Human Resource Management (HRM) has been in vogue for ...

single „best‟ practice existed. In the focus groups one student, for example, suggested
that „I just think HR can look completely different from organisation to organisation. I
think some places it seems to be the guard dog to make sure that everyone is
following the book on hiring and firing and, and while other places, like you say the
strategy, having visions, where do you want to go?‟. Similarly another student
recognised how „the definition of HRM is changing so it‟s kind of what HR does to
have to change so HR, at one time, can actually be an admin person for long periods
and later can become a business partner, and there may be change too, to change
agents and actually HR has diverse kind of functions within the same organisation‟.
That said, compared to the entry focus groups a greater number of students were now
much more readily using the language of business partnership and recognising the
need for HRM to be closely aligned to the organisation‟s business strategy: „when I
was in the work placement, I saw the importance of it in terms of meeting the bottom
line, the business aspect of it, managing the employees so that you make sure you are
able to achieve the goals of the business … that strategic element that is what HRM is
supposed to be about, I saw that come out a lot‟. Even though there were more
students who were recognising the more strategic and business-oriented aspects of
HR, a number still continued to believe that HR had a dual role in meeting business
and employee interests summed up by one respondent as „the role of HR is to make
sure that both groups [employees and managers] get a fair crack of the whip … so in
that respect it‟s almost a steward for the employees‟.
As can be seen from the discussion above much of the realisation concerning the
students changing perceptions about the role of HR was due to their experiences
during their in-course work placements. This finding was reaffirmed by the exit