Characteristics of Human Resource Management
The characteristics of the HRM concept as they emerged from the writings of the pioneers and later commentators are that it is:
1. Diverse
2. Strategic, with an emphasis on integration
3. Commitment-orientated
4. Based on the belief that people should be treated as human capital
5. Initarist rather than pluralist, individual rather than collective, with regard to employee relations
6. A management-driven activity – the delivery of HRM is a line management responsibility
7. Focused on business values
1. The Diversity of HRM
But these characteristic of HRM are by no means universal. There are many models, and practices within different organizations are diverse, often only corresponding to the conceptual version of HRM in a few respects.
Hendry and Pettigrew (1990) play down the prescriptive element of the HRM model and extend the analytical elements. As pointed out by Boxall (1992), such an approach rightly avoids labelling HRM as a single form and advances more slowly by proceeding more analytically. It is argued by Hendry and Pettigrew that ‘better descriptions of structures and strategymaking in complex organizations, and of frameworks for understanding them, are an essential underpinning for HRM’.
A distinction was made by Storey (1989) between the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ versions of HRM. The hard version of HRM emphasizes that people are important resources through which organizations achieve competitive advantage. These resources have therefore to be acquired, developed and deployed in ways that will benefit the organization. The focus is on the quantitative, calculative and business-strategic aspects of managing human resources in as ‘rational’ a way as for any other economic factor. As Guest (1999) comments: ‘the drive to adopt HRM is… based on the business case of a need to respond to an external threat from increasing competition. It is a philosophy that appeals to managements who are striving to increase competitive advantage and appreciate that to do this they must invest in human resources as well as new technology.’ He also commented that HRM ‘reflects a longstanding
capitalist tradition in which the worker is regarded as a commodity’. The emphasis is therefore on the interests of management, integration with business strategy, obtaining added value from people by the processes of human resource development and performance management and the need for a strong corporate culture expressed in mission and value statements and reinforced by communications, training and performance management processes.
The soft version of HRM traces its roots to the human-relations school. It emphasizes communication, motivation and leadership. As described by Storey (1989) it involves ‘treating employees as valued assets, a source of competitive advantage through their commitment, adaptability and high quality (of skills, performance and so on)’. It therefore views employees, in the words of Guest (1999), as means rather than objects. The soft approach to HRM stresses the need to gain the commitment – the ‘hearts and minds’ – of employees through involvement, communications and other methods of developing a high-commitment, high-trust organization. Attention is also drawn to the key role of organizational culture.
In 1998, Karen Legge defined the ‘hard’ model of HRM as a process emphasizing ‘the close integration of human resource policies with business strategy which regards employees as a resource to be managed in the same rational way as any other resource being exploited for maximum return’. In contrast, the soft version of HRM sees employees as ‘valued assets and as a source of competitive advantage through their commitment, adaptability and high level of skills and performance’.
It has, however, been observed by Truss (1999) that, ‘even if the rhetoric of HRM is soft, the reality is often hard, with the interests of the organization prevailing over those of the individual’. And research carried out by Gratton et al (1999) found that, in the eight organizations they studied, a mixture of hard and soft HRM approaches was identified. This suggested to the researchers that the distinction between hard and soft HRM was not as precise as some commentators have implied.
2. Strategic Nature of HRM
Perhaps the most significant feature of HRM is the importance attached to strategic integration, which flows from top management’s vision and leadership, and which requires the full commitment of people to it.
David Guest (1987, 1989a, 1989b, 1991) believes that a key policy goal for HRM is strategic integration, by which he means the ability of the organization to integrate HRM issues into its strategic plans, to ensure that the various aspects of HRM cohere, and to provide for line managers to incorporate an HRM perspective into their decision making.
Karen Legge (1989) considers that one of the common themes of the typical definitions of HRM is that human resource policies should be integrated with strategic business planning. Keith Sisson (1990) suggests that a feature increasingly associated with HRM is a stress on the integration of HR policies both with one another and with business planning more generally.
John Storey (1989) suggests that: ‘the concept locates HRM policy formulation firmly at the strategic level and insists that a characteristic of HRM is its internally coherent approach’.
3. Commitment-Orientated nature of HRM
The importance of commitment and mutuality was emphasized by Walton (1985) as follows: ‘The new HRM model is composed of policies that promote mutuality – mutual goals, mutual influence, mutual respect, mutual rewards, mutual responsibility. The theory is that policies of mutuality will elicit commitment which in turn will yield both better economic performance and greater human development.’
David Guest (1987) wrote that one of the HRM policy goals was the achievement of high commitment – ‘behavioural commitment to pursue agreed goals, and attitudinal commitment reflected in a strong identification with the enterprise’.
It was noted by Karen Legge (1995) that human resources ‘may be tapped most effectively by mutually consistent policies that promote commitment and which, as a consequence, foster a willingness in employees to act flexibly in the interests of the “adaptive organization’s” pursuit of excellence’.
But this emphasis on commitment has been criticized from the earliest days of HRM. Guest (1987) asked: ‘commitment to what?’, and Fowler (1987) has stated:
At the heart of the concept is the complete identification of employees with the aims and values of the business – employee involvement but on the company’s terms. Power, in the HRM system, remains very firmly in the hands of the employer. Is it really possible to claim full mutuality when at the end of the day the employer can decide unilaterally to close the company or sell it to someone else?
4. People as ‘Human Capital’
The notion that people should be regarded as assets rather than variable costs, in other words treated as human capital, was originally advanced by Beer et al (1984). HRM philosophy, as mentioned by Karen Legge (1995), holds that ‘human resources are valuable and a source of competitive advantage’. Armstrong and Baron (2002) stated that: ‘People and their collective skills, abilities and experience, coupled with their ability to deploy these in the interests of the employing organization, are now recognized as making a significant contribution to organizational success and as constituting a significant source of competitive advantage.’
5. Unitarist Philosophy
The HRM approach to employee relations is unitarist not pluralist – it is believed that employees share the same interests as employers. In the words of Gennard and Judge (1997), organizations are assumed to be ‘harmonious and integrated, all employees sharing the organizational goals and working as members of one team’.
Guest (1987, 1989a, 1989b, 1991) considers that HRM values are: unitarist to the extent that they assume no underlying and inevitable differences of interest between management and workers; and individualistic in that they emphasize the individual–organization linkage in preference to operating through group and representative systems.
6. HRM as a Management-Driven Unitarist philosophy
The HRM approach to employee relations is unitarist not pluralist – it is believed that employees share the same interests as employers. In the words of Gennard and Judge (1997), organizations are assumed to be ‘harmonious and integrated, all employees sharing the organizational goals and working as members of one team’.
Guest (1987, 1989a, 1989b, 1991) considers that HRM values are: unitarist to the extent that they assume no underlying and inevitable differences of interest between management and workers; and individualistic in that they emphasize the individual–organization linkage in preference to operating through group and representative systems.
7. HRM as a Management-Driven Activity
HRM can be described as a central, senior-management-driven strategic activity, which is developed, owned and delivered by management as a whole to promote the interests of the organization that they serve. John Purcell (1993) thinks that ‘the adoption of HRM is both a product of and a cause of a significant concentration of power in the hands of management’, while the widespread use ‘of the language of HRM, if not its practice, is a combination of its intuitive appeal to managers and, more importantly, a response to the turbulence of product and financial markets’. He asserts that HRM is about the rediscovery of management prerogative. He considers that HRM policies and practices, when applied within a firm as a break from the past, are often associated with words such as ‘commitment’, ‘competence’, ‘empowerment’, ‘flexibility’, ‘culture’, ‘performance’, ‘assessment’, ‘reward’, ‘teamwork’, ‘involvement’, ‘cooperation’, ‘harmonization’, ‘quality’ and ‘learning’. But ‘the danger of descriptions of HRM as modern bestmanagement practice is that they stereotype the past and idealize the future’.
Keith Sisson (1990) suggested that: ‘The locus of responsibility for personnel management no longer resides with (or is “relegated to”)
specialist managers.’ More recently, Purcell et al (2003) underlined the importance of line management commitment and capability as the means by which HR policies are brought to life.
8. Focus on Business Values
The concept of HRM is largely based on a management- and businessorientated philosophy. It is concerned with the total interests of the organization – the interests of the members of the organization are recognized but subordinated to those of the enterprise. Hence the importance attached to strategic integration and strong cultures, which flow from top management’s vision and leadership, and which require people who will be committed to the strategy, who will be adaptable to change and who will fit the culture. By implication, as Guest (1991) says: ‘HRM is too important to be left to personnel managers.’
In 1995 Karen Legge noted that HRM policies are adapted to drive business values and are modified in the light of changing business objectives and conditions. She describes this process as ‘thinking pragmatism’ and suggests that evidence indicates more support for the hard versions of HRM than the soft version.
