Human Resources Management
1. Introduction
Articles:
– Ulrich, D. (1998). A new mandate for human resources.
– Deadrick & Stone (2014). HRM: Past, present and future.
a. Roles of the HR-manager:
Administrative Expert:
Job Analysis, Recruitment & Selection, Training & Development, Career Management,
Performance Appraisal & Management, Compensation Systems, Labor Legislation, Human
Resource Planning
Employee Champion:
Working relationships:
• Unions
• Employee involvement & participation
• Communication & trust
• Monitoring work stress and job satisfaction (“work engagement”)
• Psychological contract
Change Agent:
Managing & supporting the change process
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, • Preparing people for change (“change readiness”)
• Organizational culture
• Conflict/problem resolution
• Action plans, monitoring progress, and making change last
Strategic Partner:
Creating added value
• Translate corporate strategy into specific, supportive HR-activities
• Aligning HR-processes
• HR information systems (e.g. HR scorecards, dashboards)
Skills of the HR-manager:
b. History of HRM:
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,• Pre-Industrial Revolution:
– Self-employed independent contractor
– Artisanal workshops
– No unions
– Hours were flexible, depending on what work was needed to collect the crops, milk
the cows or put bread on the table...
• Industrial Revolution:
– Artisanal workshops à factories
– Self-employment à employed by organizations
– External à internal labor market
– Specialized craft labor à repetitive low-skilled work
– Modern Times
• Post-Industrial Revolution (1800-1880):
– How to ‘manage’ (control) the labor force?
• Workers seen as owner’s property, commodity on a market (or perhaps a dumb
animal at work)
• Autocratic leadership: “my way or highway,” direct control by line manager, self-
centered
• Paternalistic leadership (= “enlightened autocracy”): protection in exchange for
loyalty and deference
• Limited voice/trade unions/legislation
• Personnel Management:
– The Labor Problem (1880- 1930)
• Conflict-prone relationship between employers and employees: Strikes, go-slow
practices, personnel turnover, poverty-level wages, child labor, autocratic leadership,
...
– Industrial Welfare (1880-1930)
• Welfare offices headed by welfare secretary (usually a woman)
• To oversee things such as lunchrooms, wash-up facilities, recreation programs,
and housing (but only for non-unionized workers to thwart unions)
• A decade later also hiring/staffing & training offices
• Remains administrative
– Scientific management (1880-1930)
• aka “Taylorism” (Frederick Taylor, 1856-1915)
• Greater workplace productivity through more rationalized and efficient modes of
production
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, • Four principles:
1. Vertical task differentiation: managers set objectives / workers execute orders
2. Horizontal task differentiation: break down the production process into many
simple and routine tasks (“one best way”)
3. Monitor & pay for performance
4. Hire the right workers for each job and train them to work at maximum
efficiency
ð Even more social conflict
• Human Relations Movement:
– Hawthorne studies (Mayo & Roethlisberger, 1924-1932)
• The illumination experiments
• The relay-assembly tests
• The bank-wiring tests
• Employee interviews
– Social factors > financial incentives
– “Hawthorne effect”: the presence of researchers produces a bias and unduly
influences the outcome of the experiment
– Theory X and Theory Y (McGregor):
– Psychological/emotional perspective on the employment relationship
– Rejecting the ‘rational economic (wo)man’ assumptions of Taylorism and scientific
management
– Job satisfaction, group dynamics, involvement & participation, etc.
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