Ammar Alwadani

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purpose.

Assignment 1

QUESTION 1-A: Provide a brief description of the models of HRM discussed in the first chapter

of the textbook, and explain how each one relates to strategic human resource management.

Bratton and Gold (2012, pp. 18-25) in their book Human Resource Management: Theory and

Practice showcase numerous HRM models. These all have a strategic meaning and are applied

differently based on their content.

First of all, the Fombrun, Tichy and Devanna model was one of the earliest models in strategic

HRM. It consists of four parts (a) selection, (b) appraisal, (c) development and (d) rewards.

Secondly, the Harvard model is a significant improvement from the first model. The perception

according to this model is changed, as it forms a cycle/loop, where policies are developed to

focus on specific impact on the organization (measurable in specific outcomes and

consequences.

The third model was developed by Guest. His approach is radically different from the first two -

he suggests that the primary focus should lie in creating trust and commitment, and there is a

focus on organic HR.

Next, there is the Warwick model a model that heavily borrows from the Harvard model. Its

core strength is that it is based around context outer, inner, business strategy, HRM context

(including the role, definition, organization, HR outputs, flows, work systems, rewards and

employee relations). All the functions are encompassed in this model.

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The Storey model is trying to create and recruit an ideal employee, which is what numerous

organizations have been doing they start off with the position development and the

suggested ideal candidate, and then find an individual that resembles the ideal candidate as

closely as possible.

The Ulrichs strategic partner model of HRM is attempting to overcome the traditional

marginalization of personnel. According to this model, HR professionals must be engaged in the

strategic decisions, as these have a strong impact on the organizational design and

subsequently the HR decisions.

QUESTION 1-B: Which of the models of strategic HRM do you feel best represents a strategic

approach to HRM? Explain why.

While each of these models are clearly related to strategic HR management, they each have

different priorities and in addition to that they may prioritize and focus on different aspects of

strategic HRM, they all share some similarities. The model that best represents the strategic

HRM in my opinion is the Ulrichs framework where the HR is considered to be the strategic

partner in the organization.

Many organizations and their top management make the decisions involving reorganization or

major change of strategy, and fail to reflect the need to develop and support HR as a strategic

partner that will be vital in the implementation of said strategy. While the other models are

frequently quite comprehensive, (such as the Warwick model), they do not prioritize strategy

above other functions even if we are meant to pay attention to the context, it does not tell

us, what the strategy is, should be; or how to modify it.
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If we put (promote) our HR professionals to the role of a business partner, rather than just use

HR as an implementor function, we keep the organizational design always closely related to

the business strategy which should be one of the first and foremost priorities for the

organizations.

Even though there are some doubts about the effectiveness of this model (Bratton & Gold,

2012), it is important to note that these will be frequently associated with the challenge to

implement (such as do we have our CEO on board and fully committed to prioritize the strategic

HR needs?).

While it may appear that this model is overly focused on the strategy itself, it is important to

also mention that the employee championship is also encouraged and emphasized in this

model which may not be apparent initially. However, none of the contemporary problems

that the HR managers frequently face today are mentioned in these models directly, i.e.

multiculturalism, diversity, equality etc.

QUESTION 1-C: Considering the issues raised in the commentaries and the text, how

important do you think it is for HRM professionals to be aware of a critique of neo-liberal

economic and social policies? How important is it for them to develop a more pluralistic

understanding of the nature of work?

Many of the dominant world economies have now adopted the neo-liberal model. It has been

on the rise since the 1980s, and it is considered to be a new perspective on the Human

Resource management. This is because the old ways of government involvement, worker

unionization, and other collective policies have been (or are in the process) of being
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abandoned, and individualism is on the rise. Neo-liberalism views employees as any other

resource which is to some degree a problem, because humans are unlike other resources.

Their management is much more complex, multidimensional, and they should not be solely

considered to be an investment with a high or low ROI.

This will be in particular important for certain disadvantaged groups of populations, especially

for example people with disabilities, that should (according to the neo-liberalist policies) not

work, because they would be outperformed by healthy people. For this reason, some social

policies and social support are needed.

Finally, economic efficiency should not be a single measure of the value of the worker since

this frequently gets adopted and becomes the proverbial value of the human being as is. Neo-

liberalism may seem as too corporate to some people, because it is, and because this is what

the shareholders these days demand all secondary objectives are simply not as much of a

priority. Of course, the previous economic models had their shortcomings as well, but certainly

they (aside those primarily focusing on the utility), they have approached the concept of work

also incorporating the needs of human beings as well on aggregate, not just the individual

level.

QUESTION 1-D: Do you think the massive inequality between CEO salary increases and

employee remunerationas discussed in the commentaryis justified? In what ways can

this inequality impact strategic HRM?

Massive inequality between the CEO and employee salary is to some degree inevitable, and to

some degree there could certainly be a greater equality. The traditional argument of
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competitiveness is the evidence that the businesses in fact must pay their CEOs exorbitant

salaries. These also vary greatly, and from the employers (or in this case board and

shareholder), the more attractive the compensation package, the greater competitiveness for

the position of the CEO (and ultimately ideally a better performance). The jobs of the CEOs are

both time-consuming and highly stressful, and for this very reason these positions command

highly competitive salaries, in multiples of the salaries of regular workers. However, these

arguments aside, the CEOs happen to make too much if the salary of the CEO is 2,785% of the

regular salary (lower in Canada, but still a significant difference), this creates a sense of

inequality and resentment among the workers. No matter how many times they get told that

they are the most valuable resource, if their compensation (and a representation of their

value) does not reflect this at all, this information will not be taken seriously.

The final argument for stark salary differences would be to motivate workers to work hard to

make it to the top. This would be one way to motivate workers to accomplish things, however it

is far from the traditional empowering method that every CEO claims they are doing. In

particular, the CEOs willingly accept this inequality. On the other hand, the comparison should

not be made between the top 1% of the CEOs and the general population, in particular if most

of the CEOs earn significantly less money.

QUESTION 2: Drawing on your own experiences with or knowledge of an organization with

which you are familiarand relating that to the discussion in Chapter 2 and the course

commentarydescribe the HRM practices of that organization, and explain which of these

practices are strategic or what needs to be done to establish strategic practices.

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One of the organizations that I am familiar with is Starbucks, which is also an organization that

is well-known for carefully managing their staff. Starbucks is well-known not only for the

excellent training of the employees, focused on both hard and soft skills, but also on retaining

employees and rewarding them effectively. For many organizations similar to Starbucks (having

a large number of low-skilled workers), this presents a major challenge, in particular with

generally high employee turnover and other problems.

According to the Bratton and Gold (2012), there are three traditional poles of a strategic plan,

and these are the corporate values, resources, and the environment. The management of

Starbucks can be considered effective, because these elements were all clearly reflected in their

managerial approach, as well as they are communicated very clearly to the public.

First of all, the resources (human resources) are quite vast and distributed across numerous

countries. Over its 25-year-old history in this country, Starbucks has recruited over 14,000

partners (employees) (Starbucks, 2017).

The mission of Starbucks is: to inspire and nurture the human spiritone person, one cup, and

one neighbourhood at a time with a special focus on inspiring positive change within the

respective communities (Starbucks, 2017). This mission is very clearly communicated, and in

respect with the employees or partners since this is how Starbucks traditionally refers to

them; everyone follows the same organizational strategy. Partners can freely transfer from one

store to another, without any loss of knowledge, or change in values. This is clearly showcased

also in how Starbucks interacts with the customers, not only the employees, however the
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strategy and values needs to originate with the employees, otherwise the strategy will not

work.

If the strategy of Starbucks is examined from corporate, business and functional perspective,

we can see that from the corporate perspective, the majority of the resources are concentrated

(invested in) the staff along with the coffee products. Secondly, the business strategy

Starbucks utilizes is the differentiation strategy. The service is highly distinctive (for this reason

there is also a very high HR investment over the board), and the culture plays a key role in this

business. On the functional level, there is some hierarchy, however the organization is relatively

flat. Headquarters aside, there are only the baristas, shift managers, store managers (general

store staff), and then the management goes through regional and country managers up to the

CEO.

From the corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective, Starbucks is not without fault,

however the company has been seen to carefully listen to the customer feedback and modify

their offering based on it. For example, simply due to its scale, Starbucks has a huge power on

the supplier market, which is one of the areas the company has been criticized for. Starbucks

now places greater effort in fair-trade or other purchases. There seems to be no major conflict

between the social strategy and the general corporate strategy, as the business is highly

profitable globally. Overall, it can be said that the business is estimated to be sustainable at its

current pace and with its current strategy.

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References

Bratton, J, & J. Gold, (2012). Human Resource Management Theory & Practice. 5th Edition.

Palgrave Macmillan: London

Starbucks. (2017). Our Canadian Story. Starbucks Coffee Company. Retrieved 1 June 2017, from

https://www.starbucks.ca/careers/our-canadian-story

Starbucks. (2017). Working at Starbucks. Starbucks Coffee Company. Retrieved 1 June 2017,

from https://www.starbucks.ca/careers/working-at-starbucks
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Assignment 2

QUESTION 1-A: Looking at the different work systems available to Canadian organizations,

what factors do you believe will result in an organization choosing one system over another

to achieve its strategic HRM goals?

Bratton and Gold (2012) identify several work systems available to Canadian organizations.

These are organized in a following way:

(1) The Classical Work Systems: Scientific Management

a. Scientific Management

b. Fordism

(2) Sociotechnical Work Systems: The Neo-Human Relations Movement

(3) Post-Bureaucratic Work Systems: The Self-Management Movement

a. Team-Based Systems

(4) The Home Office

a. Japanese Work Systems

b. High-Performance Work Systems

c. Business Process Re-Engineering

d. Knowledge-Based Work Systems

All the systems described above have evolved over time and strongly reflect the different

priorities and the perceptions of the role of HR. As an example, the first systems were focused

on fragmenting the job as much as possible in the effort to reduce the skill required to do the

job in this way, each worker could be easily trained to do a very simplistic job. Of course, this

type of a job design had numerous challenges associated with it, and some revisions were
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necessary. Over time, the machinery has entered the job design and the mechanization was a

sign of the progress, and workers focused yet again on repetitive and easy tasks. With high

automation, this kind of a job design continues to the present times, in particular as the

machines are replacing the human workers, and there is a focus on training workers on how to

operate the machines (i.e. Fordism), rather than simplistic tasks. The work of the labourers

actually requires specialized knowledge, and there is a difference between the same job a few

hundred years ago and today. However, the vast majority of the industries that rely on

manufacture are now concentrated elsewhere, and they do not have a large impact on the

Canadian employers and their work, so these more traditional systems do very little to achieve

companys strategic goals.

The new approaches to management are much more relevant for the Canadian workforce as

well as managers who are managing this workforce. For example, Hackman and Oldmans work

engagement framework (skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback)

can be - and should - still be applied today and is highly relevant for Canadian managers. This

way, they can still increase the engagement of the workers, and this framework is actually

highly applicable across numerous job types and industries. Similarly, with an increased focus

on individual performance (and individual excellence at the workplace) lends itself to the

companies gravitating towards high performance work systems one of the newer work

systems.

Since the vast majority of the Canadians work in services, and fewer workers are in

manufacturing and traditional style jobs, the original/classical work systems are becoming

outdated. Even the workers in farming, forestry, and other prominent industries have to re-
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engineer the business processes and refresh the job design based on the industry innovation.

The majority of the workers still rely on their knowledge (for this reason there is a high amount

of training and skilled workers available and in demand in Canada). Organizations who choose

these designs need to select the most appropriate one based on their very own strategy, but

also they need to be competitive in their industry, i.e. if all car manufacturers are highly

automated using highly skilled knowledge workers, our business will not succeed with the

Fordism.

QUESTION 1-B: If you were the Director of HR at a large Canadian organization, what HRM

strategies would you adopt to achieve sustainable work systems?

As a director of a major Canadian organization, I would have the power to determine and shape

the work strategies and systems to achieve sustainability of our workplace.

In the previous part of this assignment, the evolution of the work systems over time was

presented. While each of these systems can be categorized and it may appear as an individual

unit, todays workplaces are actually much more complex and messier they do not fall under a

single category, and the workers working for the very same company can be a part of

completely different systems, or even a combination of systems to create the most effective

strategy for the business. They are much more complex, and the individual dimensions are

frequently interlocked the cultural, behavioural, technical and other dimensions are all

interconnected (Bratton and Gold, 2012). Even the expected behaviours at work that are

encouraged or discouraged (such as showing emotions) may be encouraged and discouraged

based on the corporate culture, but also they may change over time.
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One of the largest contemporary problems that is easily perceived in the workplaces nowadays

is the always on and the requirement (or the expectation) to be always connected, always on

call, have the instant access to email, phone, and just generally be immediately responsive. For

the vast majority of the people, this kind of commitment to work contributes to burnout, rather

than increases productivity. As it was described in the text, the just-in-time production

creates extraordinary pressures on employees and work organization (Bratton and Gold, 2012,

p. 137). This is a sign of an organizational design that is, in fact, not sustainable. There is a great

necessity for the people to have some time off work a time that is private and not spent on

reading emails and answering work-related texts. Yet, workers who make the distinction clear,

turn off their phones, or do not stay long hours at work may appear to be uncommitted, which

makes them look like bad employees in comparison with the staff that conforms. This may be

either cultural problem, organizational design problem, or simply an outcome of the

environmental change that also influenced the work systems over time.

Some of the strategies that I would adopt to minimize the shortcomings of the contemporary

workplace would be to first of all acknowledge that this kind of workplace culture and a work

system; where in an effort to appear committed to the management goals, employees are at a

risk of becoming overworked, or even burning out. This is highly stressful and may be a

contributing factor to a series of diseases, ultimately significantly reducing the productivity in

the workplace as well as the wellbeing of the employees. As a HR manager, I would then have

the ability to redesign the organizational structures and introduce more flexible work patterns,

with a particular importance of ensuring that we do not promote the always on culture and

that all employees have the ability to take the very much needed time off.
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QUESTION 2: Assume you work in a small-to-medium-sized companyor perhaps a non-

profit organization or a public-sector servicewhat new methods would you adopt to

establish a more inclusive organizational culturedrawing on the issues discussed in the

textbook chapters and Study Guide commentaries? What difficulties might you anticipate,

particularly if you wanted a more sustainable and green HRM?

Having solved the work-life balance problem, there is another contemporary issue that is highly

prevalent in todays workplace and that issue is workplace diversity. Organizations tend to have

one dominant culture, however frequently there are numerous other cultures mixing in as well.

For this reason, the role of the HR manager will be to first of all to understand the culture, as

well as to manage it. Cultures, subcultures, even countercultures will be present in

organizations, and this diversity (or even a social fabric) of the organization should be

acknowledged and experienced.

Since every organization has its own culture, the HR managers need to recognize how it

manifests itself. For example, many companies utilize particular symbols to represent

meaningful content, trophies, or products. Culture has its enablers and constraints, and it

should not be solely on the shoulders of the CEO to develop, communicate, and potentially

change the culture.

Numerous organizations have diverse workforce from various national or regional backgrounds.

In such case, the research of Geert Hofstede will be very helpful. He divides and categorizes

national culture based on their power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, masculinity vs.

femininity, and uncertainty avoidance (Bratton and Gold, 2012). For example, the simple
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difference between individualist and collectivist cultures in the workplace may create major

conflicts among the employees.

Employees in multicultural workplaces may anticipate many challenges associated with trying

to manage the workplace. Due to different values, beliefs, languages, backgrounds, sexualities,

races and other factors, two employees with the same qualifications may end up being

completely different and even unable to work together sometimes. Canada in particular is a

highly multicultural country, with many nationalities working together. In general, the Canadian

population is highly tolerant, even welcoming to people from other cultures, however no

employee is equipped to deal with the vast diversity of specific cases. Employers should think

about whether to accommodate for their employees and to what degree. Some accessories,

religious wear, or other items may be highly desirable, even a commonplace to wear, however

they may interfere with the workplace policies or expectations.

As an employer, it is most important that the employees are treated with dignity and respect at

all times. At times, there may be a complete lack of understanding of the opposite culture, or

an inability to accommodate the employee, and simply adopt the structural-functionalist

approach and strive for organizational stability and consensus (Bratton and Gold, 2012).

However, it is important not to fall for the trap of ethnocentrism and believe that ones own

culture is the best and should be always adopted across the board.

My goal as a potential HR manager within an organization would be to reframe the culture to

reflect our organizational goals (whatever they may be), and at the same time making sure, that

people are put at the forefront of the organizational priorities.

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In respect with the green HR and sustainability, the businesses first of all need to critically

evaluate their current operations, policies and practices, and screen them for sustainability.

Organizations can get inspired from best industry practices, as well as follow in the footsteps of

the green pioneers companies who made it their core mission to become green.

References

Bratton, J, & J. Gold, (2012). Human Resource Management Theory & Practice. 5th Edition.

Palgrave Macmillan: London

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Assignment 3

QUESTION 1-A: Do you agree that Strategic HRM is crucially interested in HRD and employee

participation? In your answer, discuss the problems and tensions embedded within HRD and

employee participation.

Strategic HRD should be one of the key priorities for any business with a long-term outlook for

their workforce. HRD is focused around performance improvement and/or performance

growth (Bratton & Gold, 2012, p. 283). Clearly, companies need to be forward-looking to

ensure the competitiveness in the changing environment.

I would argue that HR representatives in their effort to think strategically about the people

working for the company indeed are interested in both HRD and employee participation,

however frequently they lack in the area of implementation, or have challenges with adoption

of the effective development programs. The vast majority of the employers are tracking

employee turnover, which can be used as the very basic measure of employee satisfaction (in

particular the voluntary turnover if it is well-above industry standards is a very clear warning

signal for the company). This can be an evidence that HR is failing to motivate and engage their

workers. However, employee participation would be even better measure that HR

representatives should be interested in, as increased employee participation can positively

influence employee loyalty ((Freeman, Boxall, & Haynes, 2007) cited in Module Commentary

(2017)).

Furthermore, the vast majority of the employers focus on performance as is, rather than

focusing on employee learning (in the long-term). There may be a disconnect within most of the
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organizations in what they should be doing, and what they do. After all, it is the primary role of

HR to maintain the core competencies of the workers and focus on hiring for the current

mission. Additionally, HR does a lot of problem-solving, grievances and takes care of other

employee-related issues. With priorities set up this way, development programs may either be

put aside, or outsourced to contractors who may not fully understand the needs of the

workforce and the culture at that specific company. Even if the corporate needs are correctly

evaluated, the delivery may not result in the desired outcomes (specific skills that employees

need to gain).

Does HRD necessarily have to be internal? There are external online learning resources that

frequently may do a better job of training employees than outdated learning management

systems. While a lot of formal learning is done through learning/development programs, most

of the employees learn the most from their direct supervisors, since these are the most

effective informal learning sources. In particular, in the industries strongly focused on

innovation (such as IT), innovation is the only way to achieve sustainability and to carve a place

in the industry. Using the example of Facebook its innovation driven culture is well-reflected

in its Move fast and break things motto, encouraging their workers to innovate and to take

risks in order to stay competitive.

There are two major prerequisites to effective organizational learning supportive learning

climate and support from senior managers and leaders (Bratton & Gold, 2012). The vast

majority of the tensions could be solved if these two requirements are met. As it was

mentioned in the opening case study for this chapter in Bratton and Gold (2012); even though

the training opportunities are provided and HR seems to be highly involved in organizational
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and HR development, the implementation may be one of the major shortcomings in the

initiative. If the employee spends three work days being trained, yet at the end of the training

still has problems with transferring this knowledge to an improvement in his or her work duties,

a change needs to be made. Otherwise, the three days worth of productivity (and financial

resources) were just wasted and the employees supervisor needs to additionally train the

employee to be job-ready (resulting in further resource and time requirement). However, HR

managers frequently make the trade-off between educating employees at scale and providing

focused training per position since resources generally tend to be limited and it is nearly

impossible to tailor the training for every specific position within the company, especially in the

changing workplace where even the whole positions may become redundant within the period

of few years.

On the more systematic level, nations attempt to manage the workplace through either skills

development and employability programs (if there are major skill gaps) or alternatively through

utilizing foreign workers and skilled immigration. In such cases, general economic situation

(recession or growth) has a meaningful impact. For example, there are significant cuts in

funding on employee training during recession (Bratton & Gold, 2012). In such periods of time,

a great number of the organizations may face the challenge of either cut the non-vital HR

programs, such as worker development programs, limit conference attendance, educational

opportunities budgets may be cut, and other steps may be taken to save as much resources as

possible. In particular, during recession, some companies may either make the cuts or face

layoffs in such cases, even though there may be a strong interest in HRD in the times of

economic growth, this will not be a priority in recession.

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Performance evaluation programs are frequently lacking in tracking the amount of personal

development of the worker. The performance in the current task or role is what is most

important, as well as the employees potential is considered (in particular for the leadership

and management roles), however most employees do not measure and reward how much has

the employee grown personally and professionally, except limited promotion opportunities.

All in all, in general, HR is very much interested in the strategic development activities as well as

in increasing employee participation in general, however frequently there are both internal and

external tensions that cause these efforts to fail. Mostly, it is either external influences (such as

recession) or challenges with implementation that prevent this goal from being achieved.

Overall, strong commitment to employee development is necessary for survival of some

organizations, in particular in knowledge-based industries, as the environment is changing too

fast for the employees to be stagnant. Finally, the sources of learning do not necessarily have to

be formal, however there must be a commitment from the leadership to develop the

employees, and in particular the line managers need to prioritize the learning within their

teams, as they are the informal and highly effective sources of knowledge.

How might organizations work with unions to achieve strategic HRM goals, and how might

unions prepare to represent their members in a strategic HRM environment?

Unions used to have a significant bargaining power and frequently could challenge

management decisions made by the organization (Module 3, 2017). Aside from the unions

overall losing their significance nowadays, some also pointed out that the relationship between

organizational learning, labour unions, and general modernization efforts is generally weak and
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insufficient (Module 3, 2017). Furthermore, as it is cited in The Pedagogics of Work and

Learning, the original neo-liberal goals to empower and support learning and self-management

(and employee autonomy) have at times turned to tools to better oppress and control the

employees.

When trying to achieve strategic organizational goals, such as organizational learning, Field

(2004) cited in Module 3 (2017) points out that the whole organization rarely learns, and the

actual learning is focused on a smaller, more specific interest group. This is in spite of the fact

that both the unions and management may support the idea. In this case, the question remains,

whom do the unions support and what is the level of the union involvement?

Employees are represented by various industrial, national, or even international union

federations (may or may not be working with NGOs) who have the role of social auditing

(Module 3, 2017). The role of the unions was also sometimes described as creating industrial

democracy in a strongly corporate neo-liberal world with very little oversight. However, even

in such cases, their effectiveness is limited: [I]n most cases, employee representatives [in the

participatory structures] are merely informed of upcoming changes by management with no

input into decision making (Freeman, Boxall, & Haynes, 2007, p. 177) cited in (Module 3,

2017). In this case, even though representation exists, the participation is failing (does not exist

in spite of the structures developed to support it) and more work needs to be done to increase

the worker participation.

In particular, from the globalization point of view, the scenario where the HRM strategy may be

directly at a conflict with the union goals (and general worker protection and representation). A
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case in point would be numerous Canadian (and Western) manufacturers that relocated to

South East Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and other regions with significantly cheaper

labour and more lax regulatory environments, in particular when it comes to the environmental

protection and workers rights. In such cases, the local unions (and even governments) while

they may actively lobby to keep the workforce at home, go directly against the corporate

strategic goals, and it is very difficult to find a reasonable middle ground beyond generous

severance packages.

On the other hand, unions (not necessarily labour unions) actually may have a positive role in

supporting worker mobility, as it is in the case of the European Union and to some degree in

NAFTA and CETA (which are trade unions rather than specifically labour unions). Vast majority

of the countries around the world have their own employment, vocational training, and skills

development programs which work in unison with the industrial needs (where strategic

corporate goals are clearly identified and considered), yet on the international mobility level, a

lot of this work is eliminated (and resources are saved), especially if the common labour market

balances out the labour shortages. Even though the full reliance solely on the market forces are

at times considered by many to be an anti-employee strategy (this would be an exaggeration),

the market forces ultimately also help the workers and the corporations, and play much more

active role in strategic HR than labour unions in the traditional sense. Finally, in the world

where the vast majority of the workforce works in non-unionized smaller and medium-sized

companies (Union dues-paying workers comprised 31.8% of all employees in Canada in 2015

(Statistics Canada, 2015, n. p.) and only 10.7% of the workers in the United States (US Bureau of

Labour Statistics, 2016)), it is very easy to see why these institutions lose the power and ability
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to effectively help the workers, just as much as to support strategic corporate goals in any

meaningful way.

Argue both for and against the argument that employers exploiting emotional labour are

contravening employee rights and reinforcing gendered, classed, and raced social relations.

For

It should certainly be acknowledged that emotional labour exists and some positions are

inherently dependent on effectively managing emotions, caring for customers, or handling

emotionally tense situations. Emotions are often regarded by management as something to be

managed, manipulated, and controlled and as forces creating unwanted resistance to change as

well as promoting productivity (Bierema, 2008, p. 56). However, it could be argued that

employees should have the right to retain some degree of emotional privacy, or at the very

least the emotional labour should be fairly compensated, since in many positions, the

emotional element of the position (while challenging, even straining for the individual) is

frequently not compensated adequately.

The expectations on the individual positions are to some degree also created and reinforced by

the society itself, as well as by the cultural expectations. Opengart (2003) interviewed women

managers and concluded that expectations for emotional expression are gendered, and the

nature of patriarchy may require women to engage in more emotion work since women are

expected to emulate masculine traits, and the social structure is replicated through emotional

expression as cited in (Bierema, 2008, p. 59). This idea can be also transformed further to the

expectation on women to take the maternity leave and to take care of children, as well as
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similar preconceived ideas, to which even the employers are not resistant. Employees are very

clearly exploiting emotional labour, as it has become an expectation, in some industries more

so than others. Service workers are often instructed that the customer is always right and are

forced to accommodate rudeness, harassment, and sometimes sexual advances (Price, 2008)

cited in (Bierema, 2008, p. 59). Employees are simply expected to handle it. The vast majority

of the research tends to be focused around gendered work, however there are also racial and

social group (wealth) segmentations that need to be examined in greater depth.

Against

Some may argue that the emotional element of the job was already acknowledged and the

individual (whatever their background may be) has accepted such conditions by applying for

such job. At the level of the individual organization, work is itself gendered, racialized and

classed. As such, there are important unpaid aspects of work that demand identity-based

performance that are linked to race, gender and class hierarchies (Chong, 2009, p. 178). To

expect that each job will be comparable in terms of salary and required work is unrealistic. The

diversity is simply too great. Secondly, employers specifically use this to their own advantage.

Emotion can be manipulated to preserve power relations, and women tend to be segregated

in jobs that require higher degrees of emotion work, particularly in the service industry

(Bierema, 2008, p. 59). If there are clear benefits for the employers, there will be no desire to

stop the practice. Finally, when individual identities are isolated, each employee has the

individual bargaining power to select the job that is suitable specifically for that employee

based on their preferred characteristics, and the employer should not play the role of the

government or a counsellor in this relationship.

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References

Bierema, L. L. (2008). Adult learning in the workplace: Emotion work or emotion learning? New

Directions for Adult and Continuing Education, 120, 5564. Retrieved from http://0-

onlinelibrary.wiley.com.aupac.lib.athabascau.ca/doi/10.1002/ace.316/pdf

Bratton, J, & J. Gold, (2012). Human Resource Management Theory & Practice. 5th Edition.

Palgrave Macmillan: London

Chong, P. (2009). Servitude with a smile: A re-examination of emotional labour. Just Labour, 14,

177185. Retrieved

from http://www.justlabour.yorku.ca/volume14/pdfs/ss_06_chong_press.pdf

Statistics Canada. (2015). Labour Organizations in Canada 2015 - Canada.ca. Canada.ca.

Retrieved 20 June 2017, from https://www.canada.ca/en/employment-social-

development/services/collective-bargaining-data/reports/union-coverage.html

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2016). Union membership rate 10.7 percent in 2016: The

Economics Daily: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bls.gov. Retrieved 20 June 2017, from

https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/union-membership-rate-10-point-7-percent-in-

2016.htm
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Assignment 4

What are the key arguments supporting a best practice/best fit approach to strategic HRM?

How does this approach impact HR professionals?

The arguments of best practice vs. best fit in strategic HRM refers to the strategy that the

company will utilize. The first option that the company can use is to simply follow the already

established best practices in the industry we could argue that there is no need to reinvent the

wheel and throughout the decades of research, corporations and HR managers have already

learned about strategic HR as much as possible and they should simply be aware of these rules

and consistently follow and implement them in the operations. High commitment

management practices are associated with better economic performance, better workplace

well-being and a better climate of employment relations but just 14% of all workplaces have a

majority of them in place (MBA Tools, n. d., p. 1). It has been already proven that following

best practices in HRM is associated with employee performance (i.e. when we try to measure

net profit per employee) we can see a rising trend associated with adoption of these best

practices.

The best fit approach, on the other hand, takes the contextual information and appropriateness

to the situation into consideration. The official argument is that HR strategy becomes more

efficient when it is linked / tailored to its surrounding context or environment of the business

(MBA Tools, n. d., p. 1). This theory can be further sub-segmented to two elements the

external fit and the internal fit within the organization. The external fit refers to the actual

strategic direction of the organization within its competitive environment for example if the
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company uses the general strategy of differentiation, it will adopt different practices than a

company that uses low-cost approach (which generally also applies to the labourers). The

disadvantage of this solution is that in some rapidly changing industries, the strategy itself may

change very fast as the company needs to be quite agile and this would also necessitate the

change of HR strategy (i.e. the company makes the decision to move from low-cost to become

much more services oriented and this change needs to be reflected on the employee HR

strategy). In respect with the internal best fit strategy, we need to examine whether our actual

behaviour as a HR department is in line with the strategy we are trying to achieve. For example,

we may be a service oriented company, but are we rewarding our staff for providing

exceptional service, or are our employees still evaluated based on the number of clients they

can assist a day? If the strategy and practice is incongruent, even if we use the best practices,

overall the HR strategy will inevitably fail.

This approach impacts HR professionals in quite a profound way. Even though each solution has

its advantages and disadvantages, HR professionals need to take the context and the

environment to the account, not just to rely on the best practices. Of course, the latter

approach requires extra work on the part of the HR staff, however it should bring additional ROI

to the company as opposed to the companies that only follow what works.

How can best practice/best fit be married to different organizations such as a worker co-

operative, or to the operation of a public service such as a hospital or school, or a community

or non-governmental not-for-profit organization?

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In this case, we can use the example of a community or non-governmental not-for-profit

organization. If we wanted to apply the best practice approach there would be nothing wrong

with that, we would simply recruit, select, reward performance and compensate our employees

and/or volunteers in line with the already developed best practices. There is already a great

amount of knowledge related to the volunteer management and coordination of their work, as

well as specifically how can non-profits reward their volunteers in many other ways beyond

giving them money. Many workers volunteer for personal reasons, or they want to develop

their skillset, or they have a strong personal connection to the specific cause that the charity

operates (i.e. victims of domestic violence or educating children with disabilities).

Yet, these best practices can be additionally extended by the contextual and environmental

factors that will influence the local volunteers as well as all the other stakeholders that the

company deals with (i.e. in particular the clients or the people in need). For example, one of

the issues within non-profits is generally that the volunteer turnover tends to be quite high.

While nonprofits are increasing staff and hiring, about 20% of that hiring is filling slots vacated

by turnover. Not surprisingly, turnover, again according to the Survey, is the greatest human

resources challenge facing nonprofits (Otten, 2014, n. p). So how do we solve the turnover

problem? We can have a look at the specific community composition to determine what are the

most likely barriers to volunteering. For example, Nanaimo is a community with a large

percentage of senior population, and for example retired volunteers are less likely to have

other commitments (i.e. other jobs) than if we tried to recruit student or working professional

volunteers). All these factors will have an impact on our retention strategy, however we need

to consider them first. How do we modify our strategy to fit the local community, as well as to
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ensure that we still behave as an organization in line with the best possible practices for

volunteer management?

Next, if we were to operate a public service, such as a hospital or a school, we would pay a very

close attention to the demographics of the community as well, and we would certainly look

beyond the demographics of our recruits/volunteers. In public service types of the

organizations, we need to align the business (and HR strategy) directly with the community

strategy (or potentially development), which is not always necessarily true in for-profit

organizations. We would then tailor the role descriptions performance evaluations to target

specific community needs, so employees who are meeting these goals are directly motivated

and rewarded.

How can such an approach to strategic HRM meet ethical and sustainable global corporate

obligations?

Following the best fit approach is generally directly tied also to the ethical and sustainable

global corporate obligations. For example, from the international business context, we can

make an effort to develop so-called learning units types of the subsidiaries rather than simple

implementers (Bratton & Gold, 2012). This strategy will help the multinationals develop the

local markets as well, and it will support sustainable growth not only of the corporation and its

workforce throughout various geographies, but also the local communities that will become

more productive, in line with the company requirements, and their skills will very likely spill

over to the other domestic projects. In a global environment, it is extremely difficult to develop

some form of an universal HRM model, due to differences in national cultures, standards,
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practices in HRM and in values, norms and cultures of the people (Bratton & Gold, 2012). There

are generally major gaps between the nations and organizations alike, and for this reason it yet

again makes sense to follow the best practices, but also apply the local context in the decision

making (the best fit approach). The evidence also supports this claim: For students of HRM,

the highly dynamic, complex and political nature of the global-local issue affirms the need for

an international network of academics to undertake intensive collaborative research. The

lessons for managers of recent comparative HRM research are to avoid generalizations of

trends towards convergence or continued diversity, and to adopt a more nuanced cross-cultural

approach to managing people (Bratton & Gold, 2012, p. 525).

The final chapter of the textbook also readily points out that the HRM is in fact in crisis,

following the recession, suffering from poor ethics and inadequate practices and it needs to

move toward a greater sustainability. The investment banks that were too big to fall were

readily engaging in unethical practices, and the consumers ended up paying the price in lost

investments, homes, and through loss of employment. The managers need to find the balance

between regulating the employee behaviours, as well as empowering the employees (where

they would give up some of the control over them). All in all, it is difficult to find the right

balance, and the contemporary (and the future) strategic HRM practices should not simply rely

on the simplistic linear models and old practices. As the authors mention in the textbook, the

notion of critical reflexivity could be applied a sustained analysis and the unmasking through

pedagogical activities of a world of structural inequalities, indeterminacy, indignities and often

tyranny workplace life as it is (Bratton & Gold, 2012, p. 545). This reality certainly needs to

be reflected in the workplaces and their practices.

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References

Bratton, J, & J. Gold, (2012). Human Resource Management Theory & Practice. 5th Edition.

Palgrave Macmillan: London

MBA Tools, (n. d.). Best Practice v. Best Fit. How do we know what is an appropriate HR model

for a firm? Retrieved 8 August, 2017 from:

http://www.mbatools.co.uk/Revision%20Sheets/OMP/BEST%20PRACTICE.pdf