SOC STUD ELEC 2 HRM JSMARQUEZ BSED 2C

Lesson 1: INTRODUCTION: Human Capital Theory And Human Resource Management

• What is Human Resource Management (HRM)?

The term human resource management emerged in the late 1980s as an alternative to personnel
management.

Personnel management was typically the remit of a separate, specialist, expensive and highly
bureaucratic unit within the organization. By contrast, HRM reflected the strategic vision of the
organization and was fully integrated into its day-to-day management.

Human resource management is a distinctive approach to employment management that seeks to

achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable
workforce, using an array of cultural, structural and personnel techniques (Storey, 1995).

Personnel Management VS. Human Resource Management

The Four Key Concepts in HRM

Human Capital Theory
Neo-liberalism
Managerialism
Performativity

A. Human Capital Theory

Economists call the resources available to individuals and groups capital. Physical capital is
produced when raw materials are converted into saleable goods. Human capital is produced when
people acquire desired skills and/or knowledge (Bell and Stevenson 2006).

Human capital theory assumes that individuals are motivated to increase their human capital by
obtaining relevant qualifications and experience, because this will most likely increase their future
earnings.
Limitations:
1. First, empirical studies suggest that higher spending on education (either by individuals or by
nation-states) does not necessarily create greater wealth.
2. In a free market, students cannot be compelled to learn what the economy is thought to need.
3. It is hard to predict what knowledge and skills might be needed in in the future, meaning that
today’s school-leavers can never be fully prepared for tomorrow’s jobs.
4. Finally, human capital theory ignores the social and moral purposes of education.
SOC STUD ELEC 2 HRM JSMARQUEZ BSED 2C

B. Neo-liberalism - a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being
can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an
institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade
(Harvey 2007).

C. Managerialism - combines management knowledge and ideology to establish itself systemically

in organisations and society while depriving owners, employees (organizational-economical) and
civil society (social-political) of all decision-making powers.
 Contemporary writers on management such as Thomas Diefenbach associate managerialism
with hierarchy. But scholars have also linked managerialism to control.
 It justifies the application of managerial techniques to all areas of society on the grounds of
superior ideology, expert training, and the exclusive possession of managerial knowledge
necessary to efficiently run corporations and societies (Kilkauer, 2015)’

D. Performativity
 The term performativity was first coined in 1984 by Lyotard, who suggested that the
postmodern society had become obsessed with efficiency and effectiveness.
 The principle of performativity, according to Lyotard (1984), means minimizing inputs (costs)
and maximizing outputs (benefits), so as to deliver optimal value for money

Lesson 2: Functions of Human Resource Management

Human resource management - is a body of knowledge and a set of practices that define the
nature of work and regulate the employment relationship.

HRM covers the following five functional areas:

1. STAFFING - deals with obtaining people with appropriate skills, abilities, knowledge and
experience to fill jobs in the work organization. Pertinent practices are human resource planning, job
analysis, recruitment and selection
2. REWARDS - Involves the design and administration of reward systems. Practices include job
evaluation, performance appraisal, and benefits.
3. EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT - Is analyzing training requirement to ensure that employees
possess the knowledge and skills to perform satisfactorily in their jobs or to advance in the
organization. Performance appraisal can identify employee key skills and ‘competence’.
4. EMPLOYEE MAINTENANCE - Is the administration and monitoring of workplace safety, health
and welfare policies to retain a competent workforce and comply with statutory standards and
regulations.
5. EMPLOYEE RELATIONS - Under this heading may be a range of employee
involvement/participation schemes in union or non-union workplaces. In a union environment, it also
includes negotiations between management and union representatives over decisions affecting the
employment contract.

Activities of HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

 Larger workplaces are more likely to employ at least one HRM or personnel specialist.
 Large organizations might divide HRM activities among several managers; one specialist for
recruitment and selection, one for employee training and development and another for
negotiating and administrating the collective agreement.

HRM practices aim to achieve two sets of objectives;

 improve employee performance
 enhance organizational effectiveness.

To appreciate the full significance of these HRM practices, it is important to recognize that HRM
functions within the organization at two levels:
SOC STUD ELEC 2 HRM JSMARQUEZ BSED 2C

1. HRM activities are concerned with recruiting, motivating and developing competent
employee.
2. HRM has responsibility for conflict management.

1. Recruiting, Motivating And Developing Competent Employee

 Selection procedures are designed to supply the organization with employees with knowledge,
abilities, and skills pertinent to their role within the organization.
 HRM activities them motivate the workforce by providing employees with satisfactory pay,
benefits and working conditions.
 HRM professionals also develop individuals to ensure that they possess the knowledge and
skills necessary to be effective employees.

2. Conflict Management
 Many academic observers of work organizations recognized that conflict between individual
employees, within teams or between management and employees is inevitable and can
enhance, rather than decrease, performance.
 Stephen Robbins (1991) and organizational theorist, distinguishes between functional and
dysfunctional conflict. The former supports the goals of the work group and improves its
performance.
 Richard Hyman (1989), an industrial relations theorist, identifies….
 two types of workplace conflict
1. When a group of employees engage in planned action (for example, a strike) to change the
source of discontent, it is referred to as organized conflict.
2. When employees respond to discontent or a repressive situation by individual absenteeism or
individual acts of sabotage, it is referred to as unorganized conflict.

Lesson 3 : Models of Human Resource Management

1. The Fombrun, Tichy and Devanna Model of HRM

 The early HRM model developed by Fombrun et. al. (1984) emphasizes the interrelatedness
and the coherence of human resource management activities.
 The human resource management cycle in their model consists of four key constituent
components: selection, appraisal, development and rewards. These four human resource
activities aim to increase organizational performance

 The weakness of the Fombrun, et. al. model is its apparent prescriptive nature with its focus
on four key HRM practices. It also ignores different stakeholder interests, situational factors and
the notion of management’s strategic choice. • The strength of the model, however, is that it
expresses the coherence of internal HRM policies and practices to the organization’s external
business strategy.
 The HRM cycle is also a simple model that serves as a pedagogical framework for explaining
the nature and significance of key HRM practices and the interactions among the factors
making up the complex fields of human resource management

2. The Harvard Model of HRM

 The analytical framework of the ‘Harvard model’ consists of six basic components.
SOC STUD ELEC 2 HRM JSMARQUEZ BSED 2C

1. Situational factors
2. Stakeholders interests
3. Human Resource Management policy choice
4. HRM outcome
5. Long-term consequences
6. feedback loop through which the outputs flow

The analytical framework of the ‘Harvard model’ consists of six basic components.

1. Situational factors
 influence management’s choice of HRM strategy. This normative model incorporates
workforce characteristics management philosophy, labour market, regulations, societal
values and patterns of unionization, and suggests a merging of both ‘product market’
and ‘sociocultural logistics.
 Analytically, both HRM scholars and practitioners will be more comfortable with contextual
variables included in the model because it conforms to the reality of what they know: ‘the
employment relationship entails a blending of business and societal expectations’ (Boxall,
1992 : 72).

2. Stakeholders Interests
 recognize the importance of ‘trade-offs’, either explicitly, between the interests of owners
and those of employees and their organizations, the unions.
 Although the model is still vulnerable to the charge of ‘unitarism’. It is a much more pluralist
frame of reference than that found in later models.

3. Human Resource Policy Choices

 emphasize that management’s decisions and actions in HRM can be appreciated fully if it is
recognized that they result from an interaction between constraints and choices.
 The model depicts management as a real actor, capable of making at least some degree of
unique contribution within environmental and organizational parameters and or influencing
those parameters itself over time.

4. Human Resource Outcomes

 are high employee commitment to organizational goals and high individual performance
leading to cost effective products or services.
 The underlying assumption here is that employees have talents that are rarely fully utilized at
work, and they show a desire to experience through work. Thus the HRM model takes the view
that organizations should be designed on the basis of the assumptions inherent to McGregor’s
Theory.

5. Long Term Consequences : distinguish between three levels: individual, organizational and
societal.
 At the individual employee level, the long-term outputs comprise the psychological rewards
workers receive in exchange for efforts.
 At the organizational level, increased effectiveness ensures the survival of the organization.
 At the societal level, as a result of fully utilizing people at work, some of society’s goals (for
example, employment and growth) are obtained

6. feedback loop through which the outputs flow

 is the part of a system in which some portion (or all) of the system's output is used as input for
future operations. Each feedback loop has a minimum of four stages.
 During the first stage, input is created. During the second stage, input is captured and stored.
SOC STUD ELEC 2 HRM JSMARQUEZ BSED 2C

Lesson 4 : The Selection and Recruitment Process

The RECRUITMENT PROCESS

 Preliminary, the recruitment process begins with consideration of the number and types of
vacant posts needed to be filled, and the sources of personnel or skills needed for filling them.
 The source could be internal or external, or both, as earlier indicated.
 For internal sources, postings or transfers or promotion can thus be effected.
 In the case of external sources, there may be the need to start with advertisement of a kind as
the first step.
 The advertisement itself should contain adequate information about job content, qualifications
and experience, compensations and other conditions of service, as earlier indicated.

The RECRUITMENT PROCESS

1. Short Listing
 A short list a list of people who have been judged the most suitable for a job or prize, made
from a longer list of people originally considered, and from which one person will be chosen.
 The employment agency should, therefore, short-list those to be interviewed by preliminary
screening and selection base on the information available in the applications.
 But the problem is that some applications may not provide adequate information about the
types of personnel required, depending on the format and the nature of application forms and
letters respectively.

2. Preliminary Interview
 can be conducted either after a short-listing exercise, or in place of short-listing exercise.
 Preliminary interview is superior to shortlisting in various ways:
a. It enable the employers or their recruitment officers to see the applicants personally so that
both physical and emotional disposition of applicant can be assessed.
b. It also enables recruiting officers to evaluate the validity of information contained in the
application forms or letters given by the applicants.

3. Employment Interview
 is the final stage of selection for placement, and almost the most difficult stage in the selection
processes.
 The interview could be structured or unstructured, what Edwin Flippo describes as
“guided” and “unguided” interviews.
a. In the guided interview, a list of questions is prepared based on an analysis of job specification.
b. The unguided interview, as the concept implies, is not planned or structured. It enable the
interviewer to obtain more information, including salient one, about the interviewee, since the latter
does most of the talking and reveals more about himself.
SOC STUD ELEC 2 HRM JSMARQUEZ BSED 2C

Principles of INTERVIEWING

Using this Mungo Frazers Five-point Plan, framework, interviewers are expected to
observe the following principles of interviewing:
1. First impression and physical make-up;
2. Qualifications and expectations;
3. Brains and abilities
4. Motivation
5. Adjustment

Principles of INTERVIEWING
• These principles differ somehow from those five presented by Edwin Flippo (1980)
which include:
1. Preparation
2. Setting
3. Conduct of the interview
4. Close
5. Evaluation

Principles of INTERVIEWING (Flippo, 1980)

1. Preparation
Interviewers must first of all determine the basic objectives of the interviews, and the methods of
accomplishing these major objectives. • The interviewer must be conversant with the information
already obtained in the preliminary interviews by referring to the application blanks or other sources
of information.

2. Setting
The interviewer is expected to observe the principle of setting which is of two major types: physical
and mental settings.
a. The physical setting in this principle is that, the interviewer must make the interview hall or
physical environment attractive, and as much as possible, matching with the types of jobs or
vacancies to be filled.
b. The other perspective of physical setting comes in at the commencement of the interview
(mental setting).

3. Conduct of the Interview

This is the real “action” stage at which the interviewer obtains the desired information and supplies
some facts that the interviewee may wish to know.
The interviewer is expected to create a rapport or relationship between him and the interviewee.
In this case a sort of introductory piece or conversation on current affairs or general matter may
serve as a useful tool.

4. Conduct of the Interview

The interviewer then moves straight to the interview contents. The questions should be straight and
easy to understand.
Sensitive questions should be avoided.
The questions should be framed in such a way that the interviewee does most of the talking while
the interviewer listens attentively.
The interviewer jots down important points or issues raised by the interviewee in the course of their
conversation.
SOC STUD ELEC 2 HRM JSMARQUEZ BSED 2C

5. Close
The “close” stage is important in the sense that the interviewee needs to be given some indications
that the interview is coming to an end. This should be followed by some sort of indication of future
action in a sort of positive future action. The candidates should be told when to know about the
outcome of their interview.

6. Evaluation
The evaluation of an interview follows almost immediately after the interviewee leaves the interview
room while the details are still fresh in the minds of the interviewers. The jotted down points should
be examined in a broader perspective. Both the physical and mental disposition of the interviewee
are considered along with skills, experience, and the ability for clear expression.

SELECTION

 The final selection is done after the evaluation. The best thing is to make the final selection
immediately after the evaluation stage. Some organizations, especially large ones, may chose
to take the results of the interview programme for further scrutiny by a committee for selection
and placement. This is the usual practice with the public services where certain political
considerations.

 At any rate, the candidates should be selected and placed according to the number of
vacancies existing in the various section of the organization, and in accordance with their
qualifications, and experiences