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The story of Human Resource management
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Human resources management theorise
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However you define the activities of management, and whatever the organisational processes are, an essential part of the process of management is that proper attention be given to the Human Resource function. The human element provides a major part in the overall success of the organisation. Therefore there must be an effective human resource function. In the past, most organisations viewed Human Resource Management (HRM) as an element function, that is an activity that is supportive of the task functions and does not normally have any accountability for the performance of a specific end task. Because of the emphasis on analysis and precision there is a tendency for strategists to concentrate on economic data and ignore the way in which human elements and values can influence the implementation of a strategy. 'Economic analysis of strategy fails to recognise the complex role which people play in the evolution of strategy - strategy is also a product of what people want an organisation to do or what they feel the organisation should be like.?(1).
Understanding the strategic potential of HRM is a relatively recent phenomenon. Strategic HRM attempts to bring HRM to the boardroom. It requires personnel policies and practices to be integrated so that they make a coherent whole, and also that this whole is integrated with the business or organisational strategy.
Strategic HRM has evolved through three main stages. Up until the mid 1960?s HRM comprised mainly a file maintenance stage with most emphasis on selection, recruitment, screening and orientation of the new employee. They also looked after employee-related data and organised the Christmas party.
The second stage, government accountability developed with the arrival of the Civil Rights Act and evolved with subsequent laws. To avoid costly legal battles, the HRM function gained in stature and importance.
The third stage in HRM development which began in the late 1970?s and early 1980?s was the realisation that effective HRM could give an organisation competitive advantage. Within this stage HRM is viewed as important for both strategy formulation and implementation. For example 3M?s noted scientists enable the company to pursue a differentiation strategy based on innovative products. At the competitive stage, then, human resources are considered explicitly in conjunction with
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... Management vol. 32 no. 8 November 1982 pp.263 -9
(7) Peter F. Drucker ?The Practice of Management? Heinemann Professional Publishing 1955
(8) Roethsliger, F.J. and Dickson, W.J. ?Management and the Worker.?, Harvard University
Press 1939
(9) Shoshana Zuboff ?In the Age of the Smart Machine.?
(10) Derek Torrington and Laura Hall ?Personnel Management, HRM in Action?
pp.59 Prentice Hall 1995
(11) Derek Torrington and Laura Hall ?Personnel Management, HRM in Action?
pp.28 Prentice Hall 1995
Bibliography
Derek Torrington and Laura Hall Personnel Management HRM in Action, Prentice Hall Ltd 1991
Laurie J. Mullins Management and Organisational Behaviour, Pitman Publishing 1994
Kathryn M. Bartol and David C. Martin Management, McGraw Hill 1991
Tom Peters Liberation Management Necessary Disorganization for the Nanosecond Nineties, Macmillan London 1992
Samuel C. Certo Modern Management, Allyn and Bacon 1992
Peter F. Drucker The Practice of Management, Heinemann Proffesional Publishing Ltd. 1955
J. Richard Hackman, Edward E. Lawler III and Lyman W. Porter Perspectives on Behaviour in Organisations, McGraw Hill 1983
HRM in any company is a weighty issue that needs much attention where business performance is linked to a HR strategy (Caldwell 2008; Ulrich et al. 2008). In the recent past, competition has become stiff, such that organizations need to come up with other means to compete in the extremely dynamic market world. Thus, companies have shifted their emphasis to Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) where they enhance and empower their personnel in order to increase the productivity and the services offered into the market (Mello 2006). This goes against the traditional ways of increasing the means of competition where organizations place emphasis on tangible resources. In the past, organizations competed in terms of machinery and acquisitions. This has changed greatly due to the changing customer tastes and the diversity of the market in the present (Delery & Doty 1996; Lengnick-Hall et al. 2009).
Human Resource Management (HRM) is the administration and control of employees. Its purpose is to ensure that the workers and the employer cultivate a valuable relationship. As a result, the company will record an exceptional performance particularly with regard to employee productivity (Paauwe, 2004). Further, the workers will benefit in terms of job satisfaction and self-development (Paauwe, 2004). Some of the activities involved in managing workers include selection and recruitment, training, development, motivation, and appraisal (Sharma, 2009). This paper aims to analyse the role of human resource management in organisations and its linkage to the wider organizational strategy using Tesco and Harrods as illustrations.
Ramlall, S., Welch, T., Walter, J., & Tomlinson, D. (2009). Strategic HRM at the Mayo Clinic: A case study. Journal of Human Resources Education, 3(3), 13-35. Retrieved from http://business.troy.edu/jhre/Articles/PDF/3-3/31.pdf
In the 1980’s, the birth of a new concept called ‘Human Resource Management’ was born. This trend comes after an intense period of Taylorisation, Fordism and now, McDonaldisation. HRM came to counter balance these trends and to consider the concept of the Man as a Man and not as a machine. For the last several decades, the interests of companies in "strategic management" have increased in a noteworthy way. This interest in strategic management has resulted in various organizational functions becoming more concerned with their role in the strategic management process. The Human Resource Management (HRM) field has sought to become integrated into the strategic management process through the development of a new discipline referred to as Strategic Resource Management (SHRM). In current literature, the difference between SHRM and HRM is often unclear because of the interconnections linking SHRM to HRM. However, the concepts are slightly different. Thus, we can ask, what is strategic human resource management? What are the main theories and how do they work? What do they take into account and how are they integrated? What are the links between SHRM and organization strategy? In order to answer to these questions, we will precisely define strategic human resource management, followed by a look at the different approaches built by theorists, and finally, we will see the limits between the models and their applications depending on the company’s environment. Discussion Strategic Human Resource Management: definition Strategic human resource management involves the military word ‘strategy’ which is defined by Child in 1972 as "a set of fundamental or critical choices about the ends and means of a business". To be simpler, a strategy is "a statement of what the organization wants to become, where it wants to go and, broadly, how it means to get there." Strategy involves three major key factors: competitive advantages (Porter, 1985; Barney, 1991), distinctive capabilities (Kay, 1999) and the strategic fit (Hofer & Schendel 1986). Strategies must be developed with a relevant purpose to sustain the organizational goals and aims. SHRM is one of the components of the organizational strategies used to sustain the business long-term. SHRM defined as: “all those activities affecting the behaviour of individuals in their efforts to formulate and implement the strategic needs of the business. (Schuler, 1992)” or as “the pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable the firm to achieve its goals.
Stephen Robbins , (2010). Management and Organisational Behaviour. 9th ed. England: Financial Times Pitman Publishing.
Armstrong ( 2010) defined Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) as “an approach to making decisions on the intentions and plans of the organisation in the shape of the policies, programmes and practices concerning the employment relationship, resourcing, learning and development, performance management , rewards and employee relationships,” ( p. 115). There is a paradigm shift from a functional role to a tactical one through the strategic management process. SHRM is very important to the effectiveness of my learning organisation because it ensures that the needs of the learning community are met and provides the opportunity for instructional leaders to “add value to the learning community” (Introduction to Human Resource Management, 2012, p.6) while achieving the goals and objectives of the institution.
According to this definition, we can see that human resource management should not merely handle recruitment, pay, and discharging, but also should maximize the use of an organization's human resources in a more strategic level. To describe what the HRM does in the organization, Ulrich, D. & Brocklebank, W. (2005) have outlined some of the HRM roles such as employee advocate, human capital developer, functional expert, strategic partner and HR leader etc.
Ivancevich, John, Knopaske, Robert, Matteson, Michael, Organizational Behaviour and Management (10 edition (January 30, 2013). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Human resource management (HRM) encompasses the activities of acquiring, maintaining, and developing the organization's employees (human resources). "The traditional view of these activities focuses on planning for staffing needs, recruiting and selecting of employees, orienting and training staff, appraising their performance, providing compensations and benefits, and making their career movement and development." HRM involves two aspects:...
Wright and McMahan defined Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) as "the pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable an organization to achieve its goals" (1992:298). This field moves away from traditional personnel management' and heads toward the view that employees play an integral role in the development of an organization's competitive advantage and as such carefully planned HR initiatives should be implemented to increase their value to the firm. SHRM conceptualized with Walker's (1978) article, which highlighted the need for linkage between strategic planning and human resource planning. However, it originated with Devanna, Fombrum and Tichy's (1984) article which analyzed in great detail the link between business strategy and HR. The field of SHRM has enjoyed a remarkable ascendancy during the past two decades as both an academic literature and focus of management practice.
In the fields of management and business, Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) has been a powerful and influential tool in order to motivate employees to perform productively. (Ejim, Esther, 2013). According to Armstrong (2011), SHRM refers to the way that the company use to approach their strategic goals through people with a combination of human resource policy and practices. The purpose of SHRM is to produce strategic capability that the organisation must ensure such that employees are skilled, committed, and well-motivated in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage, (Armstrong, 2011). Particularly, the organisation must be able to carefully plan strategic human resource ideas, aimed to increase the productivity.
Human resource management is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business. The terms "human resource management" and "human resources" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel management" as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations. Human Resource management is evolving rapidly. Human resource management is both an academic theory and a business practice that addresses the theoretical and practical techniques of managing a workforce. (1)
Changing Roles. Traditionally, HR has been an administrative position-processing paperwork, benefits, hiring and firing, and compensation. However, recently HRM has moved from a traditional to a strategic role, the emphasis is on catering to the needs of consumers and workers. Before, HR was seen as the enemy and employees believed that HR’s main purpose was to protect management. Now, the position requires HRM to be more people oriented and protect their human capitol, the staff. In addition, human resource management has to be business savvy and think of themselves as strategic partners in the 21st century.
Human Resource Management (HRM) is fundamentally another name for personnel management. It is the process of making sure the employees are as creative as they can be. HRM is a way of grouping the range of activities associated with managing people that are variously categorised under employee relations, industrial/labour relations, personnel management and organisational behaviour. Many academic departments where research and teaching in all these areas take place have adopted the title department of human resources management. HRM is a coordinated approach to managing people that seeks to integrate the various personnel activates so that they are compatible with each other. Therefore the key areas of employee resourcing, employee development, employee reward and employee involvement are considered to be interrelated. Policy-making and procedures in one of these areas will have an impact on other areas, therefore human resources management is an approach that takes a holistic view and considers how various areas can be integrated.
Whether an organization consists of five or 25,000 employees, human resources management is vital to the success of the organization. HR is important to all managers because it provides managers with the resources – the employees – necessary to produce the work for the managers and the organization. Beyond this role, HR is capable of becoming a strong strategic partner when it comes to “establishing the overall direction and objectives of key areas of human resource management in order to ensure that they not only are consistent with but also support the achievement of business goals.” (Massey, 1994, p. 27)