Assignment

Assignment

This is a well-written write-up on project management. Majority of the points have been covered but the only thing lacking is reasons for variations in policy and procedural practices within different organizations. This is a very important aspect when developing new policies & procedures for any project.

Throughout the business world there is a wide range of companies in a number of different industries. Each company will have a set of general rules that they abide to. This general set of rules and procedures the company follow is determined by a number of different polices employed within the organisation. There is a wide range of policies that are used from recruitment and selection policy, in employing new staff right through to disciplinary policy, when dealing with warning or even dismissal.

Policy and procedures are set out and enforced by the Human Resource Manager and department. Therefore to understand why there are reasons for variations in policy between different organisations it is important to understand what human resource management (HRM) is and that Human resource departments can have different structures within different organisations. In this piece of work I will examine and explain all these points placing a clear emphasis on factors that explain reasons for variations.

As its Human resources that create company policy it's important to understand that Human resource management can be defined as: 'The responsibility of using and developing the organisation's personnel in the most productive way.' (Nancy Wall et al 2000). It has also been defined as 'The setting up, monitoring, and facilitating processes that select, assess, and assign people to appropriate roles in the project.'

With these definitions in mind it raises the first issue relating to variations in policy. This issue is that the policies vary because the organisation varies. For example it's noted that staff need to be used and developed in the most productive way and there needs to be the facilitating of processes to select, assess, and assign people to appropriate roles in the project but how can this be the same in every organisation as they are all unique in there own way. The answer here is that they can't. There are many underlying factors that go toward reasons for variations in policy and procedural practices. These include culture, industry, stage of production, management style, the level of competition, the age and size of the company, legislation, influence of trade unions and the strength of the Human resource department.

HRM has been frequently described as a concept having two diametrically opposite, though not necessarily irreconcilable, languages: soft and hard.

'Soft' HRM emphasises communication, motivation and leadership. It is associated with the human relations movement and McGregor's Theory Y view of individuals, and it assumes that employees will work most effectively if they are fully committed to the organisation. In contrast to this, 'hard' HRM emphasises the quantitative, calculative and business-strategic aspects of managing the headcounts resource in as rational a way as

for any other economic factor. This form of HRM focuses on the importance of the ...