a rather different approach to what HRM may represent in the HI, this article treads a similar path to Sisson (1993), who used the Workplace Industrial Relations Survey (WIRS) 1990 data set to trace any increasing presence of HRM initiatives. The survey-based WIRS, he argued, was problematic as it focused on industrial relations institutions rather than on HRM processes, where case studies would be a more appropriate research methodology. Even so he was able to pinpoint and review three areas of HRM: the balance between "individualism" or "collectivism" in management's approach, the attention paid to participation and involvement, and management's organisation. Further, he was able to identify how future surveys might be constructed, so as to give a more balanced view of the employment relationship.
WERS, a statistically valid sample of workplaces across Britain, now includes very small workplaces employing 10-24 employees, embraces a more "individual" agenda, and an employee survey. While it is equally open to the criticism of only being able to produce a snapshot of essentially institutional arrangements, there are two main benefits here. It enables a valid comparison to be made of the "state of HRM" between the HI and AIS, and gives a clearer indication of how empirical, qualitative research in the HI may be directed. This article builds upon Sisson's three areas of HRM by extending "fragments" to include other areas of HRM policy and practice, a