...Human Resource Management Is No More Than ‘Old Wine in New Bottles’. In: Business and Management Human Resource Management Is No More Than ‘Old Wine in New Bottles’. Human resource management is no more than ‘old wine in new bottles’. Discuss. ‘’HRM is regarded by some personnel managers as just a set of initials or old wine in new bottles. It could indeed be no more and no less than another name for PM ’’ ( Armstrong, 1987) First we have to understand the meaning of HRM, but attempts to define HRM precisely have resulted in confusion and contradiction rather than clarity [Price, 1997]. However, according to Storey (1989) Human resource management is a completely different philosophy and an approach contrast to Personnel management. In his view, HRM provides a completely new form of managing personnel and can therefore be regarded as departure from the orthodoxy of traditional personnel management. The normative models of personnel management shows that PM is about selecting, developing, rewarding, and directing employees in such a way that not only will they achieve satisfaction and ‘give of their best’ at work, but by so doing enable the employing organization to achieve its goals. When considering the definition of Human resource management and Personnel management, there are many differences on the perspectives of researchers. Legge (1989) reviewed the definition of a variety of writers. She could come to conclude that there are three features which seems to distinguish HRM...
Words: 526 - Pages: 3
...R T 1 The role of human resource management Part contents 1 Introduction to human resource management 2 Human resource planning and resourcing 3 Work and job design 1 41 74 Chapter 1 Introduction to human resource management LEARNING OUTCOMES After studying this chapter, you should be able to: identify the historical developments and their impact on HRM outline the development and functions of HRM understand the differences between HRM and personnel management evaluate ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches to HRM understand how diversity is an issue in HR practice consider the HRM as an international issue. The opening vignette gives a somewhat pessimistic view of the role of people in the workplace. Often it is the job of the human resource manager to develop policies and practices that serve the organisation, but she or he also needs to think about the people. If the people are nurtured then the organisation can develop. As can be seen below, this was not the case with Enron. Enron: something’s got to give Human beings are not governed purely by their own self-interest, so our management and HR systems should not assume they are. For more than a year, Andrew Fastow – the erstwhile chief financial officer of Enron and the key architect of the off-balance-sheet entities that caused Enron’s sudden death – ran rings around the prosecutors investigating the collapse of the energy giant. 3 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Suddenly, he has...
Words: 16861 - Pages: 68
...of human resource management Part contents 1 Introduction to human resource management 1 2 Human resource planning and resourcing 41 3 Work and job design 74 Chapter 1 Introduction to human resource management LEARNING OUTCOMES After studying this chapter, you should be able to: identify the historical developments and their impact on HRM outline the development and functions of HRM understand the differences between HRM and personnel management evaluate ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ approaches to HRM understand how diversity is an issue in HR practice consider the HRM as an international issue. The opening vignette gives a somewhat pessimistic view of the role of people in the workplace. Often it is the job of the human resource manager to develop policies and practices that serve the organisation, but she or he also needs to think about the people. If the people are nurtured then the organisation can develop. As can be seen below, this was not the case with Enron. Enron: something’s got to give Human beings are not governed purely by their own self-interest, so our management and HR systems should not assume they are. For more than a year, Andrew Fastow – the erstwhile chief financial officer of Enron and the key architect of the off-balance-sheet entities that caused Enron’s sudden death – ran rings around the prosecutors investigating the collapse of the energy giant. 3 4 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT ...
Words: 16861 - Pages: 68
...HRM ASSESSMENT HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF HR Question 1 Personnel management started to manifest near the end of the 19th century, that was when welfare officers, or as they were sometimes referred to as welfare secretaries, were created. Welfare officers were mostly women, who were only concerned with the protection of women and girls, and their creation was a result of the conditions of the workplace, the stress that was being put on workers due to the expansion of the business's franchise and as their role grew the aim of moral protection for women and children was challenged by a need for higher output by the employers. Personnel management was pushed forward by WW1 due to women being recruited in high numbers to do the jobs of men that had left for war, which meant there had to be negotiations with the trade union about upping their employee levels to counter act the problem that their new hired workforce was unskilled at the job they were placed in and during that time personnel was being pushed forward by government schemes to get the most out of their employees. By 1916 it became mandatory to have a welfare officer in factories that manufactured explosives and was encouraged for munitions factories to have a welfare officer, at this time there was over 1,300 welfare officers. It was only until the WW2 that welfare and personnel workers were brought on at full-time at all locations that were manufacturing war materials because the Ministry of Labour and National...
Words: 2042 - Pages: 9
...Introduction Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization. HRM can be performed by line senior managers. A senior manager is responsible for overseeing and leading the work of a group of people. To the journal ‘Personnel Today’ who commissioning a series of articles introducing principles of Human Resource Management (HRM) I would like to contribute an article which related to senior managers and from other functional management areas trough success a business. The article entitled “To ensure the success of your business through effective human resource strategies”, and knowing how to help your staff to 'go green'. And the article is cover: 1. The definitions and comparison models of strategic HR management. 2. Second the importance of HRM. 3. The analysis of the framework. 4. How the strategies are developed. 5. The assessment of roles in HRM. A manager, who is generally the head of a department or functional area within an organization, has specific responsibilities depending on the needs of his or her organization. Human Resource Management Ensure the success of your business through effective Human Resource strategies To understand the role and importance of human resource management in achieving organisational effectiveness to define strategic human resource management and knowing the...
Words: 3895 - Pages: 16
...Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization. Human Resource Management can also be performed by line managers. Human Resource Management is the organizational function that deals with issues related to people such as compensation, hiring, performance management, organization development, safety, wellness, benefits, employee motivation, communication, administration, and training. More About Human Resources Management An HRM strategy pertains to the means as to how to implement the specific functions of HRM. An organisation's HR function may possess recruitment and selection policies, disciplinary procedures, reward/recognition policies, an HR plan, or learning and development policies, however all of these functional areas of HRM need to be aligned and correlated, in order to correspond with the overall business strategy. An HRM strategy thus is an overall plan, concerning the implementation of specific HRM functional areas. An HRM strategy typically consists of the following factors: * "Best fit" and "best practice" - meaning that there is correlation between the HRM strategy and the overall corporate strategy. As HRM as a field seeks to manage human resources in order to achieve properly organisational goals, an organisation's HRM strategy seeks to accomplish such management by applying a firm's personnel needs with the goals/objectives...
Words: 2217 - Pages: 9
...Learning Organisations Moving towards a learning organization is something done BY people, not something done TO people or FOR people by someone else. So, the role of HR has to be in encouraging, facilitating, and supporting a move towards learning organizations. HR can never accomplish this themselves. Then, if executives want to move towards a learning organization, they should direct their operating units to do so, and direct HR to move into a supportive role. If it's the other way around, where HR gets the responsibility, it never works. Knowledge management (KM) "any practice or process of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, wherever it resides, to enhance learning and performance in organisations (Scarborough 1999). Knowledge management involves converting knowledge sources by classifying related information then circulating to make the information to take place. Not all information is knowledge or all knowledge is important. According to Blackler (1995), "knowledge is multifaceted and complex, implicit and explicit, physical and mental, verbal and encoded". He also categorises knowledge in four as: embedded (technological - collective), enculturel (Values, beliefs - collective), embodied (practical knowledge - individual), and embraced (theoretical understanding - individual). Contrast on Blackler, Nonaka (1991) proposes that knowledge could be either individual or collective, cannot be both. Yet another argument comes from Scarborough and Carter...
Words: 4209 - Pages: 17
...STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT – HRM 3138 LECTURE NOTES 2AGEM Strategic management deals with the managerial aspect of strategy. A number of concepts that are often confused will have to be considered, namely, strategic decisions, strategy, and strategic management. 1. Strategic Decisions These are the decisions that affect the long-term well-being of the organisation. Such decisions involve major resource commitments and are difficult to reverse, implying a long-term commitment. Decisions that are regarded as strategic may occur at all levels of the organisation. There are usually two levels of decisions – corporate and business. Corporate-level decisions are those that affect the entire organisation or firm, whereas Business-level decisions affect the particular business or division. If there is only one business in the firm, then both the corporate and business levels are identical. 2. Strategy This is the common theme underlying a set of strategic decisions. The strategy may be to change the scope of the firm or become global, and the decision to acquire a particular firm is part of that strategy. Strategy is about the firm’s relationship with the environment and developing the capabilities and competencies to enable it attain success. It must be borne in mind that all firms have a strategy and that this strategy may be explicit or implicit, developed with extensive analysis or not. An organisation or firm’s strategy can generally be expressed in relatively...
Words: 29875 - Pages: 120
...INTRODUCTION “Management guru Tom Peters once joked that if you want to insult a Human Resources director ask him if HR stands for 'Human Remains.' The fact is HR is a universally misunderstood discipline whether you are a large or small company. But bringing in an HR presence into your growing business could be one of the most sensible decisions you ever make.” Source: (http://www.mybusiness.co.uk/Yc0-nCFoc2BfBw.html) This report has been designed to investigate the traditional view of personnel management and the new approach of human resource management; as well as to evaluate the procedures and practices used for recruiting and selecting suitable employees. SECTION 1 Distinguishing between ‘personnel management’ and ‘human resource management’ and discussing the historical development and changing context in which they operate Introduction ‘When the flexible concept of HRM emerged in the 1980s, in the times of Thatcherism and Reaganomics, it “could not help but look more desirable than personnel management” (Hope-Hailey et al 1997: 5). The attractiveness of the theory of managing personnel led to a proliferation of HRM language. Nonetheless, it remains to be seen if there is more to HRM than only a new and shining rhetoric. A number of authors stress the difficulties of identifying clear differences between personnel management and HRM, and maintain that...
Words: 21647 - Pages: 87
...Interplay Between Corporate, Regional/ National and Plant Level Elaine Farndale Erasmus University Rotterdam, farndale@few.eur.nl Jaap Paauwe Erasmus University Rotterdam, paauwe@few.eur.nl Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/intlvf Part of the Human Resources Management Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the International Programs at DigitalCommons@ILR. It has been accepted for inclusion in Visiting Fellow Working Papers by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@ILR. For more information, please contact jdd10@cornell.edu. The Role of Corporate HR Funcitons in MNCs: The Interplay Between Corporate, Regional/National and Plant Level Abstract The HR literature has been abundant in providing typologies of the roles of HR professionals in their organisation. These typologies are largely related to the changing nature of HRM over time, and the context in which empirical work was carried out. In this paper we focus on the context of the increasing internationalisation of firms and how this has an effect upon modern-day typologies of HR roles. We explore these roles by focusing on the way in which HRM practices come about. Especially in a MNC setting of increasing internationalisation of firms the issues of coordination, shared learning and standardisation versus leeway for adapting to the local context (customisation) are prominent. These issues present themselves both at the corporate and...
Words: 9324 - Pages: 38
...® Acodemy of Management Heview 1993, Vol. 18, No. 3. 518-545. FOUCAULT. POWER/KNOWLEDGE. AND ITS RELEVANCE FOR HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT BARBARA TOWNLEY The University of Alberta Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault. I argue that human resource management (HRM) may be best understood as a discourse and set of practices that attempt to reduce the indeterminacy involved in the employment contract. Here I reread HRM practices from a Foucauldian power-knowledge perspective and suggest that this provides an avenue to reorient contemporary, historical, and comparative analyses of the area. A glimpse at human resource management (HRM) texts would seem to give light to a comment by Beer, Spector, Lawrence, Mills, and Walton (1984) that HRM is a series of seemingly disjointed activities. This notion echoes an earlier view of Baldamus (1961: 347) that what is encompassed by HRM's subject matter is "anything from supervision, incentives and profit sharing to machine-paced production, methods of training and employee selection." Often this heterogeneity is excused in terms of HRM's reflecting the ad hoc and reactive nature of its origins (Jacoby, 1985; Niven, 1967; Ozanne, 1967). What the heterogeneity of HRM highlights, however, is the importance of an organizing principle, or analytical focus, as opposed to common sense description, which gives HRM practices a theoretical coherence. HRM's heterogeneity stresses the importance of an order "that turns a set of bits, which have limited...
Words: 12810 - Pages: 52
...DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A MEASURE THAT EXAMINES ATTITUDES TOWARDS e-HRM PRACTICES by Lisa Shane submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in the subject INDUSTRIAL AND ORGANISATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA SUPERVISOR: MR H VON DER OHE MARCH 2009 Student number: 33450625 STATEMENT I declare that “DEVELOPMENT AND VALIDATION OF A MEASURE THAT EXAMINES ATTITUDES TOWARDS e-HRM PRACTICES” is my own work and that all sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. …………………… ..…………………… SIGNATURE DATE (MRS L SHANE) ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS So many people have come along this journey of personal and academic development with me. While completing this dissertation, I have had the greatest support and encouragement from many. I would like to express my gratitude to the following people: My wonderful husband, Bryan, who has shown such patience and understanding during this trying time. I would not have been able to accomplish what I have without you holding my hand the whole way through. Thank you for helping me realise that I could do it. My promoter, Mr. Hartmut von der Ohe, who has consistently provided encouragement and support, and given me the extra push that is needed to get through the writing of this dissertation. Also for having the extra energy and pushing me when I had all but given...
Words: 47711 - Pages: 191
...2 Strategic human resource management Nicky Golding OBJECTIVES To indicate the significance of the business context in developing an understanding of the meaning and application of SHRM. To analyse the relationship between strategic management and SHRM. To examine the different approaches to SHRM, including: – The best-fit approach to SHRM – The configurational approach to SHRM – The resource-based view of SHRM – The best-practice approach to SHRM. To evaluate the relationship between SHRM and organisational performance. To present a number of activities and case studies that will facilitate readers’ understanding of the nature and complexity of the SHRM debate, and enable them to apply their knowledge and understanding. Introduction to strategic human resouce management This chapter charts the development of strategic human resource management. It assumes a certain familiarity with the evolution of HRM, early HRM models and frameworks and their theoretical underpinning as discussed in Chapter 1. The aim of this chapter is to provide a challenging and critical analysis of the strategic human resource management literature, so that you will be able to understand the synthesis both within and between strategic human resource management and strategic management in its various forms. Since the early 1980s when human resource management arrived on the managerial agenda, there has been considerable debate concerning its nature and its value to organisations. From the seminal...
Words: 70707 - Pages: 283
...of Contemporary Hospitality Management Emerald Article: Teaching human resource management in hospitality and tourism: a critique Tom Baum, Denis Nickson Article information: To cite this document: Tom Baum, Denis Nickson, (1998),"Teaching human resource management in hospitality and tourism: a critique", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 10 Iss: 2 pp. 75 - 79 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09596119810207228 Downloaded on: 24-09-2012 References: This document contains references to 19 other documents Citations: This document has been cited by 5 other documents To copy this document: permissions@emeraldinsight.com This document has been downloaded 4078 times since 2005. * Users who downloaded this Article also downloaded: * Tom Baum, Vanessa Amoah, Sheryl Spivack, (1997),"Policy dimensions of human resource management in the tourism and hospitality industries", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 9 Iss: 5 pp. 221 - 229 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09596119710172615 Philip Worsfold, (1999),"HRM, performance, commitment and service quality in the hotel industry", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 11 Iss: 7 pp. 340 - 348 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/09596119910293240 Peter Haynes, Glenda Fryer, (2000),"Human resources, service quality and performance: a case study", International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, Vol. 12 Iss: 4 pp. 240 - 248...
Words: 4471 - Pages: 18
...Comparative HRM: China and Australia * Introduction Over the last few decades, as a rising number of globalisation of business transactions and organisations are seeking to develop and operate in foreign markets, the need for comparative human resource management studies are increased (Brewster & Mayrhofer (eds.) 2012), there are a lot of differences in HRM in different countries and regions, such as institutional culture, organisational structures, recruitment and development and relation of employee (Crystal & Iles 2013). The comparative human resource management provides a better understanding of different national settings on the management task (Hollinshead 2010). Two countries from different institutional and legal systems which are China and Australia will be comparatively analysed in this essay. Firstly, the overview of both countries and culture dimensions will be analysed. Secondly, three HR features will be outlined respectively include culture, organisational structures, and the content of Human Resource Management. in addition, a critical evaluation will be given for how and why these features in these two countries developed in the way that they have. Moreover, a comparative analysis of how HRM has developed in each country will be given, as well as that approach to HRM. * Background and Different Culture between China and Australia The study of the influences of culture is a key role in HRM (Brewster & Mayrhofer (eds.) 2012). Moreover, due...
Words: 4835 - Pages: 20