MWOC

HRM , A Contemporary
Perspective By Ian Beardwell &
Len Holden

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 Human resource management
• Walton (1985), in an attempt to define
HRM, stresses mutuality between
employers and employees:
• Mutual goals, mutual influence, mutual
respect, mutual rewards, mutual
responsibility
• The theory is that policies of mutuality will
elicit commitment which in turn will yield
both better economic performance and
greater human development
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 Human resource management
• Beer & Spector (1985) emphasised a new
set of assumptions in shaping their
meaning of HRM:
• Proactive system wide intervention, with
emphasis on ‘fit’ linking HRM with
strategic planning and cultural change
• People and social capital capable of
development

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 Human resource management
• Coincidence of interest between
stakeholders can be developed
• Open channels of communication to build
trust and commitment
• Goal orientation
• Participation and informed choice

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 Human resource management
• The boundaries of HRM overlap the
traditional areas of personnel
management, industrial relations,
organisational behaviour and strategic and
operational management

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 Human resource management
• Emergence of HRM can be attributed to
the major pressures experienced in
product markets during the recession of
1980-1982
• US economy was being challenged by
Japan, which led to discussions on ‘the
productivity of the American worker’
compared to the Japanese worker

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 Human resource management
• ‘The declining rate of innovation in
American industries’
• From the above came the desire to create
a workforce situation free from conflict in
which both employers and employees
worked in unity towards the same goal

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 Human resource management
• In the UK HRM became popular because
of:
• Increased competition
• The recession in the early part of the
decade
• Introduction of new technology
• Restructuring of the economy
• Poor training
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 Human resource management
• An early model of HRM introduced the
concept of strategic human resource
management by which HRM policies are
inextricably linked to the ‘formulation and
implementation of strategic corporate
and/or business objectives’ (Devanna et
al;1984) – matching model

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 Human resource management
• The matching model emphasises the
necessity of ‘tight fit’ between HR strategy
and business strategy
• This is a ‘unitarist’ view as it assumes that
different views/conflict cannot exist within
an organisation because management
and employees are working to the same
goal of the organisation’s success

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 Human resource management
• In order for HRM to be strategic it had to
encompass all the human resource areas
of the organisation
• Decentralisation and devolvement of
responsibility are also seen as very much
a part of HRM strategy's it facilitates
communication, involvement and
commitment of middle management and
other employees within the organisation
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 Human resource management
• The effectiveness of organisations rested
on how strategy and structure of the
organisation interrelated
• A more flexible model was developed by
Beer and his associates (1984) at Harvard
University
• Their model is known as ‘the map of HRM
territory’

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 Human resource management
• ‘The map of HRM territory’ recognises the
legitimate interest of stakeholders and that
the creation of HRM strategies would have
to recognise these interests and fuse them
as much as possible into human resource
strategy and ultimately the business
strategy
• Referred to as a ‘neopluralist’ model

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 Human resource management
• Guest (1987) exerts that a combination of
a set of propositions, which include
‘strategic integration’, ‘high commitment’,
‘high quality’, and ‘flexibility’, creates more
effective organisations

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 Human resource management
• Strategic integration is defined as:
• ‘the ability to integrate HRM issues into
their strategic plans, to ensure that various
aspects of HRM cohere and for line
managers to incorporate an HRM
perspective into their decision making’

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 Human resource management
• High commitment is defined as being:
• ‘concerned with both behavioural
commitment to pursue agreed goals and
attitudinal commitment reflected in a
strong identification with the enterprise’

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 Human resource management
• High quality ‘refers to all aspects of
managerial behaviour, including
management of employees and
investment in high quality employees,
which in turn will bear directly on the
quality of the goods and services provided’

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 Human resource management
• Flexibility is seen as being ‘primarily
concerned with what is sometimes called
functional flexibility but also with an
adaptable organisational structure with the
capacity to manage innovation’

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 Human resource management
• Two important points cannot be
overlooked :
• It has raised questions about the nature of
employment relationships
• Management of employee relations and
the question of employee commitment to
the employment relationship remains at
the centre of the debate
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 Human resource management
• As organisations vary in size, aims,
functions, complexity, the physical nature
of their product and appeal as employers,
so do the contributions of HRM- discuss

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Human resource management
• Human resource management however
defined, concerns the management of
employment relationship: practiced in
organisations by managers
• The nature of the organisation and the
way it is managed, constitute the context
within which HRM is embedded, and
generate the tensions that HRM policies
and practices tend to solve
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 Human resource management
• Nature of Context:
• Our understanding depends upon our
perception
• It also depends on our ideology
• There are therefore competing or
contested interpretation of events
• Different groups in society have their own
interpretations of events
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 Human resource management
• The very nature of the people and the way
they constitute an organisation makes
management complex
• Unlike other resources people have needs
for autonomy, they think they are creative,
they have feelings
• These characteristics in human beings
complicate the tasks for managers

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 Human resource management
• Inherent tensions in organisations:
• The existence of several stakeholders in
the employment relationship
• Their differing perspective upon events,
experiences and relationships
• Their differing aims, interests and needs
• These tensions have to be continuously
resolved
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 Human resource management
• As a result a continuing issue is that of
managerial control:
• How to orchestrate organisational
activities in a way that meets the needs of
various stakeholders
• The strategies adopted are embodied in
the employment policies, and the
organisational systems they choose to put
in place
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 Human resource management
• Four strategies can be identified that
managers have adopted to deal with
tensions in organisations:
• Scientific management or classical school
of management theory
• Human relations approach

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 Human resource management
• Contingency or human resource
management approach
• The fourth approach is more an ideal than
a common reality

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 Scientific management theory
• This approach addressed the tensions in
the organisation by striving to control
people and keep down their costs
• It emphasised the need for rationality,
clear objectives, the managerial
prerogative, the rights of managers to
manage

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 Scientific management theory
• This led to a reduction of tasks to their
basic elements and grouping of similar
elements together to produce low skilled,
low paid jobs, epitomised by assembly-
line working
• Workers tended to be treated relatively
impersonally and collectively i.e.
management and labour

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 Human relations approach
• Emerged during the middle years of the
last century and developed in parallel with
an increasingly prosperous society in
which strong trade unions and a growing
acceptance of the right of the individual to
achieve self-fulfilment

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 Human relations approach
• It modifies scientific management by its
recognition that people differed from other
resources
• That if they were not treated as human
beings they would not be fully effective at
work
• It recognised the significance of social
relationships at work
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 Human relations approach
• Managers had to pay hard attention to the
nature of supervision and the working of
groups and teams and to find ways of
involving employees through job design,
motivation, and a democratic, consultative
or participative style of management

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 Human resource management
approach
• Developed as major changes and threats
have been experienced in the context of
organisations:
• Recession, international competition,
Japan's business success

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 Human resource management
approach
• In response to the need to achieve
flexibility in the organisation and workforce
and improved performance through
developing decision making and
empowerment
• Requiring that employees become multi-
skilled and work across traditional
boundaries

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 Human resource management
approach
• This approach attempts to integrate the
needs of employees with those of the
organisation in a clear & definite manner
• It recognises that people should be
invested in as assets so that they achieve
their potential for the benefit of the
organisation
• As such employees are approached
individually rather than collectively
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 Human resource management
approach
• This strategy approaches the organisation
holistically and often with greater attention
to its culture, leadership and vision
• It pays greater attention to the individual
rather than the collective

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 Human resource management
approach
• The notions of developing individual’s
potential have been accompanied by
individual contracts of employment,
performance appraisal and performance
related pay
• HRM construes individuals as resource for
the organisation to use

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 Idealistic, humanistic approach
• Aims to construct the organisation as an
appropriate environment for autonomous
individuals to work together collaboratively
for their common good
• Approach adopted by many cooperatives
• It forms the basis of the notion of learning
organisation (Senge, 1990)

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 Human resource management
• Underlying the management of people in
organisations are some fundamental
assumptions about the nature of people
and reality itself and hence about
organising and managing

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 Human resource management
• Managers make assumptions bout the
nature of the organisation:
• Many interpreting it as an objective reality
( not influenced by feelings) that exists
separately from themselves and other
organisational members
• They make assumptions about the nature
of their goals, which they identify as the
goals for the organisation
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 Human resource management
• These assumptions inform the practices of
management, and hence define the
organisational and conceptual space that
HRM fills and generate the multiple
meanings of which HRM is constructed

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 Human resource management
• The definition of the wider context of HRM
could embrace innumerable topics
(Industrial Revolution to globalisation) and
a long time perspective

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 Human resource management
• What in detail constitutes the elements of
the socio-economic, technical, political-
legal and competitive context?
• What, in your view have been their
influences upon HRM?

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