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

consideration of issues and controversies emerging from debates about the changing
nature of the HR function, the impact of these changes on the skill-set required by HR
professionals, the likely effects on careers and career paths and how these aspects may
be manifested in the CIPD‟s „professional project‟, thus informing the training and
development of aspiring and existing HR practitioners.
The results emerging from the analysis of the 2005/06 and 2006/07 cohorts suggests
that at the point of exiting the course students felt they had developed a more nuanced
understanding of HRM as both an academic subject and management function. For
example, they generally recognised the need for HR professionals to be good at both
transactional and transformational aspects, having a range of skills and abilities
reflecting specific HR knowledge and more general business knowledge; and how the
emphasis between these aspects could vary across organisations. A key role was
attributed to the provision of professional skills and the work placement in developing
this appreciation of the range of skills required by HR professionals. At the point of
exiting the course the majority of students were also readily using the rhetoric of
business partnership and the need to view the HR function in a strategic way in terms
of its ability to add value to the organisation. This more strategic orientation was also
apparent in the views of the nascent HR professionals interviewed as part of the
research.
The extent to which the views expressed by these newly-qualified HR professionals
change over time is something that the longitudinal nature of this research will
facilitate, allowing us, we would argue, to assess both continuity and change in the
HR profession. More immediately this research is aiming to encourage both students