Business and Management 2B Assignment Human resource management over the years has, debatably, emerged as the dominant approach to the management of people throughout much of the world. Following this is it of great importance to acknowledge that the practice and theory of human resource management has not simply ‘arrived from nowhere’. The arrival of what is considered the modern day HRM has been a long and evolutionary process: over the years many attempts to achieve an understanding of human behaviour in the workplace have been attempted drawing at numerous sources for its theories and practices. A continuous stream of original and reworked ideas have been offered from psychologists, sociologists and management theorists where their theoretical understandings and practical implementations have offered insights into many aspects of people management. These findings have been integrated into broader concepts consequently affecting management thinking in various periods and therefore ultimately leading to the development of HRM. During the developmental years of HRM the concept known as personnel management was the dominant process adopted and acknowledged for people management, and is the root from which HRM has grown. It was during the 1970’s that a consistent set of roles and actions had established for people management and in large organisations were seen as a specialist management function termed personnel management: consisting of areas such as recruitment, employee welfare, training and development and employee exit. During this period of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s the people management practices and policies that are termed ‘HRM’ originated in the USA manufacturing industry representing a significant break from the present personnel management model. There were a number of significant factors that caused the shift between the old models of personnel management to the new emerging model of HRM, principally the diminishing faith in the traditional approach to mass production, the influences of Japanese work organisation and manufacturing processes and the realisation of the implications of emerging new technology on work practices (Gallie 1998). Although the theme of human resource management has been found in literature dating back to the 1970’s the modern view of HRM became prominent in the early 1980’s. In 1981 HRM was introduced onto the Harvard business school MBA course providing a stepping stone, and a highly influential interpretation of HRM, that was imitated by many other courses across North America and then throughout the rest of the world through the 1980’s and 1990’s (Beer, Walton and Spector, 1984; Guest, 1987; Poole, 1990). The models of HRM fall into categories of being bipolar – completely against Personnel Management, or multi-conceptual (Bratton, J. & Gold, J., 2007).
Guest (1987) in his comparison between the stereotypes of HRM and Project Management he argues the case that there are four distinct differences between HRM and Personnel Management: first that HRM integrates human resources into strategic management; secondly that it adopts a unitary perspective and distinctive focus; third HRM organisations tend to be organic in structure and fourth HRM emphasises full and positive utilization of human resources (Bratton, J. & Gold, J. 2007). The 1992 model by Storey however states twenty-seven, later refined to twenty-five, points of difference between HRM and Personnel Management (Bach and Sisson 2000) where the model consisted of four main elements being; beliefs and assumptions, strategic aspect, the role of line managers and key levers (Bratton, J. & Gold, J., 2007). However looking back further to earlier models such as the Harvard model this consisted of six components these being: organizational context, stakeholder interests; policy choices; HR outcomes; long-term consequences; and a feedback loop (Beer et al., 1984), this model actually shares some elements with Personnel