HR Management History and Present Days Essay

Introduction

Creating and gaining competitive edge in the market in modern worlds lies in how well people are managed in the organization. At the same time, it has been established that, the traditional models of management have become inappropriate in the modern environment, a situation that has led to establishment of new models of management (Armstrong, 2009).

The growth of human resource management (HRM) can be linked to this concern for establishment of new models of management. Human resource management derives diverse definitions as observed by Storey (1989) a situation that has precipitated debate in the field for a long time (Bratton and Gold, 2001).

Armstrong (2010) sees the role of human resource management as holistic whereby, HRM has to serve the interests of the business but at same time remain keen to fulfilling the interests of the people in the business. HRM is critical in the management of modern organization, especially from the strategic perspective.

For example, Beer et al (1998) concluded that, “today, many pressures are demanding a broader, more comprehensive and more strategic perspective with regard to the organization’s human resources and these pressures have created a need for a longer-term perspective in managing people and consideration of people as potential assets rather than merely a variable cost” (Armstrong, 2010, p.8).

The essence of this paper is to look at the emergence of HRM as well as how strategically it has evolved into, specifically in achieving competitiveness of organizations.

What is Human Resource Management?

Different authors have defined HRM differently, mainly due to lack of agreed framework to understand and analyze the HR functions and activities (Bratton and Gold, 2001). For instance, the functions of HR are perceived as infinitely fluid, largely contingent, and largely influenced by external contexts of age.

Nevertheless, the history of HRM indicate that, the field has continuously experienced changes and modification of its priorities in order to respond well to the external socio-economic factors, which are beyond control by the organization and its managers (Bratton and Gold, 2001).

However, despite these differences, there is clear observation that definitions that have emerged concentrate on defining HRM by examining and exploring the functions, roles, and aspects of modern HRM in diverse organizations.

Marchington and Wilkinson (2008) perceive HRM as process where management of employment is fostered and achieved. Storey (1992) sees HRM to be composed of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ aspects of HRM (cited in Storey, 2007). ‘Soft’ aspect of HRM involves recognizing employees as resource that is vital and efforts should be made to invest in this resource.

On the other hand, ‘hard’ aspect of HRM express that, employees have to be identified as a cost that has to be minimized (Storey, 2007) through developing flexible techniques and fostering limited investment in learning and development. Torrington et al. (2008) develop two aspects that define and describe what HRM is.

First, ‘HRM mark 1’ aspect is regarded as ‘generic’ term that largely describes the body of management activities bundled together in the field of personnel management. Second, ‘HRM mark 2’ aspect is referred to as ‘distinctive approach’, which sees HRM to be concerned with identifying specific philosophies characterized by ‘people-oriented organizational activities’ (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008).

Guest (1987) regard HRM as characterized and defined based on ‘stereotypical’ features that differentiate HRM mark 1 (personnel management) and HRM mark 2 (HRM) (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2008).

Pre-1980s HRM management

Different reasons led to emergence of HRM in early 1980s, which have continuously persisted into the modern world. Some of the factors that led to this include search for competitive advantage, search for modes and methods of excellence, the failure of management failure to promote potential benefit of effective management of people, change of nature of work, and many more (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2008).

Industrial revolution in which the new field of HRM emerged was characterized by increased use of technology, and this situation increased requirements of skill and knowledge, restructuring of production, new quality system requirements, and demand of better educated new generation of workmen who had higher expectations from the organizations (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2008).

The history of HRM before 1980s can be traced by using the six periods or themes (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008). The first theme of this historical development of HRM is the ‘social justice’ theme. According to this theme, HRM has its roots in the 19th century and the foundation of the field can be linked to the works of social reformers such as Lord Shaftesbury and Robert Owen (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008).

The two social reformers are credited to their consistency in criticizing free enterprise system, which created more hardships to workers and was only interested in exploiting the workers to the maximum. Towards the end of 19th century and early 20th century, employers started to appoint welfare officers tasked with responsibility of managing new initiatives for improving work conditions (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008).

Welfare officers came up with unemployment benefits, sick pays, and subsidized housing to employees. In modern world, evolution of employee welfare programs has resulted into creation of “employee assistance schemes, childcare facilities, and health-screening programs” (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008).

The second period is termed as humane bureaucracy, which witnessed increase roles and responsibilities for personnel managers to staffing, training, and organization design. This period of HRM development was greatly influenced by works of social scientist like F.W. Taylor and Henry Fayol whose focus was on efficiency of management and administrative processes.

At the same time, this period of development was heavily influenced by Human Relations School, which looked at how industrial conflicts and dehumanizing experiences for workers could be minimized (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008). Therefore, the essence of this period was the growth of human and social relationships at the workplace.

Third theme constitutes the negotiated consent where personnel managers were more involved in bargaining activities as resource became scarce after the Second World War (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008). During this period, trade unionism increased, and given human resource was scarce, bargaining for employee compensation in workplace took center stage (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008).

Personnel managers assumed more responsibilities such as being members of “joint consultation committees, joint production committees, and suggestion schemes” (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008). All these initiatives were largely developed and spearheaded with aim of accommodating new and emerging realities in the workplace.

Next stage of development took place in 1960s where there was shift in “focus among personnel specialists, away from dealing principally with the rank-and-file employee on behalf of management, towards dealing with management itself” (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008). Here, personnel specialists became largely involved in developing techniques of manpower and workforce planning with aim to encourage effective and efficient recruitment, development, and retention of manpower with appropriate skills.

The HRM period emerged thereafter as early as 1970s. This HRM theme has largely become involved in putting more emphasis on aspects of performance management, planning, monitoring, and control, flexibility and employee management (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor, 2008).

The emphasis is on individual employees and its growth has been largely influenced by increasing globalization of the world, information technology and the emergence of neo-liberal economic policies. This new concept has its origin in issues like increasing employer demands for competitive advantage in the dynamic and uncertain global business environment.

The new HRM aims to identify the ‘best-fit’ responses to long-term trends witnessed in business world such as global perspective, issues of legal compliance, origin of multi-employer networks, emotional engagement of individual employees at the workplace, and increasing focus on customers at the workplace (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2008).

As a result, it can be observed that majority of organizations are involved in management of people rather than management of jobs as the need to create an effective competitive edge become inevitable (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2008).

Post-1980s HRM and the changes experienced

The development of Human Resource Management after the 1980s period has been at faster rate. For example, there has been development of ‘human resource accounting’ (HRA) theory, which assumes humans are critical resources of an organization for growth and development (Armstrong, 2001).

Post-1980 period in the development of HRM can be linked to array of factors that include accelerated competition in UK and USA firms, the slow growth of most Western nations’ economy, and realization among many managers that HRM has the ability to contribute positively to the performance of the firm (Armstrong 2001).

Goldsmith (1997) views HRM as a concept that has enjoyed popularity since its foundation in 1980s, and although it has been used interchangeably with personnel management, HRM is seen to be different in many ways.

HRM in modern world can be seen to be interested in performing the earlier functions of personnel management such as recruitment, workforce training, remuneration, employee discipline, and many more, in a more enhanced manner (Goldsmith, 1997).

In addition, HRM has emerged as field that is more concerned with specific managerial and organizational philosophy, which considers people to be the critical resources for the development of HRM. In this regard, HRM is concerned with developing people to have necessary skills and knowledge for better performance (Armstrong, 2009).

Moreover, HRM has emerged as field concerned with integration of personnel management functions into the strategic management of the organization, and this has to do with realization that effective HRM strategies have ability to increase performance of an organization (Goldsmith, 1997).

Analyzing the development of HRM in the contemporary world indicates that, HRM constitutes a radical departure from the earlier concept of personnel management in many ways. Personnel management is perceived as detached and neutral approach to staff, as it concentrated on operational focus, emphasis on technical skills, recruitment, and selection (Price, 2007).

On its part, HRM is pro-active approach that regards people as either assets or costs that have to be actively and efficiently managed. In this perspective, the intention of HRM in modern world is to depart from earlier goal of managing employees to management of people in view of long-term interests and goals of the organization (Price, 2007).

It can also be said that HRM in modern world is more of an integrated approach as compared to earlier personnel management approach. The essence of this integration is largely to link all aspects of people management by developing meaningful and organized frameworks of operations.

Each element that is developed or innovated is supposed to fit into the pattern that ultimately meets the needs of the business. Moreover, HRM has emerged as a holistic concept that is concerned with the overall people requirements in an organization. In this view, it can be seen that HRM is promoting the shift towards more conceptual, high-level concerns such as the structure and culture of the organization and the provision of necessary competences (Price, 2007).

Critical analysis of HRM in modern world

Torrington, Hall and Taylor (2008) observe that, HRM has developed in modern world to respond and fulfill strategic goals that majority of organizations in modern world have to develop. As a result, there have emerged three major debates characterizing the new paradigm of HRM: How to respond to current issues emerging which have direct impact on HRM; what actually should HRM managers do in the current scenario; and what long-term and future developments should be initiated in HRM (Torrington, Hall and Taylor, 2008).

First, HRM is currently concerned with attempts and strategies to innovate new approaches that can be used to manage people. The second aspect of debate oscillates around inspiring motivation among managers of HRM to develop radical changes, especially in policy and practice in response to modern business dynamics.

The last aspect of debates is geared at identifying long-term developments, especially with changing business environments. Therefore, HRM has to analyze business environment and identify the ‘best fit’ strategies that can respond to environment needs (Torrington, Hall, and Taylor).

The contribution of HRM in modern world is immense, especially in transforming an organization into a competitive and performance-oriented organization.

This contribution can be explained through three major perspectives of HRM – universalistic perspective; contingency perspective; and configurational perspective. Universalistic perspective postulates that, there are HRM practices that are better than others are, and all organizations have the responsibility of adopting identified best and appropriate practices for better performance.

Accordingly, the approach establishes that there is a universal relationship between an individual identified practice and the performance of the organization that adopts the practice (Armstrong, 2010).

Universalistic approach is concerned with internal analysis of the organization before selecting the best ‘fit’ practice based on four major principles. The first principle is that, HRM practices are superior when they reflect universal applicability.

Organizations have to select superior universal HRM practices that translate into increased performance of the organization, and HRM practices are independent, hence each practice is likely to impact differently on the organization. Lastly, organizations experience unique situations, and it is from this particular knowledge that HRM practices should be adopted in an aim to address the unique nature of organization’s situations (Armstrong, 2009).

Contingency perspective postulates that HRM concern should be to analyze external environments of business before any decision to adopt particular HRM practice is arrived at (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2005).

In evaluating which practice to have in the organization, Contingency approach goes beyond the financial performance aspects and suggests that, HRM is today involved in developing excellent people management aspects that are innovative, customer satisfying, product quality, flexibility, and socially benefiting (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2005).

Contingency approaches have received wide acceptance, as they advocate for multiple alternatives and different perspectives an organization uses to have the best practices of management.

In configurational perspective, the concern in modern world has shifted towards analyzing and considering both internal and external fit of an organization, with emphasis on external environment (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2005).

As a result, the perspective contends that, HRM strategies have to interact with business strategies of an organization and this should happen according to organizational context, which later defines and determines business performance. HRM strategies should function in harmony with overall goals of the business and the set strategies.

Conclusion

The evolution of HRM to what it is in the new world constitutes a long journey that is characterized with numerous developments and changes at each stage. However, genuine growth of HRM became evident during and after industrial revolution as issuers of workers became prominently a concern of many people.

Although great efforts have been made and there remain more to be done, it can be said that organizations will continually experience changes and this will define the growth of HRM. These changes and wider transformation of HRM to incorporate new changes of global world will largely help organizations achieve broad objectives in new business environment.

As a result, development of HRM in this era is likely to be influenced by new developments and forces of globalization coupled with global governance and technology. Moreover, organizations will have to develop appropriate HRM strategies that are in line with diverse differences across cultures.

This should see convectional HRM strategies transformed into modern strategies that are performance oriented, and have ability to address the unique needs of each society and organization. Nevertheless, HRM has developed and grown to become critical element of management for modern organizations.

Reference List

Armstrong, M., 2001. A Handbook of Management Techniques: The Best Selling Guide to Modern Management Method. PA: Kogan Page Publishers.

Armstrong, M., 2009. Armstrong’s Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice. PA: Kogan Page Publishers.

Armstrong, M., 2010. Armstrong’s Essential Human Resource Management Practice: A Guide to People Management. PA: Kogan Page Publishers.

Bratton, J., & Gold, J., 2001. Human Resource Management: Theory and Practice. NY: Routledge.

Goldsmith, A. L., 1997. Human Resource Management for Hospitality Services. OH: Cengage Learning EMEA.

Marchington, M. & Wilkinson, A., 2008. Human Resource Management at Work: People Management and Development. London: CIPD.

Price, A., 2007. Human Resource Management in a Business Context. OH: Cengage Learning EMEA.

Storey, J., 2007. Human Resource Management: A Critical Text. OH: Cengage Learning EMEA.

Torrington, D., Hall, & Taylor, S., 2008. Human Resource Management. London: Financial Times Prentice Hall.