Human Resource Management in Context

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Part One Human resource management in context 8 Box 1.5 Learning activity The persistence of welfarism? As stated, the formation of welfare workers has often been associated with paternalistic, benevolent company owners who possessed a particular religious orientation that informed the ways in which they managed their employees. To what extent does this still continue? Visit the Cadbury’s web site (ww.cadbury.com) and explore the information the company gives concerning its HR work as well as its attitude towards corporate social responsibility. Although the company now operates on a global basis, to what extent has it retained its core beliefs and values concerning its people management approach? And how appropriate is such an approach for an international organization? signifi cant than it is in the fi rst decade of the twenty-fi rst century. Concerns about the number of working days lost through strikes in the UK, as compared with better-performing European competitors such as West Germany, led to the formation of a Royal Commission under Lord Donovan. His fi ndings were critical of both employers and unions, as well as of personnel managers, who were slated for lacking negotiation skills and failing to plan industrial relations strategies (Royal Commission 1968). However, the report suggested that these defi ciencies often occurred as a consequence of management’s failure to give personnel management suffi ciently high priority. 1.4.2 Developments in the 1960s and 1970s The 1960s and 1970s also witnessed an increase in the formalization of aspects of HR activity across Western industrial societies. This was seen with the increase in legislation on employment matters such as contracts of employment, training, redundancy payments, equal pay, equal opportunities, and employment protection, with personnel departments being tasked with their implementation. By the end of the 1970s the main features of personnel management were in place, and consisted of fi ve roles (Cannel 2004): • the collective bargaining role: this involved dealing with trade unions, as well as with the development of strategies for handling industrial relations; • the implementer of legislation role: this implied understanding and implementing a growing amount of legislation; • the bureaucratic role: this involved implementing a series of rules about behaviour at work, dealing with recruitment, managing absence, and so on; • the social conscience of the business role: this was a residue from the welfare worker function; • a growing performance improvement role (in some organizations and sectors): this was concerned with integrating the personnel function with business needs and taking a more strategic view. But, although these developments, occurring during the 1960s and 1970s, created a demand for these roles and allied expertise, the status of personnel practitioners was not greatly enhanced (e.g. Watson 1977; Legge 1978; Batstone 1988; Sisson 1995). By the 1980s the heightened competitive pressures being experienced by many UK organizations were prompting employers to review their people management practices. Given such imperatives, the function arguably had to respond in order to maintain its legitimacy and enhance its status. It is within this environment of change and uncertainty that HRM arrived. 1.5 The rise of HRM The early HRM models originated in the USA and off ered the promise that the personnel function could not only meet the challenges created by heightened competitive pressures and industrial restructuring in many Western economies, but embody a strategic role if it utilized
Selection Performance Appraisal its philosophies and practices (Guest 1987). Proponents argued, and still argue, that, if the function demonstrated its ability to design, implement, and manage more sophisticated personnel techniques, it would result in heightened organizational performance. As a result of this, the function would establish a much-needed clarity and legitimacy of its practice and thereby secure substantial improvements in status for the people management role and also for the profession (Tyson and Fell 1986). The greater emphasis placed upon establishing a fi t between employment policies and practices and the organization’s business objectives is one of the main ways by which HRM asserted its distinctive approach towards people management, with Fombrun, Tichy, and Devanna’s ‘Michigan model of HRM’ (1984) proposing that long-term competitive advantage lies in securing this alignment between corporate goals, HR strategy, and its people management activities. This is presented diagrammatically in Figure 1.1. 1.5.1 Changing the status of the HR function Rewards Development Figure 1.1 The Michigan model of HRM. Source: Fombrun, Tichy, and Devanna (1984). The heightened importance awarded to eff ective people management places HRM at the heart of the organization’s business strategy, making it highly attractive to practitioners as well as to line managers, whose role was also enhanced because of the active stance they are required to play in the implementation of HR policies. Another attractive feature is the assumption of an essentially harmonious relationship between employees and their managers where both parties are perceived as working towards the same goal of organizational success. This was in marked contrast to traditional people management approaches in the UK, where workplace confl icts between management and trade unions were seen as an inevitable and frequently occurring part of the employment relationship. In contrast to this, the Harvard model (Beer et al. 1984), illustrated in Figure 1.2, takes into account a wider range of stakeholder interests than the Fombrun approach, whilst also highlighting the importance of people management and the role played by the function. This view of HRM recognizes that stakeholder interests are more likely to be attained if HR policy choices and outcomes ensure employee well-being. Its fl exibility with regard to stakeholder interests made the model easier to export beyond the USA, since it recognizes key areas of diff erence across national boundaries. It certainly proved to be the more popular approach in the UK, despite criticism from some academics for its preference for the unitarist view (a view on people management that emphasizes harmonious relationships between managers and employees and an acceptance of organizational objectives) over the pluralist view of the workplace, which sees confl ict as inevitable. But it should be noted that neither model pays much attention to the realities of work inside the organization or to the contested, contradictory, and fragmented nature of the employment relationship between employer and employee. Chapter 1 Introducing human resource management 9
Page 1 and 2: Part One Human Resource Management
Page 3 and 4: 1.1 Introduction This book is conce
Page 5 and 6: esourced internally, or whether the
Page 7: Box 1.4 Window on work The implicat
Page 11 and 12: Box 1.6 Research in focus Storey’
Page 13 and 14: ( Armstrong 1987; Legge 1989; Keeno
Page 15 and 16: But, whilst many creative or high-l
Page 17 and 18: 1.6.8 Structural change and the pub
Page 19 and 20: context altered, HRM as a term beca
Page 21 and 22: the ability of the function to iden
Page 23: » Although some of these technique

Human Resource Management in Context

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?