HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
PowerPoints + guest lectures
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1 General introduction
1.1 History of HRM
HRM starts together with the upcoming industry
- Mass production
- Abuse of the employees
- HRM and leadership (in that time): just having total control of employees
o Who worked very long hours
o A lot of days
o With no autonomy
Then we got an evolution to the time of Taylorism
- People had to do one small part of a whole job
- That specific part all day long: always the same part
- They even conducted time and motions studies
o To check what was the most efficient way to do the job
o Every employee had to do it in that same way
And then they were conducting such a study in the Hawthorne factory: checking the impact of light
- One room with a lot of light
- Another room with less light
- Another room with no lights
Conclusion: in every room the production was higher (than before the case study)
- First time they realized: “Maybe people like the fact that we ask them questions about their
jobs and/or that we observe them”
- The employees got attention
- First time they realized that there is a human behind the worker, behind the employee
- Start of the human relations period
Which evolved in the revisionism period
- Known as the golden 60’s
- The first time they got a knife for the well-being of the employees
And then we got HR as a strategic partner: supports to reach the organizational goals
- Now HR is in the management teams of companies
- Knowing that the employees are the most important assets
- Now HR has an important function in the company
,Of course, the role of HRM is still changing and growing
HR is in a rollercoaster: difficult times because of the rapid changes in technological development
- Self-driving cars
o Next 5 years more change in the car industry than the last 120 years
o Huge impact on existing jobs, for example: people working in parking lots, people
working in busses/trams/…
- Robots
o As waiters
o As shop assistants
- Smart fridge, who can order milk when you almost run out of it
- Nanobots in your life
o Who can follow your medical condition through your blood
o Huge impact on jobs in the healthcare
- Vertical farming
o Can be done at home or immediately in the supermarket
o Huge impact on the farmer industry
1.2 The role of AI in HR
Artificial intelligence in HR
- A lot of opportunities
o For example: AI is already used in selection processes
o Gains a lot of time for the employees
- On the other hand: AI still have risks
o For example: AI can’t make a perfect distinction between huskies and wolves
They will make several mistakes, despite a lot of training
They don’t think like us, they just look for patterns (in enormous amounts of
data)
Also, the presence of snow in the background of the picture can fool AI
AI can be potential for HR, but also risk for bias
Digitalization has an enormous impact on jobs and HR, for example: smartphones
- Opportunities: it can be a benefit to use it at work
- Problems
o It can be a distraction of your work
o We all have nomophobia: the fear to be without our smartphone
Every time we check it, and we have a message/like/…, we get a small shot of
dopamine
Dopamine gives you a happy feeling and makes you addicted, because you
want more and more and more … of the good feeling
,2 Peculiarities for public sector
2.1 Degree of publicness
Rainey (2009): 3 criteria that discerns organizations in to varying degrees of ‘publicness’
- Ownership
o Who owns the organization?
o Public organizations are more likely to be government-owned or owned by the public
community, while private organizations are often privately owned (by one or more
stakeholders)
- Funding
o What is the (main) source of financial resources for this organization?
o Public organizations are more likely to be publicly or government-funded, while
private organizations often rely on customers and/or stakeholders
- Authority
o Is the organization controlled by political authority and, If so, to what extent?
o Public organizations are almost always subject to political control, while private
organizations are controlled by market forces
Organizations may vary in their ‘publicness’ depending on the answers to these 3 criteria
For example: some organizations fully meet all criteria and can thus be classified as public vs.
hospitals or schools, that are semi-public (Knies et al., 2022)
2.2 Model employer
Historically: HRM or the personnel department was seen as a separate department that solely dealt
with operational tasks, such as recruitment, payroll or evaluation
- Distinctive approach of public sector: model employer (Brown, 2004)
- In terms of fair treatment of employees, high levels of job security, …
- Everything was based on rules and predetermined processes: the employment system was
highly centralized and was run by central agencies that were in charge of all hiring decisions,
rules for employment, training and career development (Alford, 1993)
Partially because of financial crises, the whole system came under pressure: there was an
increased demand for a new approach that allowed greater flexibility and greater responsiveness
and efficiency (Brown, 2004)
2.3 New Public Management (NPM)
- Shift from rule-based culture to performance-based culture (Shim, 2001; Brown, 2004)
- Private organizations: also, more ‘business-like’ approach in public sector organizations
This attitude formed the basis for public sector reform, known as the New Public Management
- Part of the overall strategy to achieve efficiency, effectiveness and quality of service in the
public sector
- In this new management approach, private sector management techniques are transferred
into the public sector
, 2.4 Mc Donaldization
- Efficiency
o Optimization of production in terms of speed
o For example: the drive through
- Calculability
o The tendency to calculate everything
o For example: quantity instead of quality focus
- Predictability
o Uniformization of products, services, procedures
o For example: Belgium and Shanghai have the same working procedures
- Control
o Control systems through the use of technology
o For example: automatic ordering
2.5 The 3 categories of peculiarities of HRM in the public sector
2.5.1 Goals
In private organizations one of the objectives is making a profit
<-> In public sector, goals are not always that straightforward, which may cause goal ambiguity
(produce public value, political responsiveness, social equity, …)
For example: providing the public with a good quality public service is an important objective
- But how can this be measured and how can employees be held accountable for their
individual contributions to that goal?
- For managers in public sector organizations, the lack of goal clarity may present some
difficulties
o How does one measure and evaluate performance when the goals of individual
employees are unclear?
o How do you give someone feedback based on these (unclear) performance
standards?
In public sector: organizational goals, team goals and personal goals are less tangible, harder to
measure and sometimes even conflicting (Blom et al., 2020). Private sector HRM practices, such
as goal setting or performance-related pay, can therefore not simply be copied by public sector
organizations
2.5.2 Constraints
Employees of public organizations do not always have the capacity or autonomy to make certain
(HRM related) decisions: high levels of bureaucracy are characteristics of public sector organizations
- Public sector managers: less power to manage their employees than managers in private
organizations
- These constraints manifest themselves in all steps of the employment process and the
accompanying HR-practices, such as hiring decision, (non)financial incentives, promotion
opportunities, employee exit management, …