Immediate Context Of Hrm

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract

Emerging and Innovative companies’ don’t stick only to computers or marketing strategies. They need HR strategies to boost up their business and to attain their goals. Vibrant and logical strategies have become an asset due to increasing effect of soft factor. It has been said that the most vital assets of any business walk out the door at the end of each day. Indeed, workforce and the administration of people are gradually seen as important components of competitive advantage (Boxall & Purcell, 2003; Pfeffer, 1998; Gratton, Hailey & Truss, 2000). Growing competition spur, rapid change in technology, globalization, businesses are finding a way to understand how one of the last truly competitive resources, their human resources, can be handled for competitive advantage.

The essay will focus on activities handled by the human resource department such as hiring practices, training and development, performance appraisal, payment practices and managerial perceptions and preferences in the organisation. Further, the discussion will also take into account the challenges and limitations faced by the organizational managers in an organisation to implement comprehensive human resource management practices.

The essay takes into account various factors which contribute towards the success on an organization and discuss various models and approaches to human resource management. It will evaluate the relationship between HRM and organizational performance and factors which an HR director should consider to restructure a failing organization which includes proper hiring, training, employee motivation and performance appraisal.

This essay also takes in to account tapestry both to create and make sense of HRM. These ways of seeing the context which are the wrap, the thread running the length of the tapestry and examine how we perceive reality, make assumptions about it, and define if for ourselves. Further best fit school and best practices of HRM which increases the organizational performance and meet goal congruence between organization and individual goals are also been discussed.

Introduction:

An event seen from one point-of-view gives one impression. Seen from another point-ofview it gives quite a different impression. But it’s only when you get the whole picture you fully understand what’s going on. We can easily misinterpret facts, events and people when we examine them out of context, for it is their context that provides us with the clues necessary to enable us to understand them.

Context locates them in space and time and gives them a past and a future, as well as the present that we see. It gives us the language to understand them, the codes to decode them, the keys to their meaning. This essay will explain HRM is far more than a portfolio of policies, practices, procedures and prescriptions concerned with the management of the employment relationship (Keenoy, 1990).

From the various models of HRM you will recognise that the context of HRM is a highly complex one, not just because of its increasing diversity and dynamism, but also because it is multi-layered. The organisation constitutes the immediate context of the employment relationship, and it is here that the debate over how this relationship should be managed begins. The nature of organisation and the tensions between the stakeholders in it give rise to issues that have to be addressed by managers.

However, we need to note here that the events and changes in the wider context have repercussions for organisations, and present further issues to be managed and choices to be made. The various layers and the elements within them, however, exist in more than one conceptual plane. One has a concrete nature, like a local pool of labour, and the other is abstract, like the values and stereotypes that prejudice employers for or against a particular class of person in the labour market.

The abstract world of ideas and values overlays the various layers of the context of HRM: the ways of organising society, of acquiring and using power, and of distributing resources; the ways of relating to, understanding and valuing human beings and their activities; the ways of studying and understanding reality and of acquiring knowledge; the stocks of accumulated knowledge in theories and concepts.

It is the argument of this essay that to understand HRM we need to be aware not just of the multiple layers of its context – rather like the skins of an onion – but also of these conceptual planes and the way they intersect. Hence, ‘context’ is being used here to mean more than the surrounding circumstances that exert ‘external influences’ on a given topic: context gives them a third dimension. The essay is arguing, further, that events and experiences, ideas and ideologies are not discrete and isolatable, but are interwoven and interconnected, and that HRM itself is embedded in that context: it is part of that web and cannot, therefore, be meaningfully examined separately from it. Context is highly significant yet ,very difficult to study.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Conceptualising and representing context

How can we begin to understand anything that is embedded in a complex context? We seem to have awareness at an intuitive level, perceiving and acting upon the clues that context gives to arrive at the ‘tacit knowledge’. However, context challenges our formal thinking. First, we cannot stand back to take in the complete picture, which has traditionally been one way to gain objective knowledge of a situation. Because we are ourselves part of our context, it is not possible for us to obtain a detached perspective upon it.

In that respect we are like the fish in water that ‘can have no understanding of the concept of "wetness" since it has no idea of what it means to be dry’ (Southgate and Randall, 1981: 54). However, humans are very different from the ‘fish in water’. We can be reflexive, recognising what our perspective is and what its implications are; open, seeking out and recognising other people’s perspectives; and critical, entering into a dialogue with others’ views and interrogating our own in the light of others’, and vice versa.

To understand a social phenomenon such as HRM, we cannot just wrench it from its context and examine it microscopically in isolation. To do this is to be like the child who digs up the newly planted and now germinating seed to see ‘whether it is growing’. In the same way, if we analyse context into its various elements and layers, then we are already distorting our understanding of it, because it is an indivisible whole.

Rather, we have to find ways to examine HRM’s interconnectedness and interdependence with other phenomena. The study of context, therefore, is no easy task, and poses a major challenge to our established formal, detached, and analytical ways of thinking. Nevertheless, as we shall discuss later in this chapter, there are ways forward that enable us to conceptualise the many loops and circularities of these complex interrelationships in an often dynamic context.

Meanwhile, we shall try to conceptualise context through metaphor: that is, envisage it in terms of something concrete that we already understand. We have already used the metaphor of the many-skinned onion to depict the multiple layers of context, but we need another metaphor to suggest its interconnectedness and texture. We could, therefore, think of it as a tapestry. This is a ‘thick hand-woven textile fabric in which design is formed by weft stitches across parts of warp’ (Concise OED, 1982).

The warp threads run the length of the tapestry, the weft are the lateral threads that weave through the warp to give colour, pattern and texture. This metaphor helps us to visualize how interwoven and interrelated are the various elements of the context of HRM, both the concrete and the abstract; and how the pattern of HRM itself is woven into them. In terms of this metaphor, our ways of seeing and thinking about our world – the assumptions we make about our reality – could be said to be the warp, the threads which run the length of the tapestry contributing to its basic form and texture.

Ideologies and the rhetoric are ways of defining reality for other people   are the weft threads that weave through the warp threads, and give the tapestry pattern and texture. Events, people, ephemeral issues are the stitches that form the surface patterns and texture of HRM. In the case of the context of HRM, this tapestry is being woven continuously from threads of different colours and textures. At times one colour predominates, but then peters out. In parts of the tapestry patterns may be intentionally fashioned, while observers believe they can discern a recognisable pattern in other parts.

The concepts and language needed to understand context

To understand context, we need to recognise its wholeness. We therefore need to incorporate both the concrete world and the world of abstract ideas. We already recognise that:

Context is multi-layered, multidimensional, and interwoven. In it, concrete events and abstract ideas intertwine to create issues; thinking, feeling, interpreting and behaving are all involved. It is like the tapestry described above.

Our understanding depends upon our perspective.

It also depends upon our ideology.

Different groups in society have their own interpretations of events, stemming from their ideology. There are therefore competing or contested interpretations of events.

These groups use rhetoric to express their own, and account for competing, interpretations, thus distorting, or even suppressing, the authentic expression of competing views.

Powerful others often try to impose their interpretations of events, their version of reality, upon the less powerful majority: this is hegemony.

The immediate context of HRM

Human resource management, however defined, concerns the management of the employment relationship: it is practised in organisations by managers. The nature of the organisation and the way it is managed therefore form the immediate context within which HRM is embedded, and generate the tensions that HRM policies and practices attempt to resolve.

The nature of organisations and the role of management

An organisation comes into existence when the efforts of two or more people are pooled to achieve an objective that one would be unable to complete alone. The achievement of this objective calls for the completion of a number of tasks.

Depending upon their complexity, the availability of appropriate technology and the skills of the people involved, these tasks may be subdivided into a number of subtasks and more people employed to help carry them out. This division of labour constitutes the lateral dimension of the structure of the organisation. Its vertical dimension is constructed from the generally hierarchical relationships of power and authority between the owner or owners, the staff employed to complete these tasks, and the managers employed to coordinate and control the staff and their working activities.

Working on behalf of the organisation’s owners or shareholders and with the authority derived from them, managers draw upon a number of resources to enable them to complete their task: raw materials; finance; technology; appropriately skilled people; legitimacy, support and goodwill from the organisation’s environment.

They manage the organisation by ensuring that there are sufficient people with appropriate skills; that they work to the same ends and timetable; that they have the authority, information and other resources needed to complete their tasks; and that their tasks dovetail and are performed to an acceptable standard and at the required pace.

The very nature of organisation therefore generates a number of significant tensions: between people with different stakes in the organisation, and therefore different perspectives upon and interests in it; between what owners and other members of the organisation might desire and what they can feasibly achieve; between the needs, capabilities and potentials of organisational members and what the environment demands of and permits them. Management (see Watson, 2000) is the process that keeps the organization from flying apart because of these tensions, that makes it work, secures its survival and, according to the type of organisation, its profitability or effectiveness.

Inevitably, however, managerial control is a significant and often contentious issue. The need to manage people and relationships is inherent in the managing of an organisation, but the very nature of people and the way they constitute an organisation make management complex. Although the organisation of tasks packages people into organizational roles, individuals are larger and more organic than those roles have traditionally tended to be.

The organisation, writes Barnard (1938, in Schein, 1978) ‘pays people only for certain of their activities, but it is whole persons who come to work’ . Unlike other resources, people interact with those who manage them and among themselves; they have needs for autonomy and agency; they think and are creative; they have feelings; they need consideration for their emotional and their physical needs and protection. The management of people is therefore not only a more diffuse and complex activity than the management of other resources, but also an essentially moral one (again, see Watson, 2000).

This greatly complicates the tasks of managers, who can only work with and through people to ensure that the organisation survives and thrives in the face of increasing pressures from the environment. Owners and managers are confronted with choices about how to manage people and resolve organisational tensions. The next subsection examines some of these choices and the strategies adopted to handle them.

Before then, however, it must be noted that as organisations become larger and more complex, the division of managerial labour often leads to a specialist ‘people’ function to advise and support line managers in the complex and demanding tasks of managing their staff. This is the personnel function (sometimes now called ‘HRM’), which has developed a professional and highly skilled expertise in certain aspects of managing people, such as selection, training and industrial relations, which it offers in an advisory capacity to line managers, who nevertheless remain the prime managers of people.

However, this division of managerial labour has fragmented the management of people: the development of human resource management beyond the traditional personnel approach can be seen as a strategy to reintegrate the management of people into the management of the organisation as a whole.

The Approaches Used By Management to Resolve The Tension In An Organization

Weick (1979) writes that managing and organising is an ongoing process. The strategy adopted by managers to over come these tension is embodied in their employment policies and practices and the organizational system they put in place. Therefore, we identified four approaches or strategies managers adopt to over come these tensions

The Scientific Management Approach:

This approach addresses the tension in an organization by striving to control people and keep their cost down. The approach encompasses low levels of trust between managers and subordinates. It emphasized the need for rationality, clear objective, the management prerogative and adopted work study and similar methods. Work is often organized such that surveillance of subordinates is made possible. In common with the principles of scientific management, jobs tend to be broken down into narrowly defined tasks. Workers in manual grades are not promoted, and tend to stay in initial jobs (Whitley, 1999). Such a strategy encourage a collective response from workers and hence development of trade unions.

Human Relation Approach

Child (1969) identifies that if people were treated as clock numbers rather than as human being, their effectiveness at work would be affected work and could even fight back to the point of subverting management intentions. It also recognized the significance of social relationships at work (the informal organization) (Argyris, 1960). Managers therefore had to understand the nature of the working and to find ways of involving employees in decision making which can be done through number of factors such as

Job design,

Motivation and a democratic,

Consultative or participative style of working (Schein, 1970).

Human Resource Management Approach

It is a Modern management technique and emphasizes worker involvement as a route to quality enhancement and increased performance. It focus on achieving flexibility in an organization and to improve performance through devolving decision making and making employees multi skilled to work across traditional boundaries. It attempts to integrate the need of employees with those of the organization in an explicit manner. It states that organization should treat it employees as an asset and invest them in such a way which utilize their potential for the benefit of the organization.

Humanistic Approach

The fourth, idealistic, humanistic approach aims to construct such an environment in an organization which encourage employees to work collaboratively together for their common good. This is the approach of many cooperatives (Huse, 1980)

THE BEST-FIT (OR CONTINGENCY) SCHOOL:

This school of thought of SHRM identifies the close link between Human resource management policies and practices and strategic management. They states that a link between the individual performance and business strategy is central to ‘fit’ or vertical integration.

Vertical integration is the linking of business goal with individual objective setting and to the rewarding and measurement of that goal. Vertical integration ensures an explicit relationship between the external market or business strategy and internal people processes and policies, and ensures that competences which are a key source of competitive advantage are created (Wright et al., 1994).This vertical integration is a vital part of any strategic approach to the people management (Dyer, 1984; Mahoney and Deckop, 1986; Schuler and Jackson, 1987; Fombrun et al., 1984; Gratton et al., 1999).

Tyson (1997) identified ‘vertical integration’ as the essential ingredient that enables the HR paradigm to become strategic. This requires, in practice, not only a statement of strategic intent, but planning to ensure that an integrated HR system can support the policies and processes in line with the business strategy.

There have been a number of SHRM models that have attempted to identify the link between HR policies and practices and business strategy, and develop categories of integration or ‘fit’. These include the life-cycle models (Kochan and Barocci, 1985) and the competitive advantage models of Miles and Snow (1978) and Schuler and Jackson (1987) based on the influential work of Porter (1985).

Life-cycle model:

A number of researchers have attempted to apply business and product life-cycle thinking or ‘models’ to the selection and management of appropriate HR policies and practices that fit the relevant stage of an organisation’s development or life cycle (Baird and Meshoulam, 1988; Kochan and Barocci, 1985). So, for example, according to this approach, during the start-up phase of the business and to enable the growth and to promote entrepreneurialism, there is an emphasis on HR flexibility. In the growth stage, once a business grows beyond a certain size, the emphasis would move to the development of more formal HR policies and procedures. In the maturity stage, as markets mature and margins decrease, and the performance of certain products or the organisation plateaus, the focus of the HR strategy may move to cost control. Finally, in the de line stage of a product or business, the emphasis shifts to rationalisation, with downsizing and redundancy implications for the HR function (Kochan and Barocci, 1985).

Competitive Advantage Model:

Competitive advantage models tend to apply Porter’s (1985) ideas on strategic choice. Porter identified three key bases of competitive advantage: cost leadership, differentiation through quality and service, and focus or ‘niche’ market. Schuler and Jackson (1987) used these as a basis for their model of strategic human resource management, where they defined the appropriate HR policies and practices to ‘fit’ the generic strategies of

Cost reduction,

Quality enhancement and

Innovation.

Schuler and Jackson’s model argued that improvement in organization’s performance will be achieved when HR practices are reinforced mutually, the organisation’s choice of competitive strategy.

This in turn leads to a set of required employee behaviours, which would be reinforced by an appropriate set of HR practices. The outcome of this would be desired employee behaviours, which are aligned with the corporate goals, thus demonstrating the achievement of vertical integration. The ‘cost-reduction’-led HR strategy is likely to focus on the efficiency by ‘hard’ HR techniques, whereas the ‘quality enhancement’ and ‘innovation’-led HR strategies focus on value addition through ‘softer’ HR techniques and policies. Thus all three of these strategies can be deemed ‘strategic’ in linking HR policies and practices to the goals of the business and the external context of the firm, and therefore in contributing in different ways to ‘bottom-line’ performance.

Configurational Model:

This approach focuses on how configurations of multiple independent variables (unique patterns) are related to the dependent variable. This model aims ideal type categories of organisation strategy and also the HR strategy. Configurational approach is different from contingency approach in a sense that these configurations approach represent ‘non-linear synergistic effects and higher-order interactions that can result in performance maximization (Delery and Doty, 1996: 808). This approach focus on internally consistent set of human resource practices that after maximising horizontal integration, links these to other strategic configurations in order to maximise vertical integration (Marchington and Wilkinson, 2002). Thus, put simply, strategic human resource management, according to configurational theorists, requires an organisation to establish an human resource system that can achieves horizontal as well as vertical integration. Delery and Doty use Miles and Snow’s (1978) categories of ‘defender’ and ‘prospector’ to theoretically derive ‘internal systems’ or configurations of HR practices that maximize horizontal fit, and then link these to strategic configurations of, for example, ‘defender’ or ‘prospector’ to maximise vertical fit

The wider context of HRM

Defining the wider context

The definition of the wider context of HRM could embrace innumerable topics and a long time perspective. Such a vast range, however, could only have been covered in a perfunctory manner here, which would have rendered the exercise relatively valueless. It is more appropriate to give examples of some of the influential elements and how they affect HRM, and to encourage you to identify others for yourself.

Echoes from the wider context

Here the focus will be on distant events from the socio-political sphere that have nevertheless influenced the management of the employment relationship and still do so indirectly. Although what follows is not a complete analysis of these influences, it illustrates how the field of HRM resonates with events and ideas from its wider context.

The First and Second World Wars

The two world wars, though distant in time and removed from the area of activity of HRM, have nevertheless influenced it in clearly identifiable and very important ways, some direct and some indirect. These effects can be classified in terms of changed attitudes of managers to labour, changed labour management practices, the development of personnel techniques, and the development of the personnel profession. We shall now examine these, and then note how some outcomes of the Second World War continue, indirectly, to influence HRM.

Changed attitudes of managers to labour

According to Child (1969: 44), the impact of the First World War upon industry hastened changes in attitudes to the control of the workplace that had begun before 1914. The development of the shop stewards’ movement during the war increased demand for workers’ control; there was growing ‘censure of older and harsher methods of managing labour’.

The recognition of the need for improved working conditions in munitions factories was continued in the postwar reconstruction debates: Child (1969) quotes a Ministry of Reconstruction pamphlet that advised that ‘the good employer profits by his "goodness"’. The outcome of these various changes was a greater democratisation of the workplace (seen, for example, in works councils) and, for ‘a number of prominent employers’, a willingness ‘to renounce autocratic methods of managing employees’ and ‘to treat labour on the basis of human rather than commodity market criteria’.

These new values became incorporated in what was emerging as a distinctive body of management thought, practice and ideology (see Glossary and later section on ‘Ways of seeing and thinking’), upon which later theory and practice are founded. Changed labour management practices The need to employ and deploy labour effectively led to increased attention to working conditions and practices during both wars; the changes that were introduced then continued, and interacted with other social changes that ensued after the wars (Child, 1969).

‘The proper use of manpower whether in mobilizing the nation or sustaining the war economy once reserves of strength were fully deployed’ was national policy during the Second World War (Moxon, 1951). As examples of this policy, Moxon cites the parttime employment of married women, the growth of factory medical services, canteens, day nurseries and special leave of absence.

The development of personnel techniques

Both wars encouraged the application of psychological techniques to selection and training, and stimulated the development of new approaches. Rose (1978: 92) suggests that, in 1917, the American army tested two million men to identify ‘subnormals and officer material’. Seymour (1959) writes of the Second World War:

The wars further influenced the development of the ergonomic design of equipment, and encouraged the collaboration of engineers, psychologists and other social scientists (DSIR, 1961). The exigencies of war ensured that attention and resources were focused upon activities that are of enormous significance to the field of employment, while the scale of operations guaranteed the availability for testing of numbers of candidates far in excess of those usually available to psychologists undertaking research.

The development of the personnel profession

Very significantly, the Second World War had a major influence on the development of the personnel profession. According to Moxon (1951), the aims of national wartime policy were:

Child (1969) reports how government concern in 1940 about appropriate working practices and conditions Moxon (1951) comments on the ‘four-fold increase in the number of practising personnel managers’ at this time. Child (1969) records the membership of what was to become the Institute of Personnel Management as 760 in 1939, and 2993 in 1960  the need to train millions of men and women for the fighting services led to a more detailed study of the skills required for handling modern weapons, and our understanding of human skill benefited greatly .Likewise, the shortage of labour in industry led to experiments aimed at training munition workers to higher levels of output more quickly.

to see that the maximum use was made of each citizen,

to see that working and living conditions were as satisfactory as possible,

to see that individual rights were reasonably safeguarded and the democratic spirit preserved.

The growth of personnel management was the direct result of the translation of this national policy by each industry and by each factory within an industry. led to direct governmental action enforcing the appointment of personnel officers in all but small factories and the compulsory provision of minimum welfare amenities. He also notes a similar increase in other management bodies. (The Institute has now become the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, with a membership of 120 000 in 2002.)

Ways of seeing and thinking

Now attention should be directed towards our ways of seeing and thinking about world, the ways that generate the language, the code, the keys we used in conceptualizing and practicing HRM. It is at this point that we became fully aware of value representing context as a tapestry both to create and make sense of HRM. These ways of seeing are the wrap, the thread running the length of the tapestry that give it its basic form and texture which are more apparent when we turn the tapestry over and examine how we perceive reality, make assumptions about it, and define if for ourselves

PERCEIVING REALITY

Perception

As Medcof and Roth (1974) said that despite the impression that we are in direct and immediate contact with the world, our perception is , in fact, separated from reality by a long chain of processing.

Psychologist indicate that perception is a complex process involving the selection of stimuli to which to respond and the organization and the interpretation of them according to patterns we already recognise

MAKING ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT REALITY

Bannister and Fransella (1971) states that we can only make assumptions about what reality is and then proceed to find out how useful those assumptions are and cannot determine an reality free from interpretation directly. Some assumptions are so deeply engrained that they are difficult to identify and express but they are nevertheless embodied in the way we approach life. These include the way we conceptualize, theories about and manage the employment relationship.

DEFINING REALITY FOR OURSELVES

We define reality for ourselves in the following manner

Orthodox Thinking:

Orthodox means correct or generally accepted opinion inculcated in the majority of members in any given society through the processes of socialization and education and sustained through sanctions against deviation. We do not generally question our orthodox beliefs, and therefore we do not pay much attention to them nor consider how they frame the interpretations we make of our world nor what other alternative there could be.

ALTERNATIVE APPROACH:

The following three approaches stand in contract to orthodox thinking

Phenomenology

It is concerned with understanding the individual’s conscious experience rather then analyzing this into fragments, it takes a holistic approach. It acknowledges the significance of objectivity (Sanders, 1982).

Constructivism

It is also concern with individual experiences but emphasises the individual’s cognitive process.

Social Constructionism

It does not assume that a reality independent of observer exists. Reality is only what we construct ourselves and that not through our own cognitive process but the social processes of language, discourse and social interaction.

The wider social, economic, political and cultural context of HRM is diverse, complex and dynamic. The metaphor of a tapestry is therefore used to express the way in which its meaning is constructed from the interweaving and mutual influences of assumptions deriving from the basic perceptual, epistemological, philosophical and ideological positions. The notion of Wrap and Weft are used to discuss such key contextual elements as phenomenology, constructivism, social constructionism etc.

Defining reality for others

Here we defined the warp of the tapestry of context as our ways of seeing and thinking. It will now examine some of the weft threads – the ways in which others define our reality (or we define reality for others): ideology, hegemony, and rhetoric. These interweave through the warp to produce the basic pattern of the tapestry, but with differing colours and textures, and also differing lengths (durations), so that they do not necessarily appear throughout the tapestry. They constitute important contextual influences upon HRM, and in part account for the competing definitions of it.

Ideology

Gowler and Legge (1989) define ideology as ‘sets of ideas involved in the framing of our experience, of making sense of the world, expressed through language’. It has a narrower focus than the ‘ways of thinking’ we have been discussing above, and could be seen as a localised orthodoxy, a reasonably coherent set of ideas and beliefs that often goes unchallenged:

Ideology operates as a reifying, congealing mechanism that imposes pseudoresolutions and compromises in the space where fluid, contradictory, and multivalent subjectivity could gain ground. (Sloan, 1992: 174)

Ideology purports to explain reality objectively, but within a pluralist society it actually represents and legitimates the interests of members of a subgroup. It is a ‘subtle combination of facts and values’ (Child, 1969: 224), and achieves its ends through language and rhetoric (see below).

What we hear and what we read is conveying someone else’s interpretations. The way those are expressed may obscure the ideology and vested interest in those interpretations. For example, in contrast to the orthodox view of culture, Jermier argues that culture is:

As you will recognise from earlier in the chapter, the organisation is an arena in which ideologies of many kinds are in contest: capitalism and Marxism, humanism and scientific approaches to the individual, feminism and a gender-biased view. Child (1969) discusses the ideology embodied in the development of management thinking, identifying how the human relations approach chose to ignore the difference of interests between managers and employees and how this dismissal of potential conflict influenced theory and practice.

Commentators such as Braverman (1974), Frost et al. (1991) and Rose (1978), and many of the readings in Clark et al. (1994), will help you to recognise some of the ideologies at work in this field.

Hegemony

Hegemony is the imposition of the reality favoured by a powerful subgroup in society upon less powerful others. Such a group exerts its authority over subordinate groups by imposing its definition of reality over other possible definitions. This does not have to be achieved through direct coercion, but by ‘winning the consent of the dominated majority so that the power of the dominant classes appears both legitimate and natural’.

In this way, subordinate groups are ‘contained within an ideological space which does not seem at all "ideological": which appears instead to be permanent and "natural", to lie outside history, to be beyond particular interests’ (Hebdige, 1979: 15–16). It is argued that gender issues are generally completely submerged in organizations and theories of them (Hearn et al., 1989; Calas and Smircich, 1992; Hopfl and Atkinson, 2000) so that male-defined realities of organisations appear natural, and feminist views unnatural and shrill.

You could use the readings in Clark et al. (1994) to identify instances of hegemony and the outcomes of power relations, such as the ‘management prerogative’; Watson (2000) throws light on the manager’s experience of these.

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is ‘the art of using language to persuade, influence or manipulate’ (Gowler and Legge, 1989: 438). Its ‘high symbolic content’ ‘allows it to reveal and conceal but above all develop and transform meaning’ (Gowler and Legge, 1989: 439, their italics). It ‘heightens and transforms meaning by processes of association, involving both evocation and juxtaposition’. In other words, its artfulness lies in playing with meanings. It is something with which we are familiar, whether as political ‘spin’ or as the terminology used in effecting organisational change (Atkinson and Butcher, 1999).

In the ‘eco-climate’ of an organisation, where meanings are shared and negotiated, power and knowledge relations are expressed rhetorically. For example, changes to structure and jobs might be described as ‘flexibility’ rather than as the casualisation of work, and increased pressures upon employees as ‘empowerment’ (see 100 Chapter · Human resource management in context the objectified product of the labor of human subjects . . . there is a profound forgetting of the fact that the world is socially constructed and can be remade . . . Exploitative practices are mystified and concealed.

(Frost et al., 1991: 231) . Moreover, Legge (1995) proposes, one way of interpreting HRM is to recognise it as ‘a rhetoric about how employees should be managed to achieve competitive advantage’ that both ‘celebrates’ the values of its stakeholders while ‘at the same time mediating the contradictions of capitalism’ (p. xiv). In other words, it allows those stakeholders to ‘have their cake and eat it’.

BEST-PRACTICE SHRM:

High-Commitment Models

The best-practice approach highlights the relationship between ‘sets’ of good HR practices and organisational performance, mostly defined in terms of employee commitment and satisfaction. These sets of best practice can take many forms: some have advocated a universal set of practices that would enhance the performance of all organisations to which they were applied (Pfeffer, 1994, 1998); others have focused on integrating the practices to the specific business context (high-performance work practices). A key element of best practice is congruence between policies and horizontal integration. Difficulties arise here, as best-practice models vary significantly in their constitution and in their relationship to organisational performance, which makes generalisations from research and empirical data difficult. Here, it is argued that by identifying, by commitment and proper implementation of set of best HRM practices, all organisations will benefit and see improvements in organisational performance.

Universalism And High Commitment

One of the models most commonly cited is Pfeffer’s (1994) 16 HR practices for ‘competitive advantage through people’ which he revised to seven practices for ‘building profits by putting people first’ in 1998.

Pfeffer (1994) explains how changes in the external environment have reduced the impact of traditional sources of competitive advantage, and increased the significance of new sources of competitive advantage, namely human resources that enable an organisation to adapt and innovate. The universalist approach or ‘ideal set of practices’ (Guest, 1997), concerns about how ideal set of practices are achieved by close organisations, the hypothesis being that the closer an organisation gets, the better the organisation will perform, in terms of higher productivity, service levels and profitability. The role of Human Resources involve gaining senior management commitment to a set of HR polices and best practices and ensuring that they are implemented and that reward is distributed accordingly.

MEASURING THE IMPACT OF SHRM ON PERFORMANCE AND THE BALANCED SCORECARD

It is now appropriate to consider in more detail how strategic management processes in firms can be improved to deal more effectively with key HR issues and take advantage of HR opportunities. A study by Ernst & Young in 1997, cited in Armstrong and Baron (2002), found that more than a third of the data used to justify business analysts’ decisions were non-financial, and that when non-financial factors, notably ‘human resources’, were taken into account better investment decisions were made. The non-financial metrics most valued by investors are identified in

This presents an opportunity for HR managers to develop business capability and demonstrate the contribution of SHRM to organisational performance. One method that is worthy of further consideration is the balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 1996, 2001). This is also concerned with relating critical non-financial factors to financial outcomes, by assisting firms to map the key cause–effect linkages in their desired strategies. (Boxall and Purcell, 2003).

Kaplan and Norton identify the significance of executed strategy and the implementation stage of the strategic management process as key drivers in enhancing organisational performance. They recognise, along with Mintzberg (1987), that ‘business failure is seen to stem mostly from failing to implement and not from failing to have wonderful visions’ (Kaplan and Norton, 2001: 1). Therefore, as with the resource based view, implementation is identified as a key process which is often poorly executed.

Kaplan and Norton adopt a stakeholder perspective, based on the premise that for an organisation to be considered successful, it must satisfy the requirements of key stakeholders; namely investors, customers and employees. They suggest identifying objectives, measures, targets and initiatives on four key perspectives of business performance:

Financial:

How we should appear to our stakeholders in order to succeed financially?

Customer:

How we should make our vision clear to our customers?

Internal business processes:

What business processes we introduce to satisfy our customers and shareholders?

Learning and growth:

What ability should be posses to achieve our vision?’

They recognise that investors require financial performance, measured through profitability, market value and cash flow or EVA (economic value added); customers require quality products and services, which can be measured by market share, customer service, customer retention and loyalty or CVA (customer value added); and employees require a healthy place to work, which recognises opportunities for personal development and growth, and these can be measured by attitude surveys, skill audits and performance appraisal criteria, which recognise not only what they do, but what they know and how they feel or PVA (people value added). These can be delivered through appropriate and integrated systems, including HR systems. The balanced scorecard approach therefore provides an integrated framework for balancing shareholder and strategic goals, and extending those balanced performance measures down through the organisation, from corporate to divisional to functional departments and then on to individuals (Grant, 2002). By balancing a set of strategic and financial goals, the scorecard can be used to reward current practice, but also offer incentives to invest in long-term effectiveness, by integrating financial measures of current performance with measures of ‘future performance’. Thus it provides a template that can be adapted to provide the information that organisations require now and in the future, for the creation of shareholder value

CONCLUSION

We have examined something of the warp and weft that give the tapestry its basic form, pattern, colour and texture. To complete our understanding of the context of HRM we need to recognise that issues and people constitute the surface stitching that is drawn through the warp and weft to add further pattern and colour. You will be aware of examples from your own experience, but we can instance the influences of recession, equal opportunities legislation, European directives, management gurus, that resonate with the warp and weft to produce the pattern that has come to be known as ‘HRM’.

Wright & Boswell (2002) point out HR practices which include recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management (including appraisal) and pay and reward schemes. In present times when organizations increase their presence in multiple countries, the need to align HRM practices in a global context has become increasingly important (Geringer, et al., 2002).

We are fully aware of the value representing context as a tapestry both to create and make sense of HRM. These ways include how we perceive reality, make assumptions about it, and define it for ourselves.HR function plays an important role in an organization progress and growth. HRM policies and practices is directly linked with the organization performance. SHRM indicates that people in organization are strategic resources i.e. man force capital that must be balanced in implementing corporate strategy.

HRM adds value to business by:

Increasing the effectiveness of the processes such as hiring, staffing, performance appraisal, communication, and compensation etc. These processes govern how work is done and enhance organizational competitiveness and therefore adds value

Making recruitment process effective. By recruiting right person with proper job description can improve performance and goal congruence will be achieved.

It ensures compliance with policies and procedures and ensure all department follow those policies and procedure consistently. This standardizes the working within the organization and creates unity among employees and keeps them motivated.

Creates accountability. It identifies who is responsible for HR work and identify the role of manager in this context.

Identify and ensure when and how HR should be proactive, reactive, or anticipatory.

Its makes employee participative. It ensures whether staff are compatible with the job and ensures that right volume of people are employed by the company.

Further, in order to ensure the viability of the company, HRM maintain the company margins and meet company goals.

It meets the legal requirement related to HR.

It ensures that employees appraisals are carried out on regular basis which not only motivate them but also give them feedback about how they are working and what they should do to achieve their targets. This in turn increases their efficiency and effectiveness in the job.

Ensures fair employee compensation. Fair pay scales and benefits help organization attract best candidates and increase the goodwill of the organization as equal opportunity employers.

For successful enactment of these role HR manager must: know where the company’s is going, position where company stands among competitors and Capabilities and competence of HR manager to execute the task. To successfully accomplish business partners role and SHRMs change agent, the HR practitioner must be very well informed, multitalented, multi skilled and obtain essential competencies like business know how, strategic visioning and global operating expertise, reliability, veracity and consulting skills, among others.

This essay tries to prove close link between HRM policies and organization performance and argued that businesses should adopt good HR policies in order to increase their performance and competitiveness. This essay also identified that HR policies are influenced by business strategies organization follows therefore investment in on and off job training, employee participation, quality initiatives and by increasing employee job satisfaction organization can sustains its economic performance. This essay has identified number of implications for both decision makers and managers.

Organization should develop policies related to HR based on the business strategies they follow as business strategies and policies related to HR are not mutually independent. For the purpose organization should have HR department representation to the board level.

The emphasis should be given on the development of those HRM policies and business strategies which improves employees’ outcome such as attitude, skills and behaviour.

The important aspect of HRM strategy should revolve around selection, work design, performance appraisal, training and development, incentives, communication, promotion, Participation, involvement.

Business strategy should revolve around cost, quality and innovation.

HR Professionals should always consider whether investment in HR will help achieve business objectives and how it will increase business productivity. Secondly, trust is the foundation to add value in organization.HR manager / director should consider ways of increasing trust levels in an organization which is based on confidence, honesty and the ongoing participation.

Gomez-Mejia & Balkin (1992) states that organisations set of polices related to HR will be more effective if it is consistent and in line with other organization strategies. For an organization, in order to retain competitive advantage business strategies of cost quality and innovation will be more suitable (Porter,1985). If a strategy influences the relationship between organizational performance and HR management policies then it is a cost business strategy. Similarly, a quality business strategy also influences the relationship between Human Resource Management policies and business performance. An innovation business strategy also influences the relationship between organisational performance and HR management policies (Schuler & Jackson, 1987).