Closing the HRM Scholar-practitioner Gap: Turning to the Aesthetic Experience in Human Resource Selection

HR selection practice seems to differ from the way much existing literature theorizes about it, where emphasis is placed on the rational and measurable aspects of selection, creating an HR science-practitioner gap. This paper seeks to address this gap by introducing aesthetics to selection, adding non-rational and non-measurable aspects by investigating how practitioners select for aesthetic skills in practice. This is done through a practicebased study, emphasizing aesthetic experience in selection decisions made in situ in various projects within the Danish film industry. The findings of this paper show that aesthetic experience is inherently part of any selection decision, and that attempts to implement strictly rational means in practice cause confusion and inability to order candidates into a meaningful short list. These findings contribute to the debate about critical HRM by providing a more nuanced perspective on selection, seeking to close the gap between HRM practitioners and scholars.