human resource management (revision)

Human Resource Management

Critical Discussion of the Differences and Similarities Between the So-Called `Hard ' and `Soft ' Approaches to Human Resource Management

HRM was identified in the U . S . during the fifties but wider recognition especially in the United Kingdom did not arrive until the mid 1980 's The 1980 's saw the first British books written on the concepts of Human Resource Management , which created much scepticism about the new ways in which to organise labour forces . Academics such as Beardwell , Holden Legge and Beaumont who introduced many supporting theories during the

br 1990 's , demonstrated that HRM wasn 't just a passing phase , but a new concept of how employees think and operate in the work place . Monk described HRM as a slippery concept that means different things to different people (1994 :

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It has been described as an evolving set of competing theories (Pinnington and Edwards , 2000 ) and a group of interrelated policies with an ideological and philosophical underpinning (Guest 1990 . have developed many definitions for HRM Armstrong (1999 ) defined it the strategic approach to acquiring , developing , managing , motivating and gaining the commitment of the organisations key resource - the people who work in it and for it (p 13 . Storey (1992 ) suggested that it is a 'distinctive approach to employment management which seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable workforce , using an integrated array of cultural structural and personnel techniques (p 5 . There have been many differing views by on the subject , as to what exactly HRM is such as questioning whether it is a practice , a philosophy or a theory (Legge , 1995

In many cases are cautious not to describe HRM as a theory , but they do however offer various models to describe approaches to HRM . Some of these approaches are normative (e .g . Legge , 1995 , others are theoretical and derived form literature (e .g . Guest , 1990 ) and others are empirically derived (e .g . Storey , 1992 . Although there are a number of models , there has been little success achieving a fully-fledged theory due to complexities in terminology lack of generalisation contradictions and failure to provide any predictive capability (Truss 1997

The two most widely accepted models of HRM and frequently cited are those that adopt the 'hard ' and 'soft ' approaches . These two models are viewed as being opposing and incompatible and 'capable of signalling diametrically opposite sets of assumptions (Storey , 1992 ,

. 26 ) This reason for this view is that the set of assumptions on which they are based seemingly differ with the soft model placing its emphasis on the 'human ' whilst the hard model places its emphasis on the 'resource . The aim of this essay will be to compare and contrast these two seemingly opposing approaches to HRM in to ascertain if it would be possible to incorporate both these approaches into one single model of human resource management or whether it is the case that both need to be kept separate as the...