Reflections on Human Resource Managment - Essay Example

Introduction A considerable number of companies have developed into an essential part of the period of global competition, increasing development,improved business paradigms, and corporate reorganization. The continuing transformation from the traditional industrial framework with its hierarchical companies to a worldwide, knowledge-founded financial system and intelligent corporations, altering ideas regarding the social contract involving employers and employees, an progressively more adaptable pool of talent and a body of workforce, necessitates human resource (HR) purposes to realign and relocate itself in the vicinity of these drivers (Armstrong, 2001). This study intends to discuss the capacity of strategic human resource management in the development of an organization. Particularly, the discussion will concentrate on the relationship of strategic human resource management and the acquisition of organizational commitment from the workforce as a whole. In this manner, the paper will concurrently be discussing the methods on how to ensure an efficiently working company through the use of HRM methods. Strategic Human Resource Management In reaction to the said impediments, HR functions, expectations and capabilities are being redefined in a considerable number of companies. A higher concentration human capital, as compared to human resources, is the important difference being a much concrete concentration on people management and improvement schemes and initiatives that are apparently associated to business strategy and that, by means of key metrics, is capable to be presented to show the way to a highly developed business performance and superior potency of capacity. This alteration now compels HR leaders to take on a responsibility of the strategic business professional. Their basic capacity is in the approximate function of associating business goals and HR purposes effectively to motivate the execution of the contemporary human capital management models, efficient intra-organizational change management, and exceptional business achievement. Strategic human capital administration is the change on how organizations hire, organize, develop, and appraise the workforce. It concentrates on outcomes as opposed to the process itself. (Walker, 2000) It locates the appropriate individuals in the appropriate jobs to most efficiently carry out the goals of the company. Theoretically, human resource management (HRM), the approach of attracting, retaining, and leveraging the capabilities and knowledge of the labor force, is slowly inching its way up the corporate schema. At a company level, HR's capability to manipulate and motivate transformation across the whole organization is being reinforced by the measured removal of departmental impediments and the reception of common working practices. Whereas HRM is not the restricted area of the HR professional, it is an company-wide discipline that have got to be wholly accepted and motivated by line of business administrators and supervisors; the HR department is an important authority. If it decides to confront the challenge, HR has the objective and rational tools to provide an effective people management to the core of the corporate strategy. The philosophies and concepts have become an actuality. Previous shifts in the business strategy have been become adjunct with disruption, frequently exhausting the resources in terms of time, individuals, and finances. The business is revitalizing the principles, formulated in the latter part of the 1980s and early 1990s, is the forewarning that change is required to be executed with precision. (Walker, 2000) they compel recurring evidence that the contemporary practices and policies provide quantifiable benefits. In current times, what is demanded is incremental revolution that provides continuing worth in the company and similarly in the shareholder's worth Much has been stated regarding the goal efficient HRM yet putting together an approach that integrates the best business practices with the best technology infrastructure is considerably complicated. It is specified on a significant number of advantages that are hard to measure. Appraising the actual predicament of HR, concrete advantages can be acquired in a cost-effective way, accepting the best of the technology accessible in current times to provide the quantifiable value in a controllable environment. Organizational Commitment The domain of organizational behavior scrutinizes behavior in and of organizational arrangements. A principal motivation of theory and examination has been individuals' employment attitudes and the individual and organizational characters that influence these attitudes. In these examinations, organizational commitment has been recognized as a significant work-related mind-set. Two principal notions of organizational commitment have been acknowledged in this literature (Reichers, 1985). The generally accepted structure is based on the work of Porter and his colleagues (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982; Porter, Crampon, & Smith, 1976; Porter, Steers, Mowday, & Boulian, 1974). They conceptualized commitment as a person's association with and involvement in a company. In the same way, O'Reilly and Chatman (1986) recently characterized commitment as an emotional attachment experiences by the person for the organization. The second view, anchored in perception of side bets, recommend that commitment reflects an individual's reluctance to leave an organization for the reason that he or she is protected into unrelenting membership as a consequence of factors such as individual characteristics and organizational practices that coalesce as accumulated investments, rewards, and/or sunk costs. Of these two conceptualizations, the former has acquired the most reputation in the organizational behavior literature. The Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (OCQ), an apparatus developed by Porter et al. (1974) to determine their perception of commitment, has been taken on so extensively by researchers in the field that Reichers (1985) put forward this has turn out to be the approach to organizational commitment. The prevailing orientation in the organizational behavior literature, in that case, concentrates on commitment as an individual's manner concerning his/her relationship to the organization. One of these subscales they apply to as value commitment, which point towards a commitment to maintain organizational goals and is comparable to Etzioni's (1975) "moral involvement." The other was categorized commitment to stay, and it signified a desire to keep hold of organizational membership established more on a "calculative involvement" (Etzioni, 1975). Romzek (1990) discerned between employee investment and employee commitment as two kinds of psychological bonds to an organization. These maybe in harmony with the two conceptualizations of commitment noted above, the former reflecting a utilitarian relationship based on the notion of side bets and sunk costs and the latter referring to an affective identification with the organization, its values, and its mission. Ultimately, Balfour and Wechsler (1994) have examined the role of commitment as specified by O'Reilly and Chatman (1986). While the organizational behavior literature includes multiple perspectives on the concept of commitment, the rational choice literature shares a more consistent view about the concept. The latter focuses on how an individual's choice of behavior relies on the manner on which he or she perceives and weighs the anticipated costs and benefits of alternative courses of action (Radnitzky, 1987). However, it contrasts with the dominant organizational behavior emphasis on commitment as a psychological attachment to the organization. The hypothesis following this idea is that individuals are vulnerable to giving way to a weakness of will (Elster, 1979) or the temptation (Williamson, 1983) to go back on previous promises. In the former case, it is contended, weakness of will may possibly diminish the likelihood of a person following through on a possibility even supposing it would be self-beneficial (Schelling, 1984). Plausible commitment is recognized when an individual decides to succumb to rules or punishments that make it more difficult to move away from preceding resolutions. In the case of temptation, an individual may be persuaded to break promises when anticipating further gains from doing so, as when someone behaves opportunistically in a business transaction. From the rational choice viewpoint, plausible commitment is not wholly an individual's subjective way of thinking, to be precise, whether he or she is psychologically dedicated to a certain option. What is significant for successful collective action is not merely whether each personality is individually committed to the collective understanding. More significant is whether circumstances subsist that can either dishearten or put a stop to a member from reneging on a pledge. The fundamental hypothesis is that even though parties may have motivations to reach an accord the incentives ex post may be unable to coexist with maintaining it (North & Weingast, 1989). As maintained by Shepsle (1991), a commitment is credible in two potential senses - motivationally or imperatively. A commitment is motivationally plausible if the member looks forward to collect adequate rewards for them to respect the commitment at the point in time of performance. The commitment is incentive-friendly and thus self-enforcing. It is imperatively plausible if the participants are not capable to proceed otherwise since either they will be compelled to do so by an outside influence or they will be short of the means to do otherwise. Both the organizational behavior and rational choice viewpoints share alongside the conviction that commitment is an imperative aspect affecting collective action systems. In addition, understood in both perspectives is the impression that individuals with higher degrees of commitment will be more possible to engage in behaviors inclined towards the advantage of the collective. In other words, commitment can encourage individuals to act communally in pursuit of shared collective purpose. Traditionally, companies have relied profoundly on what Perrow (1977) identified as first- and second-order control mechanisms, such as undeviating management, official procedure, task specialization, and standardization, for indemnifying that people engage in behaviors oriented toward organizational objectives. On the other hand, observers in the subject of organizational behavior have long been unconvinced about the net value of depending on these prescribed mechanisms for creating the considered necessary cooperative behavior. Above all, they have been anxious that over reliance on these overbearing control mechanism generates such "pathologies" as constituent alienation and emotional failure (Ouchi & Johnson, 1978), dysfunctional self-protective performance (Kanter, 1977), overconformity and inflexibility of behaviour, objective disarticulation and focus on subunit goals (March & Simon, 1958; Selznick, 1949), and performance at austerely satisfactory levels. Accordingly the subject has enthusiastically acknowledged the significance of informal mechanisms such as leadership style, participation in decision making, greater autonomy and discretion, and shared norms and values for developing participant commitment and motivation to work communally toward the general company goals (Walton, 1985). Since they smooth the progress of the internalization of mutual cultural suppositions and values, strong cultures can produce superior commitment amongst members to the company and to their colleagues (Siehl & Martin, 1983). As a consequence, member behavior more enthusiastically corresponds to the normative expectations entrenched in the culture and individuals are more eager to do something in ways desired by the company and its members. It is the unceremonious social structure, rather than the formal that double up as the principal foundation for generating and maintaining commitment among members in the organization. Conclusion Given the challenges of managing complexity and internal resistance to change, the task of managers during the implementation of change can be very difficult indeed. Where significant change is involved, effective management is required. The challenge to understanding management becomes one of identifying effective management behavior in the context of the organizational turbulence stirred up in the change process. In order to cope with and manage the challenges posed by organizational change, managers at any level should perform a variety of roles. Mintzberg (1973) states that a role is a set of certain behavioral rules associated with a concrete organization or post. He also noted that roles does not exist in isolation, by means of every manager they are mutually dependent and interconnected in such a manner that they permit to depict the nature of managerial activities taking into consideration the grade of managers and the specificity of production procedures (Mintzberg 1979). The interpersonal roles are primarily concerned with interpersonal relationships while the informational roles are concerned with the information aspects of managerial work. On the other hand, the unique access to information places the manager at the centre of organizational decision-making. In looking into the discussions above, one could deduce that organizations are in pursuit of basic objectives in administering its employees. One of these objectives is to harmonize the actions of its employees in pursuit of efficiently realizing company goals. Coordination is made possible by institution of hierarchical configurations and designation of influence to supervisors to identify systems and measures for subordinates and guarantee their enforcement. The second is to develop and sustain a decidedly motivated labor force. A company's yearning to coordinate the performance of its workforce can, nevertheless, have an unconstructive authority on enthusiasm of professional employees . References Armstrong, M (2001) A Handbook of Human Resource Management Practice (8th edition) Kogan Page. 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