Summary Human Resource
Management. A Critical
Approach
CH1 Contemporary Human Resource Management: the Role of Critique
Defining human resource management
Human resource management (HRM) is concerned with managing work and the employment
relationship.
Personnel management is about working relationship and ensuring the agreement is fulfilled.
Occupying a neutral position, placed between the employer and the workers, and engaged in
processes aiming to provide fair terms and conditions as well as having a responsibility to
provide satisfying work. People management is a pluralistic process.
HR practices have a strategic role in supporting organizational strategy. HRM actions affect
the nature of the employment relationship. Performance is a product of all HR activities which
should be aligned with the organizations’ corporate strategy. Worker development and
commitment im achieving competitive advantage.
Soft approach = ‘H’ place a high value on people as a creative asset and source of
competitive advantage. Treat workers holistically, with attention to development, job
satisfaction and well-being. Developmental humanism model.
Hard approach = ‘R’ minimizing costs and profit maximization, views workers as an atomized
resource. Utilitarian-instrumentalism model.
Analytical HRM; emphasizes the primary task of HRM scholars to build and gather empirical
data in order to identify and explain the way management actually behaves in organizing
work and managing people. Three interrelated analytical themes:
- What and why of HRM (understanding human behavior in different context and with
explaining motives)
- How of HRM (processes by which it is carried out)
- Cui bono? (who benefits and how well?)
Context is a crucial factor in explaining how employers manage their workers. Both soft and
hard types of HRM are practiced in different sectors, different organizations and among
different occupations in the same organization.
Human resource management is a strategic approach to managing work and employment
relations. It underscores that leveraging people’s capabilities, commitment and cooperation is
a prerequisite for realizing desired goals. This is accomplished through a distinctive set of
integrated employment practices and a positive employment relationship, embedded in an
organizational, societal and ecological context.
, - HRM is considered as having a strategic role
- The primacy of people (only human factor has the inherent capacity to generate
value)
- Importance of the integration of the HR system with the organization’s goals
We need to beware that while people are critical for creating wealth and sustainability
performance, and human dignity in and at work is, or ought to be, at the heart of HRM, we do
not deny fair reward, basic rights, security and dignities to all workers.
The employment relationship
Workers exchange their capacity to work (their labour power) that is distinct form the person
themselves. That capacity is regulated into uniform temporal units (hours, days, night shifts)
using cash.
The capitalist employment relationship describes an asymmetry of reciprocal relations
between workers and their employer through which both the work performed (whether it is
routine or creative) and the economic exchange (wage or salary) is contractually determined.
Employment relationships vary (can be short term, primarily but not exclusively economic
exchange for relatively well-defined set of duties and low commitment, complex long-term,
broad set of duties and high commitment from the work-economic inducements and relative
security of employment, given in return for a broad set of duties and a high commitment from
the worker)
Key dimensions of the employment relationship:
1. Economic (exchange of pay for work)
a. Product market conditions directly affect the employer’s revenue, with
potential changes to the terms and conditions of employment
b. Capitalism is subject to economic forces, particularly those attached to
product markets and profit-making, which involves continuous change and
restructuring and, periodically, economic crises and recessions
c. The sate influences the economic relationship through fiscal and monetary
policies (indirect) and employment law on wages (direct)
d. Exchange is dependent upon a process of abstracting the value in which work
or effort level is indeterminate
e. Work-wage bargain is structurally conflictual
2. Social
Workers and managers are not isolated individuals but members of a family,
community and social groups, such as a trade union or professional association, who
observe social norms and mores that influence their actions in the workplace. People
have own values, social norms, mores and histories.
Attention to the role of power in explaining the dynamics in the employment
relationship. Uneven balance of power between parties (social power). Most
important source of power is coercion and reward.
Power is exercised through work organizations and society.
Social triangle concept; authority, mutual respect and cooperation.
3. Legal
A network of contractual and statutory rights and obligations affecting both parties in
the contract.
4. Psychological
This is a metaphor that captures a wide variety of largely unwritten expectations and
understanding of the two parties about their mutual obligations. The perceptions of
both parties to the employment relationship, organizational and individual, of the
reciprocal promises and obligations implied in that relationship.
HR practices may communicate different beliefs about the reciprocal promises and
obligations that are present. Managers will be faced with a multitude of perceived
psychological contracts within the same organization.
, Psychologization of HRM; the field of HRM has become increasingly dominated by
psychological theorizing.
The scope and goals of HRM
Major subdomains of HRM knowledge:
- Micro: concerned with managing individual workers and small work groups. Covers
activities such as workforce planning, job design, recruitment and selection,
performance management, learning and development, and rewards.
Human resource development: planned interventions in organizational and individual
learning processes.
- Strategic: concerned with the processes of linking HR strategies with business
strategies and measures the effects on organizational performance. Defined as a
coherent, vertically aligned and horizontally integrated set of learning and
development activities which contribute to the achievement of strategic goals (Human
resource development).
- International: focuses on the management of people in companies operating in more
than one country.
Three basic questions:
- What do HR professionals do?
o Recruitment (can also be outsourced)
o Pay administration (can also be outsourced)
- What affects what they do?
o The external context (globalized capitalism, peculiarities of national
employment systems and national culture)
o Strategy (underscores the need for the HR strategy to be integrated with the
organization’s strategy)
o Organization (covers a myriad of new working arrangements, such as work
teams)
- How do they do what they do?
o Strategic decision-making
o Personal credibility
o Delivery of foundational HR infrastructure
o Business knowledge
o HR technology
o Competencies of change and culture management, effective communication
and coaching and mentoring
How the HR function is organised and how much power it has relative to that of other
management functions is affected by both external and internal factors unique to the
establishment. A rules-based, regulation-oriented national business system, with strong trade
unions, employment laws on equity and affirmative action, elevates the status of the HR
professional and strengthens the corporate HR function. In contrast, a market-oriented
corporate culture, minimum investment in worker development and reliance on temporary
workers, is associated with decentralisation of the
HR function.
The model implies not only that HRM is a
multidimensional activity, but also that its analysis
has to be multidirectional. Serves to develop an
analytical conception of HRM by building theory and
generating data based on managers’ intended and
actual actions in managing work and people across
, workplaces, sectors and market societies. Helps line managers look beyond their immediate
tasks and to be aware of the totality of management.
The goals of HRM
Four key goals:
1. Cost-effectiveness – maximizing profits or minimizing costs
2. Flexibility – short-run responsiveness and long-run agility in response to external
pressures
3. Social legitimacy – how people are managed and led affects the ethical standing of
the organization in society
4. Power – managers aim to enhance their power as stakeholders
The strategic HR goals may vary between private and public-sector organisations. They can
also vary depending on whether organisational leaders demonstrate a commitment to an
environmentally sustainable planet, by enacting policies and practices that will decarbonise
the workplace. In terms of theoretical development, a fifth goal for HRM can relate to
effective pro-environmental leadership. It is suggested that none of these goals can be
achieved without investment in worker learning and development.
Theorizing HRM
HRM varies across organizations and market societies depending upon a range of external
and internal contingencies. Models to demonstrate the distinctiveness and goals of HRM
(theoretical model that demonstrates the nature and goals of HRM). Each model fulfils
important intellectual functions:
- Establish a cluster of variables and relationships between dependent and
independent variables to be researched
- They legitimize HRM
- They serve as a heuristic device by providing an analytical framework for studying
HRM
The Michigan model of HRM
Four core HRM activities:
1. Selecting people who are best able to perform defined jobs
2. Appraising worker performance
3. To facilitate equitable distribution of rewards by linking rewards to high levels of
performance
4. Developing employees to enhance their work performance
The HR system is conceptualized as a cycle that represents sequential managerial tasks.
Unitarist perspective underpins the hard model of HRM. Organizations are families where
employers and workers share common goals and dissent among workers is dysfunctional
behavior.
Expresses the coherence of the HR system and the importance of matching internal HR
policies and practices to the organization’s strategy.
Weaknesses include its prescriptive nature and its focus on just four HR practices, ignores
multiple stakeholder interests, situational factors and the notion of management’s strategic
choice.
The Harvard model of HRM
Provided one of the first comprehensive statements on the nature of HRM, the goals of
employers and specific HR outcomes. Six basic components:
1. Stakeholder interests; recognize the importance of trade-offs between the interests of
employers and employees, shareholders and trade unions (pluralist ideology).
