Comparing HRM Practice in Current Organisations to an Ideal Type - Coursework Example

Comparing HRM practice in current organisations to an "ideal type" still a valid analytical device or is HR practice so varied nowadays as to make such comparisons futile? Human Resource Management (HRM), also known as personnel management, personnel administration, manpower management, and industrial management, is regarded as an issue, a function, a strategy and a process generally concerning the employees as a group working at businesses. It covers the behavior, emotions and the social aspects of the group of individuals, as well as all the levels and categories of employees; in addition, HRM is also about developing knowledge, skill, capabilities, and potentials and it is common to all organizations (Definition and Significance of Human Resource Management n.d.). This intentional focus on the employees and employers is part of what is called the social welfare movement that spread during the 19th century but the concept of HRM developed around the early 1900s from corporate paternalism (An Introduction to Human Resource Management 2002). From them on, rules, procedures, methods and system in managing the human resources were being developed. However, in the late 20th century, difficulties and issues arise. They said managements spent most of the time fixing minor problems than the major ones that are concerning the employees, western businesses were also falling behind from the Japanese, and employment contracts were not constant. Due to these reasons, behavior theorists began to influence the business administrators and people learned to adopt concepts from different countries. HRM has goals that it wants to attain from different areas – in the organisation, the individual and the society – thus, it seeks to gain the employee’s cooperation for the fulfillment of all the goals at the three areas (Definition and Significance of Human Resource Management n.d.). Many actions are involve in the function of HRM and the most significant among them are making decisions on what the employees need, making sure that the employees are the best and that they comply to the rules and regulations of the company, and in return, the management must take care of the benefits and compensations of the employees (McNamara n.d.). The management of human resources is very important since the development of a country deeply lies in manpower. There are countries, like Singapore, that lacks all the natural resources they need but due to a strong and discipline employees, they were able to develop as one of the leading economies is Asia. HRM is one of the cores of every organisation and it also pervades every functional management types which are production management, marketing management and financial management (Definition and Significance of Human Resource Management n.d.). Modern Rising Trends Modernisation and globalisation have widely spread throughout the world and totally affected the lifestyle of the people and the usual way that things work. HRM is not an exception, especially since modernisation and globalisation influenced the world of economy, thus, businesses and its strategies and methods were also changed by these phenomenons. In addition, the rise of modern technology also has its say to the changes that happened in HRM. Years ago, markets and trading are secure and predictable, technology is considered “lifeless”, customers are not as active, promptness is not the priority, competition is limited within the area of the region or just the whole country, and positions and status are easily accepted and rarely questioned (Shivakumar n.d.). However, times have changed; today, markets and trading patters are no longer constant – it may be that one is gaining profit now but it may lose everything it has come tomorrow – part of the success of a business lies in the efficiency of the technology being used, customers are more demanding, processes are more fast pace, competition are not between country to country due to the opening of the countries to trading, and standings are now more or less disregarded. Production is no longer focused on the local market but on the global market, the need to meet the standards of the global market is very significant to attain global competitiveness. The management is now seeking for people, who are ground-breaking, competent, adaptive, and high aspirations. Changing the ambiance of the working place to encourage the flourishing of talent, using practice that can release potential, and applying a “reward and recognition mechanism” to their people to show appreciation are just some of the major steps taken by the managements to enhance their work force (Shivakumar n.d.). Concepts of leadership have undergone modification and hierarchies were tamed to a low profile to give way to an open environment. The present work structure gave rise to what is called a “flexi time culture” and a round the clock accessibility to the main office that employees could even achieve the work they have to do in their own residence in order to stay ahead (Shivakumar n.d.). Compensations and benefits are no longer solely for the employee alone but it also extends to the employee’s families. Teamwork is also being pushed than individualism in order to accomplish more tasks and to keep up with the pace of the present flow of economy. Communication is deeply being encouraged among the management and the employees to give way to their opinions and suggestions, and to have a better exchange of ideas. These measures gave rise to the new model of HRM (de Silve 1998). HRM, in order to be more effective, address to the employees’ issues as a whole unlike before where it takes it one-by-one, now, it links all the issues together for quick solution. It also builds an organisation with a common attitude, values and “culture” by unifying the employees and their interests with the management despite their different interests. Treatment of the people has also changed; from treating them as “variable costs” they now look at them as “resources” that can be developed in order for them to contribute to the business. Finally, in order to develop trust and a more productive knowledge, communications are opened though some of the information will be controlled by the management to sustain power among them. Goals are also redefined. From focusing on attaining individual, organisational and society goals, HRM shifted to fulfill its new goals which are integration, commitment, flexibility and adaptability, and equality. Comparing current HRM practices to “ideal types” would rather be futile since “ideal types” of practices tend to be rigid and cannot adapt to some circumstances that are new. It is essential to know that the new practices in HRM motivate small and medium size firm to be more competitive and dynamic in a foreign environment (Ichniowski et al. 1996). Moreover, new practices centers on treating employee as source of high quality skill and performance which are adaptable and more competitive if given enough attention and supervision. Committed as employee, they are the untapped resources of every firm and through active participation and involvement, effectiveness will follow. New HRM practices are prone to follow system like manner rather than individual components and are stick to follow a steep diffusion curve (Laursen and Mahnke 2003). It shows that the new practices centers on diverse team based organization, decentralization of decision, and emphasis on internal knowledge dissemination (Mendelson and Pillai 1999; Zenger and Hesterly 1997). It allows firm to be more flexible and its staff to be versatile and adaptable to any kind of situation. The field of strategic management and economics of organisation have received more attention since new HRM practices were traced and found prevailing on these areas. Practices were identified as having a connection on enhancing innovative performances of firms. It involves the exploitation of local knowledge and further leads to new findings inside an organization. It is done by allowing bottom class workers to sort out problems and issues currently bugging there department. The success of Japanese firms to harness local knowledge with proper usage of economic and non-economic incentives has led them to some of their success (Laursen and Foss 2003). Similarly, constantly using teams to harness local knowledge may produce various results. Teams are made up of different individuals with different way of thinking and understanding, thus bringing in different ideas and improvement to products (Laursen and Foss 2003). Additionally, by constantly aiding the employee’s in improving there skill and increasing there knowledge, may lead to improvement of products and can led to better innovations and efficient services. By handing out training camp and seminars, employees’ could gather sufficient skill or harness knowledge they could use in order to be better at there jobs. In doing so, they are providing the company they are working with better outputs and efficient services needed in the competitive world of business. Information dissemination and job rotation can also give training to employee since they increases employee’s knowledge and sense of awareness. Although the new practices of HRM displayed positive results for innovation performance it still lacks literary references and can be considered as its only downfall since there few material to be used as references. According to Laursen and Foss (2000), when it come to empirical data, there is a possible link between HRM practices and innovation performances but the needed theory to support this claim is not present or rather does not exist in this field. Different literature in other field of study such as management of innovation and technology do contain ideas that could help in creating a link between innovation and HRM practices. Moreover, scholar from various field such as technological studies and organizational behavior have taken interest on the notion of Edgeworth complementarities. They believe that in the fundamental level, HRM practices provide understanding about systematic features of technologies (Laursen and Foss 2003). Thus it helps in understanding technological paradigms and can offer company’s and firms in finding out advantageous activities. it also help employees’ by means of new jobs and new jobs could mean new experiences that could further help in the development of the company’s’ workforce. New HRM practices are implemented on the basis that it would provide change on a wide scale level, intended to improve more than one employee’s skill and efficiency at job. Additionally by reinforcing it with the use of aide such as training camps and seminars, higher output of development would not be impossible to attain. Additionally, innovation performance, would improved if coupled by incentive-based remuneration schemes (Ichniowski et al,. 1997). Conclusion The birth of modern economy has also given birth to a new trend of how work is done in this new century. It is indeed possible to accomplish something even if you work alone but in order to compete and meet the demands of the business world working with teams is the most effective way of reducing the time spent and spent your resources wisely. Moreover, working in team can produce the best result by having different ideas of different human merge into one products and that is how innovation performance is enhanced. Furthermore results can further be developed or pushed in order to attain better results. This is done through constant training given to employee’s to further developed their skill and to increase there knowledge regarding there job. Working in teams and through constant training, the current trend focus on the development of a company’s workforce, in doing so, they are preparing there employee’s to meet whatever the demands of the economy. New HRM practices have quickly established its efficiency over the management department since it treated employees as resources of untapped energy. It is now more versatile and less rigid than “ideal types”. And by tapping it, the potential of any company seems limitless and innovations of products know no boundaries. However, this current trend will further evolve for change will always be present to drag down or push whatever the results we attained. A continuous study is still needed and research instruments that are applicable to any context concerning the said topic still lacks and need to develop to be able to cope up with the changing times. Advances can come if current works pertaining to concept of individual (employee) could be extended and thoroughly be analyzed. Other factors with connection to that concept should be given immediate attention since it contributes knowledge pertaining to the said concept. Undertakings like this could serve as an important starting school in providing a solid base of knowledge pertaining to the said topic and could further supply us with additional information that would help us in understanding more about the said topic. In the end, such comparison would seem futile since current trends are changing and can only exist in a matter of time. However, by giving out full attention in studying and further knowing these trends, we could gather enough data that could serve as our guide or reference that would probably help us in the near future in understanding possible practices that would take over the one that are currently in use. And by doing so, we could further improve the efficiency and quality of job by further developing the workforce behind each company. References Foss, N.J. and Laursen, K. 2003. New human resource management practices, complmentaries and the impact on innovation performance, Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol. 27, 243-263 Gibb, S. 2001. The state of human resources management: evidence from employees’ views of HRM systems and staff, Employee Relations vol.23 no. 4 318-334 Haggerty, J.J. and Wright, P.M 2005. Missing variables in theories of strategic Human resource management: Time, Cause and Individuals, Center for Advanced Human Resource Studies, 3-17 Hesterly, W.S. and Zenger, T. 1997. The disaggregation of corporation: selective intervention, high-powered incentives and molecular units, Organization Science, vol.8, 209-22 Ichniowski, C., Kochan, T.A., Levine, D., Olson, C. and Strauss, G. 1996. What works at work: overview and assessment, Industrial Relations, vol. 35, 299-333. Ichniowski, C., Shaw, K. and Prennushi, G. 1997. The effects of human resource management practices and productivity: a study of steel finishing line, American Economic Review, vol. 87, 291-313 Laursen, K. and Mahnke, V. 2001. Knowledge strategies firm types, and complementary in human-resource practices, Journal of Management and Governance, vol.5, 1-27 Mendelson, H. and Pillai, R.R. 1999. Information age organizations, dynamics and performance, Journal of Ecoonomic Behaviour and Organization, vol. 38 253-81 Twomey, D. F. & Harris, D. L. 2000. From Strategy to Corporate Outcomes: Aligning Human Resource Management Systems with Entrepreneurial Intent, International Journal of Commerce and Management. Vol. 10: pp. 43 - 55. De Silva, S. R 1998, Human Resource Management, Industrial Relations and Achieving Management Objectives. Retrieved January 9, 2008, from http://www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogue/actemp/papers/1998/srshrm.htm McNamara, C n.d., Human Resource Management. Retrieved January 9, 2008, from http://www.managementhelp.org/hr_mgmnt/hr_mgmnt.htm Shivakumar, R n.d., Emerging Trends in Managing Human Resources. Retrieved January 9, 2008, from http://www.humanlinks.com/manres/articles/trends_hr.htm University of Sheffield 2002, An Introduction to Human Resource Management: Approaches to ‘managing’ staffs. Retrieved January 9, 2008, from http://dis.shef.ac.uk/teaching/introleadership2002.htm Definition and Significance of Human Resource Management (HRM) n.d. Retrieved January 9, 2008, from http://www.citeman.com/definition-significance-of-human- resource-management-hrm Human Resource Management Good Practices n.d. Retrieved January 11, 2008 from http://www.csb.gov.hk/hkgcsb/hrm/e-good-practices/e-gp.htm Read More