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

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Introduction „Employee champion‟ or „business partner‟? The views of aspirant HR professionals This paper focuses on the perceptions, expectations and experiences of full-time students regarding the study and practice of the CIPD-accredited Postgraduate Diploma/MSc in Human Resource Management at the University of Strathclyde. Specifically, it reports on-going longitudinal research with three cohorts of students (2005/06, 2006/07 and 2007/08). The project examines why students want to become HR practitioners, what they expect of human resource management (HRM) education, the applicability of that education to practice and their actual experience as HR practitioners both new and developing. The research is also timely in picking up on a number of themes emerging from major research emanating from CIPD considering the changing HR function (CIPD, 2006; 2006a; 2007; 2007a); and relatedly emerging trends and issues with regard to HR careers and the career paths of HR professionals (CIPD, 2005; 2006b). For example, in one of the earlier scoping documents CIPD (2006: 1) notes how „the project aims to consolidate and extend existing knowledge of the HR function, the changes affecting it, the reasons for the changes and the implications for further development of the successful contribution of HR professionals‟. Similarly the research reported in this paper is seeking to explore four primary research questions: What are participants‟ perceptions of HRM whilst in education and in employment? What are participants‟ expectations of HRM whilst in education and in employment?
What are participants‟ experiences of HRM whilst in employment? What are participants‟ reflections on HRM education when in employment? The paper reports some initial, indicative findings from research undertaken with the 2005/06 and 2006/07 cohorts, drawing on survey, focus group and interview data. These findings concentrate primarily on students‟ perceptions of the role of HR, how their views changed during the course of the year, their initial thoughts on pursuing an HR career and early experiences as HR practitioners. Controversies in HRM and the CIPD’s ‘professional project’ The term „HRM‟ has been in vogue for over 20 years with controversies raging about what the term actually means in theory and practice. Storey (2007: 7) believes HRM „seeks to achieve a competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable workforce using an array of cultural, structural and personnel techniques‟. It is this concern with strategic integration and input which is the most pervasive characteristic of HRM and that which is seen to make HRM distinct from personnel management or industrial relations (see also Heery and Noon, 2001). HRM is seen as distinct from the pluralist industrial relations approach involving mediation, mutuality and maintenance of the quality of working life. Instead it aligns with a unitarist assertion of organisational values, goals and strategy (Legge, 2005; Storey, 2007). As a result, HRM is also attempting to move away from the „routine administration‟ of personnel management and into a „business partnership‟ model, ultimately contributing to the productivity and financial performance of the firm (Francis and Keegan, 2006). For example, the CIPD (2007) reporting a survey of 787 HR professionals notes how over half of their respondents
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