Abstract

A Comprehensive Approach in Recruitment and Employment Policies for Faculty Members: A Critical Review

Author(s):Soleiman Ahmady, Farin Tatari, Shahram Yazdani and Seyed Ali Hosseini

Experts in the field of human resource management have always emphasized on human work force as the most important strategic factor and the organization's most valuable asset and believe that effective management of human resources is the key to organizational success. Recruitment and selection are one of the aspects of human resource management that are of great importance and adopting appropriate policies in this area could provide the appropriate use of human resources. In universities and higher education institutions, faculty members are one of the major capitals and development and application of appropriate policies play a major role in their success. This study is based on critical review where relevant search terms were used to collect the studies using extensive and structured search of the databases. One hundred fifty titles were retrieved. Then, with purposive sampling, texts screening was conducted in three stages: A) primary screening or title screening on the grounds that are associated with managing recruiting faculty members, B) secondary screening performed based on study summary and introduction texts, and C) tertiary screening: the texts were briefly studied and the texts were prioritized based on conceptual richness and related to contextual studies and irrelevant articles were excluded. Complete and in-depth study of the richest papers began. Forty-five articles and text were examined. The results suggest that in most universities management of recruiting faculty members is decentralized and based on the department. Findings show that policies such as reducing the use of tenure track, the long-term contracts, limiting the tenure to faculty of science, limiting tenure to higher levels of associate professor and design the diverse career paths and different forms of employment are of the policies that can be considered by university managers. The findings also suggest that universities can use flexible policies, such as increasing pre-tenure probationary period, the possibility of transition between employment tracks, increased use of part-time and decreased full-time employment, implementation tenure-clock-stopping policies and hiring both couple policies are used as a range of bilateral(winwin) policies (for universities and faculty members). Universities should proportionate faculty recruit policies and practices in line with the economic realities of their environment and consider policies that enhance performance and create a balance between work and life of faculty members

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