Management in 21st Century: Strategic Human Resource Management - Essay Example

Management in 21st Century: Strategic Human Resource Management Introduction It is rightly perceived in the business fraternity that the ‘change’ is the only constant word in the contemporary world. With significant developments in the arenas of information technology and communication process, the terms of trade is fast changing. The effects of globalization have almost deleted the geographical borders of the nations and the world economy has become trans – national in nature. Most of the major companies are multinationals i.e. they not only sale their products to many countries but also those companies operate and manufacture their products in more than one country. The changing nature of trade and finance has called for increasing competition. In order to beat the increasing completion successfully, the companies have been trying with various combinations that would keep them flexible and sustainable. The competitions have led to increased number of brainstorming sessions with in the companies and greater collaboration in between various departments. N. J. Thrift has identified the situation as the fast subject as he says that with the advent of the newer business situations, challenges and opportunities, the managers are now more dynamic and the a series of ‘fast subjects’ have enacted. According to the scholar, there were many such remarks that were not noticed earlier but are now increasingly marked as well as objectified. The new way of doing business also meant that certain things or occurrences that were not visible in the earlier situations are now visible and are also operated on to get the extra benefits (Thrift, 2005). Strategic Human Resource Management Human resource management has experienced paradigm shifts in the recent years. Even few years back, human resource management was basically categorized as the function of a company that dealt with the recruitment and selection along with that of grievances handling. In fact, the job profile of an executive of the human resource department was perceived to be boring and monotonous. Human resource department was viewed by the majority of the industry to be a redundant functions altogether. Over all, it was a cost unit for the corporate. But since the concept of human resource management has been transformed to strategic human resource management, the scheme of things took a sudden shift. In present day, the human resource department is viewed as the department that can make positive impacts to the profits of the company. As observed according to a recent survey by Prof. David Ulrich of University of Michigan, the human resource competence model has shifted to 20 – 20 – 60 propositions. The survey revealed that 20% of the respondents utilize the department of human resource as the active business partner where as the other 20% still thinks the department should be engrossed with the administrative works. But the positive from survey is that at least 60% of the respondent believes that the human resource department should partner with other departments of the organizations to create value and to meet the organizational objectives. The prime factor responsible for the changing nature of the job of that of human resource department is that of increased competition. The companies can no longer afford to have staffs only for the administrative and the clerical jobs. The managers of the new economy understand value. Either the staffs have to create value or they have to be left out. Such aggressive culture across companies have resulted change in the attitudes. More over with the boom in technology, much of the work of such human resource personnel have been either outsourced or digitized. It has been observed across companies that the managers and the leaders basically target three areas to make their business reach to the desired state. The first is to increase sales, second is to generate profitability and third is to reduce costs. With the increasing pressure upon the company because of the tremendous competition that companies are undergoing in the present situation, it became crucial that the human resource department create value to the company apart from being disciplined administrative overhead. The recent and the latest business trends suggest that all of the departments should be interrelated and there should not be any such theory within the company that would require having only experts. Expert professionals would definitely be required within the various processes but also it is essential as per the new economy for all the employees to know about the other processes. The executives of the human resource department should have a fair knowledge about the finance functions and also the marketing executives should be aware about the selection and training methods that were predominantly a human resource function. The transitions of the human resource department to profitability have been based on the following basic changes: Developing of a leadership program that would provide hands on training to all the functional disciplines There should be cross functional training and abilities prevalent in the company. The human resource executives are aware of the financial managements. The HR person knows how to read the annual report and prepare cash flows. Such trends help the organization to reduce the cost and increase check upon the utilization of scarce resources. The human resource department can contribute towards the profitability as the human resource executives becomes active partner of the business and takes active part in various functions like technology reviews, customer visits, sales strategies, contract negotiations and process improvement techniques. The modern executives of the human resource departments are more like active consultants towards the growth of the business and therefore they directly contribute toward organizational objectives and profitability. In the present day management of the companies, the due emphasis is laid upon meeting the ‘critical numbers’. Even the members of the human resource department are informed about the numerical destinations that are to be achieved and are required to assist the other verticals in such meeting. (Moore & Furlong, n.d.) All these factors have increased significant emphasis upon the human resource management that has transformed the function in to profitability. Knowledge Sharing The new system of doing business has significantly put emphasis on the knowledge sharing and the knowledge management. Companies are putting in increasing effort to build a dedicated database for all the already acquired knowledge by the companies. The industry has understood that if such knowledge is allowed to be lost in every occasion after the wok is over, a huge of resources gets lost in terms of time as well as funds. To overcome such limitations, knowledge sharing has come up as the need of the hour. As the requirement of the present day managers goes, the additional knowledge that has been gained are shared in the repositories which ultimately helps in terms of expansion and enrichments. The knowledge sharing has immense benefits for all the concerned parties. The company can save the scarce resources through ceasing the duplication work that could be done away with because of the database. The employees can save their time and drudgery and could work in some other active and more meaningful venture. The sharing of knowledge also has greatly benefited the end customers. The knowledge sharing will allow the end customers to have reliable and informative sources of information which is expected to be much flexible and user friendly than that of the books and libraries. The knowledge sharing mechanism can be channelized properly that would serve both the purposes of marketing as well as construction of the pre-packed knowledge services. The knowledge sharing will not require to initiate the project from scratch rather it would be feasible for the end users to assemble the knowledge bases to meet their needs. There is little doubt that the mechanism of the knowledge sharing and the knowledge management has become so important with time. The entire process of knowledge sharing and knowledge management includes complex models of technology. In the organizational perspective, the management of knowledge has far reaching consequences. The prime benefit that the organization gets through the knowledge management is even if any of the key employees leave the organization, minimum or zero effect is felt by the company. This is so because the contributions of that key person have been shared among others of the organization and they can take such measures forward. Knowledge management also serves the organization as the future reference. Once the cases are stored in the database, they can act as the guiding force for the juniors and trainees as they can learn lot from them. It is true that knowledge sharing and knowledge management can cost the company quite a large sum which might not be possible for a small or medium enterprise to bear but the fact should be kept in mind that once the capital expenditure is taken care of, the company can take optimum benefit of the process. It can take the help of the machines to complete the routine transactions and deploy the intelligent human resource in more worthwhile functions. It is expected that in the recent future large databases would evolve across organizations. With such evolution one can use the problem – solving techniques, declarative knowledge and the reasoning services within the system. It can be observed that with such evolutions, the production cost would decrease considerably. And as the tested parts would be re-used by the employees, the methodologies of the company would become more robust (Neches, Et Al, 1991). Human Resourcefulness There is absolutely no doubt that the function of human resource is the most vital function in the organizational perspective. It is so because human resource is that factor that has emotions ad sentiments in place and can actively oppose the terms if those are not as per the expected ways. On the other hand, also the human resource can be motivated and charged up to complete a particular assignment in a desired way. Cultural values have always played pivotal role towards the success of the human resource policies. Values like that of stability, security, growth and sustainability are the powerful instruments towards the development. Though the cultural values have undeniable role towards the human resource policies, it can be well understood that the, the values can be both constructive as well as destructive towards the policies. Resource can be defined as anything that has a greater scope of being accomplished. When a person takes extra effort to accomplish a given task, he finds greater energy with in him. Again the person might found out a better way of working and then it is identified as mental resource. Resourcefulness nature of any object greatly depends upon that of the human minds. It is the mind of humans that has the power to think and as it generates newer ways of utilizing any object to have better value out of it, it is known to be as resourceful (MSS Research, n.d.). The organizations of today take myriad of measures to ensure that the human resourcefulness is maintained at the work place. Few of them might be as follows: Extensive Training – The executives those are selected by the organization to work with, are provided with extensive training so that they are ready for any such challenges that can come up while working. Many of the organizations allocate a senior person as a mentor to the trainees, so that the trainees can fall back upon their mentor in case of any such requirement. Comprehensive theory of development – In the modern day organizations, the training is not only provided to enhance the professional expertise, but also appropriate measures are taken so that the there is all round development for the employees. In order to do so, the organizations have introduced various spiritual and motivational sessions. Social organizations – The managers of today have identified that the workplace of the present era should be more of social organizations than being typical formal office. In order to beat the increased competition, the workforce is always under extensive pressure to perform. To reduce such pressure, the management of the big companies decides to organize social parties and family gatherings of the employees often on. This helps to the employees to share perceptions and prejudices among themselves and work better. Also, such measure inculcates greater sense of responsibility. Greater participation - In order to attract and retain best of the talents available in the industry, the management of the companies are trying to keep the employees participated in various contests and competitions that keeps on going within the organization. Also, to have greater understanding of the social responsibilities along with the objective of reducing social costs, the companies keep their employee participated in such ventures as it provides with an opportunity to feel pride for them as it take up the corporate social responsibility. The above discussed factors, along with certain cultural and organizational issues decide the work flow of any organization. The organizations no longer view increased profitability as the only objective; rather it tries to ensure that there is sustainable growth. The modern day workplace has whole lot of issues and the managers of today take appropriate measures to find better ways to deal such issues. Conclusion Management in 21st century is a different ball game altogether. The industry is competitive like never before and the companies are trying to find way out to beat such competition and to ensure sustainable growth. The business managers and the business leaders of today are extremely dynamic and futuristic in their approaches and attitudes. The changing nature of the jobs and the business is ensuring major shifts in the workplace equations, today, there are no such clear distinctions between the various functions of the jobs and all employees are expected to know the work across domains. The changing nature of business dynamics are coming up with a newer cultural habitat within the organization. The organizations should be adaptable and flexible to align itself with such changed terms of business. Also, the business organizations should initiate timely measures so that the employee force is always equipped with the best of the training and development methods so that they can face and win over the changing times as well as increasing competition. Table o Contents Introduction 1 Knowledge Sharing 4 Human Resourcefulness 6 Conclusion 9 References 10 Bibliography 11 References MSS Research, No Date. Resourcefulness. Resources: Finite and Infinite Resources. [Online] Available at: http://www.mssresearch.org/?q=Resources [Accessed 08 January 2010]. Moore, K & Furlong, R., No Date. The Human Resource Department as a Profitability Factor. Human Resource. [Online] Available at: http://humanresources.about.com/od/humanresourcesstrategic/a/hr_profit.htm [Acceded 08 January 2010]. Neches, R. Et Al, 1991. Enabling Technology for Knowledge Sharing. Idaho State University. [Online] Available at: http://www.isi.edu/isd/KRSharing/vision/AIMag.html [Accessed 08 January 2010]. Thrift, N. J. Knowing Capitalism. SAGE, 2005 Bibliography Alvesson, M. Management of knowledge-intensive companies. Walter de Gruyter, 1995. Castells, M. The informational city: information technology, economic restructuring, and the urban-regional process. Wiley – Blackwell, 1991. Waters, M. Globalization. Routledge, 2001 Read More