IBM Investigation of Human Resource Planning Activities - Research Proposal Example

In terms when a company’s past success does not serve as a password to “cloudless future” businesses need to rely on stable assets and first of all on human resources. Increasing attention to human resources has recently called into being a new set of methods, principles, and techniques known as Human Research Management (HRM). Respectively, the set of strategies designed to develop the policy towards human resources is known as Human Resource Planning Activities (HRP).

The importance of HRM and HRP is hardly objected to in any company following western standards of business. Its performance depends not only on the hard and attenuating work of its personnel but also on the “human side” of the employees, i.e.: their competence, motivation, attitudes, communication, and other variables. Observing Gunnigle and associates (2002: 12) HRM is the core of a company’s general efficiency and the basis for effective management.

Beardwell and associates (2003: 15) believe that regardless of the visible simplicity, the area of HRM and HRP has dramatic complexity due to the potentially unpredictable nature of human resources. If a company fails to design HRP and direct human resources in the right areas of the business, at the right time at the right cost, serious inefficiencies are likely to arise creating considerable operational difficulties and likely business failure (Beardwell, 2003).

 In the present project I will (i) identify the importance of human resources and vitality of HRP in modern business; (ii) investigate the HRP of IBM company which is one of the pioneers and leaders in the area of human resource management, (iii) evaluate the effectiveness of IBM’s HRP activities and (iv) propose and justify reasonable changes in the HRP policy of the company.

The importance of HRM and HRP in modern business

Also, organizational history is as old as the history of human civilization itself, the chronicle of human resources management is much younger. Originally emerged in 1960s, the  paradigm of HRM relied, however, on previous researches and findings of organizational scientists. As Alan Price (2000: 62) believes, HRM “hasn’t come out of nowhere” as there is a long history of attempts to achieve an understanding of human behavior in the workplace. Throughout the whole XX century and even earlier both practitioners and scholars attempted to design the theories explaining human behavior at work and the ways to raise its effectiveness. A number of organizational theories brought to life the principles of HRM in 1960s-1970s.