The Emerging Popularity of Human Resource Management

What were the socioeconomic changes in the 1980s which contributed to the emerging popularity of military military force Resource Management? Does the concept of Human Resource Management accede a radical novelty or is it a mere repackaging of personnel focusing? Introduction During the 1980s, a new management concept referred to as Human Resource Management (HRM) became very fashionable. At that time, many academics questi mavind whether HMR was alone a renaming of the previously known personnel management (PM) tool, or whether it was, as some cl engineered, a radi battle cryy contrary philosophy and approach to management of people at work (1).Firstly, it decidems appropriate to define HRM. However, the definition of HRM this has been widely debated, and so for our purposes, we will use Stephen Bachs view that it laughingstock be viewed as the involvement of particular strategies and approaches towards management of deal outable outwear. We must in addition consider wha t we mean by socioeconomic, which we notify state as the relationship amidst economic activity and friendly life. In this es regularise, the standardizedities and differences amidst HRM and PM are analysed in an onrush to see whether there is more than to HRM than novel rhetoric.Socioeconomic Changes Towards the end of the 1970s and the proterozoic part of the 1980s, both the US and UK economies experienced recessions of relative magnitude. Both governments seek new economic solutions, and adopted policies known as Thatcherism and Reaganomics, that call fored monetarism and rid market economics. virtuoso of the consequences of this radical catamenia was the reforming and reshaping of what many described as the courtly modeling of industrial relations (2).These new policies inevitably led to the sanction of employers, and resulted in substantive destruction of trade union power at that time and eventually became the turning point of the era of trade unionism. there w ere a number of consequences as a result of this reshaping of the economy credibly the largest of note was that there was a considerable dec field of operation in a number of the mature Basic industries, such as Steel and Coal, which was equilibrise by the increase in the Service sector (this is still patent today as 70% of UK GDP comes from the service sector (3)).This period of decline in many Basic industries coincidently ushered in a time for new technologies based on hi-tech products, further assisting the aim of both governments to deregulate and intensify market competition through free market economics. With anti-union legislations and privatisation at the core of the Conservative party philosophy, as Thatcher pushed to bump off the power of the Socialist / Communist trades unions, the result of which led to the encouragement of firms to participate new labour practices and re-order their collective bargaining arrangements (4).This gave companies the opportunity to deve lop make relationships with employees, and hence reduce further the power of trade unions. These direct relationships are what some people to consider as one of the fundamentals of HRM. On a more global scale, this was an important period in the growing of globalization that cut competition intensify from overseas. Japan rapidly became one of the major exporters of very competitively priced manu pointured goods to the US undercutting many municipal suppliers.This development, unsurprisingly, forced US companies to consider their cost structure in an attempt to see off this foreign competition. Companies quickly began to investigate the productivity of its workforce. One of the outcomes of this, which is judged to be one of the cornerstones of HRM, was to try to develop harmonious relations between employers and employees. The belief was already there that synergy could be created from the employee/employers relationship.Furthermore, it became apparent that an environment free of conflict could help unite an presidency so that undivided employees could commit themselves to organisational success. This Unitarianism perspective became one of the antecedents of the development of HRM. Toward the end of the 1980s as more and more academics continued to produce a wealth of books on the subject of HRM, it became clear that there was a recurring idea for those companies that appeared to perform extremely well in these market conditions.It became obvious in these increasingly dynamic markets that companies that were proactive to market change were able to do so as a result of motivated workforce. The question that was pray to be asked was how they were able to this so well? The answer was through pertain management styles that were instilling a culture in the workforce that was proactive rather than reactive. This is one of the key differences that will be referred back to later. It was suggested that these had been brought on by the intense competition and pressure, which eant a competent PM was more necessary than ever. There were several different socioeconomic changes that all acted as antecedents to the development and reshaping of PM that became known as HRM. These included increasingly conspicuous demands of shareholders, changing work force (flexibility, part time largely through the employment of women), a changing age structure of the workforce, the young paltry in the direction of private and service sectors, hence less accustomed to unionisation and finally increasingly mechanised manufacturing processes through new technologies.Differences between HRM and PM The second part of this essay looks at whether HRM was in factual fact a novel idea or whether in ingenuousness it was a re- chase afterling of PM. Looking through a variety of literature on the subject, it immediately becomes clear that it is extremely hard to start out a authoritative line to draw between HRM and PM. Legge for example mentioned he felt their wasnt a huge difference between the two and in fact drew on some very clear similarities. However he does manage to point out some diverging aspects.While Torrington saw the development of HRM as only adding a further dimension to the multi faceted subprogram (5) therefore seeing HRM as an ongoing process in the evolution of PM. As a result he finds it hard to label HRM as a revolutionary model. There are those experts that do pair in the novelty of HRM. Its these authors that remind us not to play down the effects of HRM, mentioning that while many of the techniques in HRM are similar to those in PM, it is the philosophical context of HRM that makes these techniques so much more effective.The model of HRM unfortunately is not uniform and is made up of several different theoretical approaches therefore it becomes even harder to define clearly. This is perhaps what has muddied body of water so much in the debate of HRM and PM. Perhaps the easiest was to try and find an answer to this question is to compare the differences versus the similarities. Firstly the differences Storey puts particular wildness on the strategic character (1) and continuously mentioned how HRM decision and formulations of policies should take mastermind on strategic level within an organisation.Meanwhile PM merchantman be condemned for its limited consideration of business objectives during decision making. some other major concept that is fundamental to HRM (particularly in Soft HRM) which cannot be set in PM is the creation culture and values on an organisation level. The intention of this aspect is to drive towards employee commitment towards achieving organisational goals. This commitment can be seen as a precursor of motivation and performance (6).Furthermore we can consider the aspects of communication within HRM, whereby it rejects collective bargaining and attempts to set up direct channels of communication with individuals. By operating in this manor, HRM attempts to m arch the individual needs of the employee so that they can then go on to contribute to the organisation. Consideration of the proactive versus reactive argument can also chance on differences (with HRM viewed as proactive and PM viewed as reactive). Proactive workforces alter organisations to pre-empt changes in markets.However they can only be implemented if the workforce is sufficiently motivated. The final major difference that can be set is the emphasis that HRM places on training and development, that PM does not seem to identify with in the same elan (5). When we contemplate the similarities of the PM and HRM we can consider Legges work (he viewed the clearest change from PM to HRM to be the re-labelling process). He established three main aspects than run through both forms of management. He stated that both emphasised the importance of integration.Both sought to possess the right people to the right jobs (he saw this as the principal role of the management of people in an organisation). Both PM and HRM gave people- management to line managers. Guest also discusses personnel development and functioning on a strategic level. However the above theses partially contradict what many other authors thought (6). In conclusion, we can accept that while HRM and PM contain significant similarities, we have to acknowledge that they differ in terms of their convey and emphasis.Perhaps cultural aspects and strategic considerations would be the most important alteration, when converting from one theory to the other. Perhaps it would be wrong to say that HRM was a only novel idea, especially when so many of the procedures and techniques overlap. However it is correct to say that HRM took many of the principles of PM and applied them to a different philosophy and way of thinking, and in doing so, inherently took the continuous evolution of PM to what we today call HRM.