Human Resource Management and Organizational Culture

Human resource management (HRM or HR) is the strategic approach to the effective management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer’s strategic objectives. Human resource management is primarily concerned with the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and systems. HR

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The nature of human resource management

1. HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FOR THE TWENTY- FIRST CENTURY Businesses are diverse. Prisons, restaurants, oil companies, corner shops, fire brigades, churches, hotel chains, hospitals, schools, newspapers, charities, doctors’ and dentists’ surgeries, professional sports teams, airlines, barristers’ chambers and universities are all businesses in the sense that they have overall corporate missions to deliver and

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Debates and philosophy of human resource Management

1. DEBATES IN HRM The world in which human resource managers exist and with which they interact is continually changing, generating new issues and conundrums to consider. While in most cases managers have a fair degree of choice about how to deal with new ideas and new sets of circumstances, the choices themselves are

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The nature of Strategic human resource management

1. STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT AND HUMAN RESOURCE STRATEGY Our understanding of HR strategy has changed considerably since strategy first became the subject of great attention. We have moved from viewing strategy as a physical docu­ment to seeing it as an incremental process, affected by political influences and gener­ating learning. Tyson’s (1995) definition of

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Theoretical perspectives of strategic human resource management

Three theoretical approaches to strategic HRM can be identified. The first is founded on the concept that there is ‘one best way’ of managing human resources in order to improve business performance. The second focuses on the need to align employment policies and practice with the requirements of business strategy in order that the

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Introduction to human resource planning

1. THE CONTRIBUTION AND FEASIBILITY OF HR PLANNING A useful starting point is to consider the different contributions that strategy and planning make to the organisation. A common view has been that they are virtually one and the same – hence the term ‘strategic planning’. Henry Mintzberg (1994, p. 108) dis­tinguished between strategic thinking,

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Analysing the environment and Forecasting future human resource needs

1. ANALYSING THE ENVIRONMENT In this chapter we refer to the environment broadly as the context of the organisation, and this is clearly critical in the impact that it has on both organisational and human resource strategy. Much strategy is based on a response to the environment – for example, what our customers now

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Current HR situation analysis, reconciliation, decisions and plans

1. ANALYSING THE CURRENT SITUATION AND PROJECTING FORWARD 1.1. Organisation, behaviour and culture It is in this area that more choice of techniques is available, and the possibilities include the use of questionnaires to staff (see www.pearsoned.co.uk/torrington HRP Exercise, 3.1, note 7.), interviews with staff and managerial judgement. Focus groups are an increasingly popular

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International human resource management

The main problem about understanding international HRM issues is that they evolve so rapidly; having worked out how to deal with one opportunity or challenge, you find that things have changed and your plans are obsolete. As one company chairman put it, ‘You feel as if you are driving from one station to another,

International communication and coordination of human resources

Communicating across geographical, ethnic and national boundaries is a major chal­lenge for HR people. Brandt and Hulbert (1976) studied organisational feedback in a number of multinational companies that had their headquarters in Europe, Japan and the United States. They found that the American organisations had many more feedback reports and meetings between headquarters and

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Analysing labour markets

1. RESPONDING TO LABOUR MARKET TRENDS The starting point for all strategic activity in HRM is to understand the environment in which an organisation operates. It is only possible to formulate the most appropriate policies and practices once its key features have been identified and their importance grasped. In the field of employee resourcing

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Flexible resourcing choices for human ressource needs

1. FLEXIBLE RESOURCING CHOICES Understanding the dynamics of the organisational environment is only one part of taking a strategic approach to employee resourcing. Having gained an understanding one must decide how the organisation can best interact with its environment to maximise its performance. One set of key choices concerns the extent to which the

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Contracts of employmen, Working patterns and Flexible working hours

1. CONTRACTS OF EMPLOYMENT As far as the law is concerned over 80 per cent of people who work in the UK are employees. This means that they have a contract of employment with their employer, with the duties and privileges that that implies. The employer may be an individual, as with most small

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Contractual arrangements, Consultants and Outsourcing

1. ATYPICAL CONTRACTUAL ARRANGEMENTS Recent decades have seen the growth of contractual arrangements that differ from the permanent, open-ended, full-time, workplace-based form of employment that has always been regarded as representing the norm. There has always been considerable disagreement about the significance of these trends. For some they mark the ‘beginning of the end’

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Introduction to Recruitment

There is always a need for replacement employees and those with unfamiliar skills that business growth makes necessary, and with the Institute for Employment Research (2006) now estimating that UK employers will be creating an additional 1.3 million jobs before 2014, it is clear that effective recruitment will remain a central HR objective for

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Internal recruitment

Vacancies, of course, are often filled internally. Sometimes organisations advertise all vacancies publicly as a matter of course and consider internal candidates along with any­one from outside the organisation who applies. This approach is generally considered to constitute good practice and is widely used in the UK’s public sector. However, many organisations prefer to

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Methods of recruitment and Employer branding

1. METHODS OF RECRUITMENT Once an employer has decided that external recruitment is necessary, a cost-effective and appropriate method of recruitment must be selected. There are a number of distinct approaches to choose from, each of which is more or less appropriate in different cir­cumstances. As a result most employers use a wide variety

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Control and evaluation, Correspondence and Shortlisting of candidatures

1. CONTROL AND EVALUATION The HR manager needs to monitor the effectiveness of advertising and all other methods of recruitment, first, to ensure value for money and, second, to ensure that the pool of applicants produced by the various methods is suitable. Wright and Storey (1994, p. 209) suggest that information on the following

Introduction to selection methods of candidature

1. SELECTION AS A TWO-WAY PROCESS The various stages of the selection process provide information for decisions by both the employer and the potential employee. While employment decisions have long been regarded as a management prerogative there is considerable evidence that the two-way nature of the process is now being widely acknowledged, and Lievens

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Choosing and validating the selection method of candidatures

1. SELECTION METHODS In Chapter 7 on recruitment we considered the shortlisting process and the sifting of applications. We go on to look at selection methods in more detail, many of which may be used at different stages in the selection process, including shortlisting and sifting. We deal with interviews in depth in the

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