HRM

HRM

HRM

Evolution Of Hrm in people managment.

Background

Personnel management has been a recognised function in the USA since NCR opened a personnel office in the 1890s. American personnel managers worked within a unitarist tradition, identifying closely with the objectives of their organization. It was natural for HRM to emerge comparatively smoothly from this perspective. In other countries, notably Australia, South Africa and the UK, the personnel management function arrived more slowly and came from a number of routes. Moreover, its orientation was not entirely managerial (Storey, 2007: 67).

In Britain its origins can be traced to the 'welfare officers' employed by Quaker-owned companies such as Cadburys. At an early stage it became evident that there was an inherent conflict between their activities and those of line managers. They were not seen to have a philosophy compatible with the worldview of senior managers (Truss, 2001: 1121).

Social Partnership in the 80's

By the 1980s, personnel had become a well-defined but low status area of management. Associations such as the British Institute of Personnel Management (now the Institute of Personnel and Development) recruited members in increasing numbers, developed a qualification structure and attempted to define 'best practice'. Although the knowledge and practices they encouraged drew on psychology and sociology, they were largely pragmatic and commonsensical and did not present a particularly coherent approach to people management. Moreover, in some instances training and industrial relations were considered to be specialist fields outside mainstream personnel management. Traditional personnel managers were accused of having a narrow, functional outlook (Storey, 2007: 67).

Harvard Business School Model

A large part of this section in Human Resource Management, 4th edition is devoted to the Harvard 'map' of HRM. This is probably the most seminal model of HRM and has had a major influence on academic debate on the subject.

'We noted that the Harvard Business School generated one of the most influential models of HRM. The Harvard interpretation sees employees as resources. However, they are viewed as being fundamentally different from other resources - they cannot be managed in the same way. The stress is on people as human resources (Torrington & Hall, 2002: 67).

The Harvard approach recognizes an element of mutuality in all businesses, a concept with parallels in Japanese people management, as we observed earlier. Employees are significant stakeholders in an organization. They have their own needs and concerns along with other groups such as shareholders and customers.' The Harvard Map or model outlines four HR ...