Compare ion study of HRM in British Airline and China Eastern airline

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1 .1 Introduction

According to Stone (1998 , the focal point of human resource management (HRM ) is on managing people within the employer-employee relationship It includes the productive utilisation of employees to achieve the organization 's business objectives and satisfy individual employee needs . This approach has also confirmed McGraw 's (2003 ) assertion that HRM seeks to strategically combine the interests of an organisation and its employees . Consequently , ineffective HRM can be a major barrier to employee satisfaction and organisational success

HRM practices play a key role in attracting

, motivating , rewarding , and retaining employees . HRM practices include recruiting employees selecting employees , designing work , compensating employees , and developing good labor and employee relations (Noe , 2005

For the purpose of this study , the researcher has focused on five specific human resource management practices . These are HR planning training , career development , performance appraisal , and employee participation programs . Because these five HEM functions are interrelated with each other and straightly reflect the company 's performance (Torrington , 2005 ) For example , training and development and performance appraisal overlap each others ' results . The appraisal of an employee 's performance will show improvement areas and identify gaps in employees ' knowledge , skills , and abilities that may be addressed by training and development . Furthermore , Torrington (2002 ) has also defined the HRM philosophy , which stated that `HRM is a series of activities which first enables working people and the organisation to use their skills to agree about the objectives and nature of their working relationship and , secondly , ensures that the agreement is fulfilled (Torrington , Hall and Taylor 2002 :13 . As only the individual contributors have satisfied their needs then the business would obtain commitment to the company 's objectives which is needed to achieve organisational success . But only if individuals contribute to organisational success will they be able to satisfy their needs Moreover , this can only achieved when the employer and employee accept that mutuality and reciprocal dependence are the reasons that human resource management exists , centre stage and productive of business success (Torrington , 2005 . On the other hand , if employers are only concerned for employees as players in production , or manage HR as machines , management itself is wasteful and would lead to lack of employee trust . They are likely to adopt an entirely instrumental orientation to their work , which means they may find the work boring and will be ineffectual (Torrington , 2005

According to Guest (2001 , employees ' perceptions of organisational practises and working conditions influence employee attitudes and behaviour . Therefore , organisational practices such as HRM should facilitate the development of desired employee attitudes and behaviour that contribute to the enhancement of firm performance (Chang , 2005 Previous studies have found that positive perceptions of HRM practises lead to positive employee attitudes and behaviours such as job satisfaction (Guest , 1999 ) and organisational trust (Barney , 1995 as cited by Gould-Williams , 2003

In these cases , it is important to study HRM practices and relative approaches such as job satisfaction and organisational trust within the company because employees ' attitudes and behaviours would directly affect...