Human Recourse Management Amounts to Little More Than a Simple Reworking of the Human Relations School of Management - Essay Example

Human Re Management amounts to little more than a simple reworking of the Human Relations school of management. AC330 ASSESSED COURSEWORK Submitted to Jo Lambert Department of Accounting, Finance and Management University of Essex I. Introduction II. Human Relations School of Management III. Human Resource Management IV. Conclusion V. Reference I. Introduction In the evolution of management theory, there have been contributions of people from various fields and streams. In the period of pre 1980’s man was an economic person1. He was based on agriculture for his living. This period was followed by the industrial revolution. The trends shifted towards industrial productivity. Various methods of administration and scientific management were developed during this period. It was mid 1920’s when the shift was experienced towards the human component of the production. The standardised production techniques got criticised on humanitarian grounds. Various theories were developed for workers and factors influencing their work. The post industrialisation period of 1970 to till date has seen a significant shift to develop human component of organisations. It started treating human component as a resource like any other resources required for the production process. Various studies are being conducted each year to study this complex component of business environment. Various theories have been developed. Each theory developed on the basis of the shortcomings of the earlier theory. In fact these theories which were developed in any particular period were revolutionary during that period. Later on others theories were developed to either criticise or support them. In this paper will discuss about the Human Resource Management and compare it with Human Relations Theory. The first section deals with the introduction of Human Relations School of Management. This section will explain the concepts and methods contributed by various thinkers. This will be followed by the Human Resource Management. In this section the HRM practices of present will be compared with the Human Relations theory. II. Human Relations School of Management As mentioned in the introduction part, this school of thought was developed as reaction to the classical approach of organisation analysis. Elton Mayo, the American sociologist is regarded as ‘father of human relationship theory’. This approach was developed from the results of the Hawthorne studies. This study was conducted in four phases and has established a relationship between the man and his performance as a social being. Mayo stated that the reason workers are motivated by such things is that individuals have a deep psychological need to believe that their organization cares about them, is open, concerned, and willing to listen. The sociological implications are that the human dimensions of work (group relations) exert a tremendous influence on behaviour, overriding the organizational norms and even the individuals own self-interests. The discoveries of "social capacity", "informal work groups", and "employee-centred management" were nothing short of revolutionary for administrative thought2. Apart from Mayo, the other contributors to this approach are Carnegie, Maslow, McGregor, Herzberg, Likert, McClelland, and Argyris to name a few. Each of them has contributed significantly with their theories and researches in this field. Dale Carnegie’s Book “How To Win Friends and Influence People” is one of the famous books. His main advices are3: a. Make others Feel important through a sincere appreciation of their efforts b. Strive to make a good first impression c. Win people to your way of thinking d. Change people by praising their good traits Figure 2.1: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs4 Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs explains the motivation levels at each place. When the basis biological and physiological needs are not met, the motivation will be basic need driven. At each stage when one reaches one stage and is sure about the need will be fulfilled in future also he thinks for the further needs. An organisation can help an employee to achieve each need and remove their barriers of reaching to the self actualisation point. McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y is an assumption about human nature. Theory X assumes negative view of people. These require close supervisions and do not want to take responsibilities. On the opposite side Theory Y assumes that people are responsible. They required minimum directions and consider their work as natural as rest or play. Broadly the elements of Human Relations School of Management can be divided into following way: Elements of Human Relation School of Management The Individual Informal Organisation Participative Management Figure 2.2 Elements of Human Relation School of Management II.i. The Individual Human Relations theory treats each worker as an individual. It recognises the social and psychological factors of the work place which influences an individuals’ performance. It gives importance to the emotions, feelings and perceptions of an individual. It studied that workers has their own choices to form small groups. Their productivity and behaviour is influenced by the norms of this group. This is called informal group. II.ii. Informal Organisation Human relations theory emphasises on informal organisation. These are the groups formed by people working in any place. People have a tendency to form their own groups according to their choices and preferences. This group has no formal structure or membership. People can join or leave the group on the basis of there choices. This involves emotional and personal choices and preferences of any member. Informal groups have strong social controls over its members. This control influences the productivity and workplace behaviour. II.iii. Participative Management Participative management when workers participate in the decision making process regarding the factors which influences their working and work conditions. There are several merits of participative management. Workers associate themselves with the decision and try to work to ensure success of the decision. The work environment becomes more comfortable and productive. It facilitates the ownership of organisational goals by the workers. The Behavioural School of Management was highly influenced by the Human Relations School of Management. This school developed various theories of motivation, perception, personality, leadership etc. III. Human Resource Management Human is considered as a valuable asset to the organisation today. Human Resource Management has developed and still growing in various aspects. The primary function of HRM is to attract, select, recruit, train and develop competent employees. This department keeps track of the supply of the resource and analyses the demand in the organisation. It keeps on motivating the employees at various levels of their work life with the compensation or salary, various benefits and packages and maintaining positive work culture for them. The Human resource department functions contribute to the achievement of mission and objectives of an organisation by attracting and retaining the workforce in the global competitive workforce environment. The functions of HRM have become complex due to the complexity of job market today. Understanding the ambitions of workers, providing them opportunity within the organisation, handling the communication and proper information flow, promotion, retrenchment, performance appraisal etc are some of the functions handled by Human Resource Department in any organisation. HR planning This is the function in which the requirement of human resource within the organisation is analysed and planned according to the business goals and objectives. e.g. If a company is increasing its production to serve new market or setting up new office the HR department will analyse the need of people and recruit and train them. Recruiting This is a process where the potential employees from the job market is attracted through various modes like advertisement etc Selection This is the process of selecting the most appropriate candidate from the available choices. Training and development Through this process new employee are trained and developed for the particular job while the old employees get an opportunity to upgrade their skill to handle new job requirements. Compensation This is the process of rewarding the employees for their performances. Performance management The records related to each employee is kept and updated regularly. Employees are evaluated against various parameters set for the particular profile. . Employee relations This is an important function of Human resource today. By maintaining proper employee relations organization can understand their ambition and goal and can motivate them to work harder. Transparency of communication, fair practices of the policies, equality and unbiased decision making and participative management will help the organization to improve the relationship with the employees. As stated above, all the practices today of Human Resource Management have developed from the Human Relations Theory of Management. Human Relations Theory laid foundation for the development of the HRM stream. This has become an important function of today’s business environment. Figure 3.1 Functions of Human Resource Management5 http://www.bized.ac.uk/educators/16-19/business/hrm/lesson/hrm1map.gif Human Resource Management today is influenced by various factors like Social Economical Technological Legal/Political The social conditions, culture and norms influence the job market and working environment. The economical conditions decide about the factors of payments. One of the factor by which India and China is attracting foreign direct investments in their countries is the cheap labour available to them. Technological factors also influence the HRM. This decides the skill sets required or the training required handling a particular job. The legal and political conditions of any country or part of the country are also an important factor. Every country has labour laws and legal environment within which the operating company has to work. The political stability becomes one of the deciding factors for the company for their investments. IV. Conclusion There are several factors which have there impact on the growth of the HRM as a field. The main factors are economy and society. During the period of agrarian economy the social structure and economy was very simple. It developed into a complex system during industrial revolution. The social set up changed. There was more emphasis on the productivity. Manufacturing industry contribution to economy decreased in subsequent years and Service Industry experienced growth. The importance of human increased due to the fact that human is important factor in the production and consumption of services. Human resources have been an important factor of production from the agrarian economy. The scientific methods of management by Taylor and his stress on efficiency improvement gave food of thought to others. Mayo and others focused on the soft components of workers’ life. These were the psychological and social components. This was the starting of the study of human resource management. Various theories of motivation, leadership, loyalty, perceptiuon, behaviour and others have developed. The contributions of Human Relations School of Management encouraged the managers and leaders to understand individuals’ various needs and develop their human resource strategies on the basis of that. This have demanded for an individual department in the organisations. It is Human Rsource Management department which independently handles the needs and requirements of the human resource. Human Resource management has its foundation on the Human Relation School of Management. V. Reference Bowditch, J and Buono, A. F.: 1997, A Primer on Organisational Behavior, New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc Kanter, M R, 2003, Best Practice Handbook, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc THE HUMAN RELATIONS MOVEMENT, retrieved 13 Jan. 06 from http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/417/417lect05.htm The Human Resource Management, retrieved 14 Jan 2006 from http://www.accel-team.com/human_resources/hrm_00.html http://web.uniud.it/faec/Download/Lokar/RISORSE_UMANE.doc accessed on 14 Jan 2006. http://www.bized.ac.uk/educators/16-19/business/hrm/lesson/hrm1map.gif accessed on 14 Jan 2006. Read More