Contemporary
Chapter 1
Human Resource
Management
The Role of Critique
Defining Human Resource
Management
HRM aspires to:
1. Be strategic.
2. Focus on the ‘human capabilities’.
3. Integrate the HR system with the organisation’s goals.
4. Be shaped by, and shape, context.
Management and HRM
• ‘Human capital’= traits that people bring to the
workplace.
• Management = process designed to coordinate
and control productive activity.
• Human resource management = (unlike other
resources) requires the coexistence of control
and cooperation.
The Employment Relationship
Regulation of employment relationship:
• Unilateral (employer).
• Bilateral (employer and trade unions).
• Trilateral (employer, trade unions,
government statutes).
The Dimensions of the Employment
Relationship
1. Economic = ‘exchange of pay for work’ (Brown, 1988).
2. Legal = contractual and statutory rights and
obligations.
3. Social = social relations, social structure and balance
of power.
4. Psychological = two-way exchange of perceived
promises and obligations.
The scope and goals of HRM
• Micro (MHRM) = individual employees and small work
groups.
• Strategic (SHRM) = links HR strategies with business
strategies and measures effects on organizational
performance.
• International (IHRM) = management of people in
companies operating in more than one country.
• Clusters of follower-centred HR practices support
Scope and Functions of HRM
Important Questions
• What do HRM professionals do?
Functions
• What affects what they do?
Contingencies
• How do they do it? Managerial Skills
The Goals of HRM
1.Cost-effectiveness
2.Flexibility
3.Social legitimacy
4.Power
Theorising HRM
The Michigan Model, Figure 1.3, p. 33
Four core activities:
• People selection
• Worker performance
appraisal
• Equitable distribution of
rewards
• Employee development
Theorising HRM
The Harvard Model, Figure 1.4, p. 34
Six components:
1. Situational factors
2. Stakeholder interests
3. HRM policy choices
4. HR outcomes
5. Long-term
consequences
6. Feedback loop
Theorising HRM
The Storey model, Table 1.2, p. 36
• Differences Four parts:
between ‘personnel • Beliefs and
and industrials’ and assumptions
HRM paradigm by • Strategic aspects
creating an ‘ideal’ • Role of line
type. managers
• Key levers
Theorising HRM
Ulrich’s strategic partner
model
• Demonstrates the Four Roles:
added value of HR • Strategic partner
activities in • Change agent
business terms. • Administrative
expert
• Employee
champion
Theorising HRM
The Bath model, Fig 1.5,
Focuses on the p. 39
Six Components:
processes through • HR system choices
which HR policies • Employee AMO
and practices • Line management
affect employee influence
motivation and • Employee responses
performance. • Discretionary
behaviour
• Performance outcomes
HRM and the Role of Critique
Internal Critique
• Legge (2005), Townley (1994), Winstanley
and Woodall (2000) Keenoy and Anthony
(1992)
HRM and the Role of Critique
External Critiques
• Academics within the broad field of critical
management studies and labour process theory.
• Alvesson and Willmott (2003), Godard (1991),
Thompson and McHugh (2009) and Watson (2004)
HRM and the Role of Critique
Feminist Paradigm
• The processes of gender roles, inequalities in society
and the workplace, problems of power, and women’s
subordination and oppression.
• Important Early Thinkers:
• Classical Wollstonecraft
• Modern Friedan
HRM and the Role of Critique
Post-colonial Discourse and Scholarship
• US/European theorising does not capture complexity of
cultures that populate the planet.
HRM and the Role of Critique
Intersectionality
• An analytic approach that recognises multiple social
categories in society (e.g. class, race, gender, sexuality,
age, disability) operate not as discrete entities, but build
on each other and work together (Collins and Bilge,
2020).
• E.g., used to examine how race and gender
interact to influence multiple dimensions of
inequality.
The Effect of Critique on Work and
People Management
• Improve capitalism and, by extension, work
organisations.
• Delegitimise models of HRM and divest them of their
effectiveness.
• Compels organisational leaders to justify those actions.
• Offers less-optimistic analysis of the reactions of
neoliberal capitalism.
