HST5504 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Social Capital, Human Capital, Society For Human Resource Management
WEEK 2: GOALS OF SHRM
Characteristics of HRM:
• People are not human resources.
• People are independent agents who
possess human resources.
• Human resources include knowledge, skills,
attitudes, values, personality characteristics,
motives etc.
• HRM is an inevitable process in
organisations.
• HRM encompasses management of work
and management of people to do the
work.
• HRM is a set of activities aimed at building
human and social capital.
• HRM is an aspect of all aager’s jobs
• Key partners in HRM: Senior
management, line managers, HR
professionals.
• HRM incorporates a variety of
management styles and ideologies.
• Industry and societal factors influence HR
strategies of firms
Goals of HRM:
Economic Goals:
• To make labour productive at an affordable
cost in the industry concerned – HRM must be
cost-effective
• To develop HR practices designed to enhance
the orgaisatio’s capacity to chage – short
run responsiveness and long run agility (See
next slide.)
• To strive for sustained competitive advantage
through HRM (Human capital advantage +
social capital advantage)
Short run responsiveness:
1. numerical flexibility
2. financial flexibility
3. functional flexibility
Social Legitimacy Goals:
• Compliance with legal requirements and the norms and standards of society
Political Goals:
• Management seeks to enhance its autonomy or power to act
Issues Managers face in pursuing goals:
• Problem of labour scarcity
• Problem of employee motivation
• Change tensions in labour management: Need
to balance stability and flexibility in
employment
• Challenges to the legitimacy of some
employee practices in wider society.
• Managing human resources is cognitively
complex and politically fraught.
• Managers in firms are not the sole masters of
HRM – societal contexts enable and constrain
them.
HR strategy as a cluster of HR models:
• HR strategy: a orgaisatio’s patter of strategic choices i HRM.
• We should not assume that HR strategies are uniform within firms.
• It is better to think of HR strategy as a cluster of HR models (as depicted in the image).
• It is quite common for there to be one HR model for management staff, another for core workers, another
for support workers etc.
• There will usually be some overlaps in HR policies and practices across HR models within an organisation.
• However, there are also substantial differences across HR models.
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Document Summary
Economic goals: to make labour productive at an affordable cost in the industry concerned hrm must be cost-effective, to develop hr practices designed to enhance the orga(cid:374)isatio(cid:374)"s capacity to cha(cid:374)ge short. Short run responsiveness: numerical flexibility, financial flexibility. Political goals: management seeks to enhance its autonomy or power to act. Issues managers face in pursuing goals: problem of labour scarcity, problem of employee motivation, change tensions in labour management: need to balance stability and flexibility in employment, challenges to the legitimacy of some employee practices in wider society. Hr strategy as a cluster of hr models: managing human resources is cognitively complex and politically fraught, managers in firms are not the sole masters of. Hrm societal contexts enable and constrain them: hr strategy: a(cid:374) orga(cid:374)isatio(cid:374)"s patter(cid:374) of strategic choices i(cid:374) hrm, we should not assume that hr strategies are uniform within firms.
