Mohammad Mosaddek Hussain :
If we want to grasp the internationalization of human resource management, the three recently published works would be highly helpful in all respects in the arena oh human resource towards the internationalization perspectives of human resource management. These publications are authored by Poole (1999), Schuler and Jackson (1999) and Storey (2000). These are the books that focus the intensive analysis on the subject as a whole.
In this 21st century, more and more entrepreneurs and companies are recognizing the importance of managing their human resources as effectively as possible within their available resources and capacities. Because the environment of business organizations becomes more global throughout the world, managing people effectively is also more challenging, more unpredictable and uncertain due to frequently changing situation. It is also notable that the human resources are not machines, they have the ability to think and act based on their logic, ability, knowledge, skill and experience. So, it is simply very difficult to manage people properly in the workplace situation.
Human resource management practice and procedure are the rapidly affecting factors for the development of all aspects of global and international activities and issues associated with the goal of business. And because the importance of managing people effectively in the global context is so tough, many companies are devoting more time, attention, skill, and effort towards the achievement of set goal.
In the recent trend it is manifested that the researchers, academics and practitioners are working more than ever on understanding and advancing our knowledge of issues in and activities associated with managing human resources within the global context. Not only that they are also relating the basics of HRM with the context of the global scenario with a view to extending their business.
Relating to global context, two of the areas of managing human resources have identified: comparative HRM and international HRM.
Besides, today, there are generally four general areas of study regarding managing human resources: (1) comparative (competitive) HRM, (2) international (global) HRM, (3) SHRM, and (4) General Practice of HRM. Over the past years, these areas of knowledge have gained increased academic and professional interest among the researchers and students.
HRM is the basis for comparative HRM, international HRM, and SHRM and, consequently, is the largest here, and thus, is reviewed first. HRM is a vital and priority function in all of the organizations of any type. It places and engages everyone and it takes time to deploy every employee in his/her place of duty.
Managing human resources effectively requires that the expert HR professionals in the HR department be engaged by, and in partnership with other line managers and other employees. It involves attending to the concerns of the moment while keeping a longer-term perspective in mind. It also involves continuously improving and changing activities that take time to put in place and produce results.
Consequently, HRM includes
(a) the employee managing activities, policies, and practices that firms can use to compete effectively now, and (b) the many changing forces (e.g., new competitors, new technology, business restructuring, legal, and social concerns) that organizations need to understand and respond to in order to ensure they are positioned to compete effectively with other competitors.
According the opinion of Poole, (1990), the theoretical base of HRM combines both multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary elements. A central aspect of HRM is the link with the organization. After all, the competitiveness of companies and nations has been increasingly recognized to stem from the caliber of their people. The significant advantages of companies having workforces that are fully developed, highly motivated, and rewarded for creativity and innovation is widely understood. But because “the human resource” is so central to the success of companies, strategies need to be formulated in ways in which the human assets of the firm are a central feature. And this is theoretically consequential because: (1) there is not necessarily one best human resource practice or set of practices (rather, these are linked with distinctive organizational strategies, structures, and processes) and (2) human resource issues
are in the domain of all managers (particularly on line and general management) and are not the preserve of the professionally trained personnel specialist.
In reality, HRM function involves “all management decisions and actions that affect the nature of the relationship between the organization and employees and the vision of the the organization as a whole. Further HRM encompasses the “development of all aspects of an organizational context” as well as employee’s morale so that they will encourage and even direct managerial behavior with regard to employees. HRM is organizational in its compass, it involves all managerial personnel, it regards people as the most important single asset of the organization and it seeks to enhance company performance, employee needs and societal well-being. It comprises a broad area of focus and carries with it the ideal of increasing human satisfaction at a variety of levels. Moreover, other than the links with strategic management from a disciplinary standpoint, it synthesizes elements from international business, organizational behavior, personnel management and industrial relations. It also involves disciplines like occupational psychology, labor economics and industrial sociology which are also very important towards the development of organization culture and people development in all respects.
The study of HRM has changed dramatically during in the eve of 21st century. Beginning with the works of Frederick Taylor around the turn of the century, the focus of managing people in organizations was on developing precise analytical schemes to select and reward an individual. This focus was typically for the purpose of motivating, controlling, and improving the productivity of entry-level employees. During the 1920s, work on these analytical schemes expanded to encompass issues of appraising and training individuals, essentially for the same purpose. While the focus during the first quarter century was on the individual employee, the second quarter was to see it shift to the group. Elton Mayo’s work at the Hawthorne plant focused on improving the productivity of individuals by experimenting with groups. His efforts included changing the group composition and incentive schemes. They also included changing environmental conditions, namely lighting and the physical arrangements. Knowledge of groups and the impact of group on individuals advanced with the work of Kurt Lewin and Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Sherif during the 1930s and 1940s. Yet with few notable exceptions, such as the work of Chester Barnard on CEOs, this work was focused primarily on the people doing the work.
It was revealed that in the 1950s and 1960s, managing individuals in organizations highlighted individual needs and motivation. Yet, again, most of the work focused, explicitly or implicitly, on improving the performance of the employees working in the organizations. In this period, the more applied work in these areas related to managing and motivating individuals became the domain of those identifying primarily with employee psychology, industrial and organizational psychology. Later the more theoretical work came as a new subject namely the ” organizational behavior”.
Another discipline evolved in the name of HRM in the 1970s. Encompassing the methodological tradition of the personnel and industrial and organizational psychologists and the theoretical frameworks of the organizational behaviorists, HRM took on a broader shape than before. New focus included concerns for the safety and health of the employees and their satisfaction and performance evaluation. Industrial relations and planning were also came in the focus of HRM. Yet throughout the work on all the HRM topics, the primary focus of attention is found on the fresh and entry-level employees.
Between 1970s and 1980s, the discipline of organizational strategy used to assess its
impact on HRM functions. Besides, environmental forces, intense international and domestic competition for companies, also began to make an impact. This actually involved the continued theoretical and applied sides of HRM. The result of this within HRM was recognition that a substantial number of organizational characteristics not generally addressed actually had/have substantial impact upon managing human resources. Thus, organizational characteristics such as structure, strategy, size, culture, process and procedure, method, product and organizational life cycle began to be incorporated into the work of HRM grid. Nowadays, methods of global competition, worldwide labor availability, business ethics, culture and process and the environment are attracting major attention of HRM within the organizations as a whole. On the other hand, these are the jobs of HRM those are challenging, rewarding, and exciting for the HR professionals and higher management.
The discipline and study of “personnel management ” is prevailed In the late 1970s and early 1980s. Then the discipline and study began to change and gradually assume the label of “personnel and HRM” or just “HRM.” Later the activity in Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) and strategic international HRM (SIHRM) are flourished as the new areas of activities within HRM. Storey (1992) offered 27 points of difference between personnel/industrial relations and HRM. In turn, these 27 points were grouped into three categories: beliefs and assumptions, strategic aspects, and key levers.
HRM has moved from a local focus to a more global focus. There is more concern now for the environment, ecological issues, and for healthcare and illiteracy problems.
In the organizational setting, HRM has gone from being concerned only with the operational issues of personnel to include the more strategic, business level concerns of the organization itself. Human resource divisions/departments might also be concerned about the operations of key suppliers and customers. Since its beginning, human resource professionals are working more closely with the line managers, to some extent a customer of the human resource department. At the same time, the top management of the organizations intervenes in planning policies, rules and regulations for their control and authority. Moreover, as the trend reveals that the human resource profession has become more involved in the global, external, and strategic issues of the organization, so has its critical goals changed in some ways. Whereas the goals in “personnel management” were attracting, retaining, and motivating workers, the goals of “HRM” are concerned with the bottom line: competitiveness, profitability, survival, competitive advantage, and workforce flexibility.
The focus was with developing human resource products and services rather than understanding the traits and propensities of human resource implications of the business in many organizations. Concurrently, human resource professionals have become more generalists in nature. This trend is individual focused and at the team level for serving its clients and customers. Regarding the employees, the human resource department and the professionals have moved from a philosophical orientation of conflict and differentiation to one of harmony and egalitarianism.
HRM is associated with practices that are more broadly conceived and team-oriented.
Nowadays, the field of studying and managing human resources have hot attracted by the top management officials, researchers and academicians and industrialists. On the other hand, many debates in the field have also evolved (Poole, 1999). While there may be differences in the debates depending on which side of the Atlantic one stands, these differences are perhaps more of degree than kind (Sparrow and Hiltrop, 1994; Brewster, 2000).
Still the debate revolves around the extent to which the human resource community should be involved in greater social problems outside the organization. Perhaps the best contribution HRM can make to the community is to make its own organization as effective and efficient as possible. Others say, of course, that it is impossible not to be concerned about the impact of the organization upon the environment and its dependence for supplies, such as skilled individuals.
Debates are also focused on the appropriateness and the ability of HRM to become more organizationally linked. There are many issues like the health and literacy problems that are critical to the organization and rightly fall to the human resource department. As many opined that responsibility for healthcare and system, some would suggest, is right and appropriate for HRM department. Furthermore, as human resource practitioners are not trained to be knowledgeable in the business, they lack the ability to link their activities to the organization and effectiveness of personnel efficiencies.
For the same reasons, the human resource manager/in-charge probably
best serves the line manager by acting as the behind-the-scenes operator rather than as in equal partnership on center stage.
Needless to say that the HR professionals are requiring training and the possession of a technical knowledge in the art of people management in various settings and they are likely to be more effective in focusing team approach rather than individual level. Within academia a similar debate is going on that whether business schools be left to teach only the general, more strategically focused HRM, thereby leaving the psychology departments or schools of HRM and industrial relations or others?
Managers or HR professionals can plan an effective model to prevail harmonious relationship between workers and managers in the workplace situation. These two groups can work in achieving the same goal of the organization. At the same time, this should be also identified that is there always continuing irrational conflict between the owners and their representatives and the workers. Monitor that the human resource professional is keeping the true interests of the workers or not in different situation. The reciprocal role for HRM implies not carrying out what is in the interests of the managers, but rather what is in the best interests of the business. The expression of partnership means the human resource manager working with managers and the workers and their representatives in the best interests of the business and the best interests of the community.
Regardless of whether workers are working effectively in teams to improve quality today, will they be able to continue this trend in the future? This is now a burning question for the owners and top management. Debates are still going about the trade unions and representative committees, their roles and activities. The debate still continues by focusing on the real role of teams and harmony. It can help to improve efficiency and the lot of the workers. In this event, as human resource practices move from being more narrowly developed to more broadly developed, are organizations making themselves more attractive and unions less attractive to the workers?
The discipline of managing human in organizations has transformed itself tremendously throughout the last century. Today what organizations and the human resource/personnel professional have is a range of alternatives for managing human resources. Similarly, academics have an equally vast set of topics to address.
Today organizations are faced with increased social issues and pressures to behave in a socially responsible manner. In part this pressure comes from society at large, in its role as one of several stakeholders of the organization. But society is just one of several stakeholders for organizations, and consequently, for HRM (Jackson and Schuler, 2000).
(Mohammad Musaddek Hussain is a management expert)
