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Employee
Relations The name has changed but has
22,6 the game remained the same?
Michael Armstrong
576 Independent Consultant, London, UK
Keywords Human resource management, Personnel management
Received July 2000
Revised August 2000 Abstract The article argues that many of the practices associated with the concept of human
Accepted August 2000 resource management were flourishing under different names before the notion of HRM emerged
in the mid-1980s. There have been many developments in these practices but they have been
evolutionary. They have not happened because of any revolutionary new approaches derived from
HRM theory. The fact that the pace of change in personnel management is faster now than before
the 1980s is not attributable to the advent of HRM as a philosophy. It has been forced on
organisations by the rapidly changing business, political, economic and social environment. It has
also taken place as a result of the increased professionalism of personnel practitioners encouraged
by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and by the burgeoning academic
institutions which have disseminated ideas about human resource management more
comprehensively through a wider range of high quality publications.

Introduction
Personnel practitioners who have been around a long time, as this one has, are
often bothered, bewildered and bemused by a feeling of deÂjaÁ vu as we
contemplate the seemingly endless and often sterile debate about HRM and
personnel management. We ask questions: Are they different? Is one better
than the other? Has anything really changed ± for better or worse? Is this
simply a case of the emperor's new clothes (Armstrong, 1987)?
HR has now become common parlance. Three quarters of the job
advertisements typically refer to human resource rather than personnel. But we
observe these HR directors and managers doing much the same things
personnel directors and managers were doing 20 years ago. Familiar concepts
and practices such as performance appraisal, skills analysis and merit pay are
re-packaged (often persuasively) without any discernible differences in their
content. Fads come and go.
This article is based largely on my experience as a personnel practitioner
extending over a period of nearly 40 years in the engineering and food
industries and in publishing, The reason for writing it is that I, like many other
practitioners I know, have become confused, even cynical, when concepts or
techniques are introduced as new ideas although we have been using them all
the time under different names. My theme is that, while the context in which
personnel people work is constantly changing, many of the approaches that
have been tried and tested over the years can work just as well today. Giving
them a new name makes no difference. Of course, ideas worked up by
academics such as Argyris, Boyatzis, Flanders, Kolb, Lawler, McGregor,
Employee Relations,
Vol. 22 No. 6, 2000, pp. 576-593.
Tyson, Vroom, Walton and Woodward have influenced personnel practices but
# MCB University Press, 0142-5455 they have not revolutionised them.
The purpose of this article is to address the question of ``what's new'' both in The name has
the overall concept of HRM and in various policy and practice areas. changed
Consideration is also given to the issues emerging from the analysis and
possible directions in the future.

What's new about the concept of HRM?


HRM theory in its initial version emphasised the importance of strategic 577
integration, high commitment, high quality and flexibility (Guest, 1987). But as
Hendry and Pettigrew (1990) observed:
What HRM did at this point was to provide a label to wrap round the observable changes,
while providing a focus for challenging deficiencies ± in attitude, scope, coherence and
direction ± of existing personnel management.

The game was changing and it was useful to have a new name and a new
language to encapsulate what was taking place in the world of work. It is,
however, worth noting that the term human resources did not first appear in
the mid-1980s. It was in common use as a synonym for personnel in the 1970s;
for example, Armstrong (1977) noted that ``personnel management is concerned
with obtaining, organising and motivating the human resources required by
the corporation'', (italics added).
HRM has been described as ``a perspective on personnel management''
(Hendry and Pettigrew, 1990) and ``high-concept personnel management'
(Armstrong, 1996). Some commentators (Legge, 1989, 1995; Keenoy, 1990;
Sisson, 1990; Storey, 1993; Hope-Hailey et al., 1997) have highlighted the
revolutionary nature of HRM. The latter mention the ``rhetoric'' of HR
practitioners, but should more accurately have referred to the rhetoric of the HR
academics who have been debating what HRM means, how different it is,
whether or not it is a good thing, indeed, whether or not it exists, endlessly and
unproductively. Practitioners have pressed on regardless, in the justified belief
that what the academics were writing about had little relevance to their day to
day lives as they wrestle with the realities of organisational life. They did not
suddenly see the light in the 1980s and change their ways, for better or for
worse. The true personnel professionals just kept on doing what they had
always done but tried to do it better. They took note of the much wider range of
publications about personnel practices and the information on so-called ``best
practice'' provided by management consultants and conference organisers, and
they learned from the case studies emanating from the research conducted by
the burgeoning academic institutions. They also recognised that to succeed in
an increasingly competitive world they had to become more professional and
they were encouraged to do so by bodies such as the then Institute of Personnel
Management. They took account of new ideas and implemented new practices
because they were persuaded that they were appropriate, not because they
fitted into any sort of HRM philosophy. HRM cannot be blamed or given credit
for changes that were taking place anyway. For example, it is often alleged to
have inspired a move from a pluralism to unitarism in industrial relations. But
Employee newspaper production was moved from Fleet Street to Wapping by Murdoch,
Relations not because he had read a book about HRM but as a means of breaking the
22,6 print unions' control.

What's the same?


A number of commentators have denied that there is any significant difference
578 in the concepts of personnel management and HRM. Torrington (1989)
commented that:
Personnel management has grown through assimilating a number of additional emphases to
produce an even richer combination of experience . . . HRM is no revolution but a further
dimension to a multi-faceted role.

The conclusion based on interviews with HR and personnel directors reached


by Gennard and Kelly (1994) on this issue was that ``it is six of one and half a
dozen of the other and it is a sterile debate''. All that seems to have emerged
from this debate is a distinction without a difference. As Lowry (1990)
remarked:
Personnel work has always included strategic matters and the present emphasis on strategic
issues merely represents another change in the environment to which the personnel manager
adapts by strengthening the competence required for the new situation. Human resource
management is just the continuing process of personnel management ± it is not different.

Lowry's point is significant. It is the context within which people are managed
that is changing and personnel management has had to re-position itself in the
ever-changing environment of global competition, new technology, and new
methods of working and organising work. In the private sector the mantras are
sustainable competitive advantage, added value, core competences and
strategic capability. In the public sector the driving force is ``best value''. Whilst
in the voluntary sector, charities are saying: ``we may not be businesses but we
have to be business-like''. In this situation personnel management has had to
become more strategic but this is simply building on what effective personnel
directors were already doing in the 1970s and 1980s. As Don Beattie
commented in 1998 when he was personnel director of STC plc (cited by
Armstrong, 1989): ``Personnel directors are paid to know what business they
are in, to know where it is going, and to ensure that the input to get there is
available from a human resourcing and organisational capability point of
view''.
The notion that personnel practitioners became involved in strategy
formulation and implementation after HRM was invented is a travesty of the
facts. Perhaps the word ``strategy'' was not bandied around as much then as
now but personnel specialists could not deliver effective services unless they
understood the business context within which they were operating ± where the
business was going, what its needs were. To imply that until they travelled
along the road to Damascus in the mid-1980s they were unaware of the need to
innovate and think ahead is an insult to the many able personnel practitioners
who were doing just that before the 1980s.
Another concept often associated with HRM is that of the HR director as a The name has
business partner or manager. This idea is generally attributed to Ulrich (1998) changed
but was advanced many years before by Tyson (1985) who suggested that:
Personnel specialists as business managers integrate their activities with top management
and ensure that they serve a long-term strategic purpose and have the capacity to see the
broad picture and to see how their role can help to achieve the company's business objectives.
579
In 1993 the HR director of Motorola (cited by Armstrong and Long, 1994) stated
that: ``Basically, I have agreed with my teams that we will be business partners
in each business; we will have the understanding of what is going on to
converse knowledgeably with any of the business people''.
The business-orientated approach to people management described by
Storey (1989) as ``hard HRM'' emerged as a method of responding to and
supporting the enterprise culture of the 1980s. Personnel management simply
adjusted to new demands. More recently the importance of involving and
developing people which is characteristic of current approaches to personnel
management has been emphasised by the resource-based theory of the firm
formulated by Barney (1991). This suggests that competitive advantage is
achieved if a firm can obtain and develop human resources which enable it to
learn faster and apply its learning more effectively than its rivals. An approach
based on this concept will aim to improve resource capability (Kamoche, 1996)
achieving strategic fit between resources and opportunities and obtaining
added value from the effective deployment of these resources. This can be
regarded as no more than putting a label on what any effective personnel
director as manager believed before the advent of HRM. Those who were
business partners or ``architects'' (Tyson and Fell, 1986) were fully aware of the
need to integrate personnel and business strategies, although it is true that
HRM theory places considerable emphasis on the importance of external and
internal integration or fit.
The writer would like to share with the readers three examples from his
earlier experience which illustrate strategic or business-like approaches before
the term human resource management was coined. They are by no means
unique.

Bristol Aircraft
In 1961 the writer was a personnel officer in the Britannia Assembly Hall of
what was then Bristol Aircraft Ltd. The business strategy was quite clear. The
company had to manufacture, sell and deliver Britannia aircraft (the first large
turbo-prop aircraft) faster than the competition ± Lockheed with its Electra and
De Havilland with the Comet. To meet this business need a revolutionary
manufacturing system ± stage build ± was developed. This involved teams of
workers, some of them multiskilled (although that term was not used in those
days) who concentrated on one of the twelve successive manufacturing stages.
To meet this business/operational need, recruitment and training plans had
to be drawn up. The author of this article was in charge of a national recruiting
Employee campaign for skilled fitters. It was successful in getting people from all over the
Relations country but they did not stay ± half left within three months. This was
22,6 seriously holding back production. Investigations into the cause of this
problem included exit interviews and meetings with management, supervisors,
shop stewards and rate fixers (the people who agreed on the timing of jobs or
tasks which was the basis for the payment-by-results system). The message
580 was quite clear: as a result of a stream of design modifications and shortage of
tools and equipment, it was impossible for workers to predict their earnings
from the payment-by-results scheme. These earnings in any case, fluctuated
widely. Simply, the skilled fitters recruited and trained at considerable expense
could not keep their families in funds, so they went home. As a first attempt to
produce a business solution to this problem the author of this article suggested
that a group or team bonus scheme should be introduced, tied to the stage build
system. This met with overwhelming resistance from works management
(many of them ex-rate fixers) and the rate fixers themselves. That particular
retention crisis ended but the problems of wage drift (incentive earnings
increasing at a higher rate than productivity) and dissatisfaction with the
payment system remained.
So another approach had to be adopted which could be pursued when the
author took responsibility for education and training throughout the company
in 1962. With the active support and encouragement of the personnel manager,
John Raimes (no personnel director in those days), a system of what was called
project training was developed for managers. The slogan adopted for this
approach to management development was that it must be ``problem-based and
action-orientated''. It was, in fact, action learning before Revans (1971)
popularised the concept.
The first project was centred on the payment-by-results scheme and the
project team consisted of a production manager, a senior production engineer,
the chief aerodynamicist, the financial accountant and the deputy personnel
manager. The author facilitated the project ± recommending reading such as
Wilfred Brown's Piecework Abandoned (1962), arranging visits to Glacier Metal
and other firms which had changed their piecework systems, and setting up
seminars with experts. The educational aim of the project was to develop a
wider appreciation of management issues and approaches and an
understanding of the processes of modifying and diagnosing management
problems. The operational aim was to expose top management to new ideas
about how to run the payment-by-results scheme. The team reported to the
works director (an ex-rate fixer) and was aware that, realistically, he was not
going to be persuaded to change his views about the effectiveness of the
scheme, although it had clearly been demonstrated that it resulted in
continuous wage drift. However, the team was able forcefully to impress on
him the need to review rate fixing methods and check wage drift, and action
was accordingly taken. The point of reflecting on this experience is not that it
refers to a battle against an old-fashioned payment scheme, which is not
particularly relevant today, but the fact that John Raimes and the author could
have restricted themselves to recruitment, apprentice training and industrial The name has
relations, but chose not to. What we tried to do was to put the business interest changed
above the functional interest by playing our part as part of an integrated
management team. We had to plan what we proposed to do in the context of
what the business was intending to do. Otherwise we would have failed.

Ranks Hovis McDougall 581


In the mid-1960s the author became head of management development and
training for Ranks Hovis McDougall. In its agricultural division the business
strategy was to expand by acquisitions in order to achieve market leadership. It
was believed this strategy would be unattainable unless the many small
businesses ± millers, seed corn merchants and the like, could be welded
together so that integrated business development plans could be put into effect.
Working with the chief executive, two initiatives were launched and
implanted successfully. The first was to establish a conference facility in a
country house that had been acquired as part of a deal. This was presented to
heads of business units as a communications centre in which people could get
together to address business issues and prepare development plans. These
conferences, in which management training was almost incidental, were
facilitated by personnel who therefore played an active part in the process of
formulating the business strategy. The other initiative was a divisional-wide
management audit which personnel conducted to identify managers with
potential to expand new businesses or run existing groups of businesses.

Book Club Associates


Starting in the late 1970s, the author was personnel director of Book Club
Associates for a period of 12 years. As members of the executive board (the
body responsible to the joint owners of the business, Doubleday Inc. and
W H Smith Ltd, for formulating and implementing business strategies and
plans), he and his colleagues were expected to act collectively to address all the
issues affecting the business as a whole. The members of the board were not
there just to represent their own function ± marketing, editorial, operations,
finance or personnel. They made collective decisions. In fact none of them
would have lasted long if they had sat in a corner and only sprung to life when
a matter affecting their own discipline was raised. Thus personnel strategies
were not simply integrated with business strategies, they were integral to them.
If the board decided the business needed to move into a new area such as music,
computer games or a paper-back book club, its members jointly discussed the
people implications, answering such questions as: What sort of people do we
need? Who have we got? Can we develop them to take on new responsibilities?
Can we find them elsewhere, if so, where and how? Do we need to introduce
new performance pay systems, relating rewards to achievements and
innovations? All these questions were answered within the context of an
analysis of the business environment.
Employee Inter-departmental project teams were set up to analyse that environment
Relations and to develop and launch new products. These teams were chaired by
22,6 executive board members, irrespective of their discipline. For example, the
author chaired a new product team responsible for developing and launching
new book clubs in line with the business strategy of diversification.

582 What's different about HRM practices?


Over the last decade or so there has been a plethora of new ideas, fads and
fancies, some new, others recycled. Marchington (1995) commented that the
tendency of writers to glamorise new employment practices ``can encourage a
perspective which views new initiatives as more extensive than they are in
reality, and assume that they are replacements for previous practices in this
area''. As Marchington et al. (1992) remarked, ```new' employee involvement
initiatives come in waves, in many cases with `old' techniques decreasing in
prominence though not being discontinued''. However, warnings by
Marchington and others about ``faddism'' ± unveiling new employment
practices as if they were a panacea for all organisational ills ± are not new.
Drucker (1955) remarked that ``The constant worry of all personnel
administrators is their inability to prove that they are making a contribution to
the enterprise. The preoccupation is with the search for a ``gimmick'' that will
impress their management associates.'' Tout cËa change, tout c'est la meÃme
chose. Forty years later Marchington used the phrase ``impression
management'' to convey the same message.
The personnel practices or concepts that have emerged since the advent of
HRM in the mid-1980s include competency-based personnel management,
performance management, the learning organisation, knowledge management
and, most recently, emotional intelligence. None of these, with the possible
exception of performance management, conspicuously embodies HRM
philosophies. They can all equally well be grouped under a personnel
management banner. But what's new about them?

Competency-based personnel management


The concept of competency burst upon the personnel management scene in the
early 1980s (Boyatzis, 1982) although it did not achieve the present prominent
position until the end of that decade. Academic discourse has addressed the
issue of whether we should be referring to competencies or competences at
tedious length. Practitioners, like the author of this article, say ``a plague on
both your houses'' and settle for a less jargon-ridden word such as capability.
This is done not just because of being irritated by semantics, but, more
importantly, because making terminology an issue clouds the basic common
sense fact that when recruiting, developing and rewarding people, the
following questions need answering: ``What must they be able to do?'', ``What
do they need to know?'' and ``How should they behave in order to be effective in
their roles?''. The idea that personnel specialists were not aware of these
considerations until Boyatzis said let there be light is absurd. Of course
personnel professionals are more sophisticated ± they have their competency The name has
frameworks, profiles and dictionaries, and they claim to be more systematic in changed
analysing requirements (although skills analysis techniques were developed in
the 1950s, for example, by Seymour, 1954). Drawing on the previous case
studies, here are two very different examples of what were in effect
competency-based personnel management activities back in the 1960s and
1970s. 583
In the mid-1960s the Midlands division of British Bakeries, the bakery
division of Ranks Hovis McDougall formulated a business strategy which was
based in part on getting van salesmen to sell more higher-margin cake products
door-to-door. An intensive training programme was developed and sales went
up. However the van salesmen left in droves to go to more prestigious sales
representatives jobs and sales went down. With the help of a local academic, a
detailed analysis of the work of van salesmen was carried out to produce what
was, in effect a competency framework. This set out what good sales staff did
and how they did it. A battery of psychometric tests were then developed and
applied to existing staff. Subsequent analysis of leavers established that it was
those who scored highly in tests who tended to go. Sales managers,
understandably, were selecting the best candidates but this produced people
who became over-qualified for the job. The training made them more
employable elsewhere. The outcome of this analysis was a structured interview
process supported by psychometric tests which identified the appropriate
range of ability. The use of these tests reduced turnover and helped to increase
profitability. Soon afterwards in the agricultural division of Ranks Hovis
McDougall a similar exercise was carried out for sales representatives to
identify and define the different levels of behaviour which could contribute to a
greater or lesser degree to sales performance. This ``competency'' framework
was used for performance appraisal and training.
At Book Club Associates in the early 1980s a problem arose over the grading
of designers and copywriters in the creative department. Conventional methods
of job evaluation did not work. It was clear that the level of contribution was
best measured by reference to an analysis of what creative staff were able to do,
at one end of the scale, designing an entry in a catalogue in an established book
club, at the other, styling and designing an entirely new catalogue for a book
club launch. What would now be called a ``competence framework'' was
developed which not only defined levels of competence for grading purposes
but also mapped out career paths and set ``aiming points'' which defined what
designers and copy writers had to learn to do in order to progress. Thus an
approach to developing a pay structure was ``bundled'' with an approach to
career planning and development ten years before the notion of bundling was
to be popularised (MacDuffie, 1995).
The latest fad in this area is emotional intelligence. This postulates that to be
effective it is not enough to have a high IQ but also the ``capacity for
recognising our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, for
managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships'' (Goleman, 1995).
Employee This boils down to the inscription the Greeks inscribed on the temple of Apollo
Relations at Delphi ± ``Know Thyself'' ± together with a distillation of all the competence
22,6 frameworks and dictionaries produced over the last decade. It is better-
packaged but it is not new.

Performance management
584 Performance management is generally believed to be an invention of the late
1980s and early 1990s. But the term was first used by Beer in 1974 in describing
the introduction of performance management processes in Corning Glass. In its
earlier version, performance management was entirely based on the
measurement of achievements against agreed objectives. But this was nothing
more-or-less than the discredited management by objectives system. Features
of performance management such as integrating individual and organisational
objectives were part of the concept of management by objectives as originated
by Drucker (1955) and developed by McGregor (1957, 1960). As Drucker wrote:
``Business performance requires that each job be directed towards the
objectives of the whole business''. He emphasised the importance of
measurement, which is a basic feature of performance management but
stressed that: ``These measurements need not be rigidly quantitative; nor need
they be exact. But they have to be clear, simple and rational.'' In 1960,
McGregor wrote that the purpose of management-by-objectives should be ``to
encourage integration, to create a situation in which a subordinate can achieve
his (sic) own objectives best by directing his efforts towards the objectives of
the enterprise''.
Of course there have been some changes in the game. Performance
management has moved on beyond traditional approaches to performance
appraisal. The focus is more on problem-solving dialogue leading to agreement
rather than top-down rating (although the partnership approach was advocated
by McGregor in 1960). Another development is the introduction of the ``mixed
model'' of performance in which not only are outputs (achievements against
objectives) reviewed but inputs (levels of competence displayed) are also
assessed. The latter provide the basis for the preparation of personal
development plans leading to self-managed (but supported) learning
programmes.

The learning organisation and knowledge management


The learning organisation was defined by Senge (1990) as ``an organisation that
is continually expanding to create the future''. This somewhat woolly statement
was clarified by Wick and Leon (1995), who described a learning organisation
as one that ``continually improves by rapidly creating and refining the
capabilities required for future success''. The importance of managing
knowledge was emphasised by Scarborough et al. (1999) who claimed that
``knowledge displaces capital as the motor of organisational performance''.
Garvin (1993) linked the two ideas by defining a learning organisation as one
that is ``skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge, and at The name has
modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights''. changed
According to Sloman (1999) the concept of the learning organisation is vague
and inoperable and is therefore in terminal decline, and Burgoyne (1999) admits
to naiveties ± including his own ± about the learning organisation. Ideas, like
products, can be over-marketed and this may be a case in point. Perhaps these
concepts are simply repackaging the theory of organisational learning 585
(Argyris, 1992) which represents the view that organisations are continuous
learning systems (Harrison, 1997) in which there are mechanisms built in
for individuals and groups to access, build on and use organisational capability
(Marsick, 1994). This fits in well with the belief that competitive advantage
is achieved by enhancing resource capability and it is helpful to have a
clear expression of a concept as a basis for action (packaging has its uses,
as long as it explains rather than disguises the nature of the product). But
effective organisations have been doing this for years without labelling it ±
they echo M. Jourdain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (Moliere, 1670) who said
``Good heavens! For more than 40 years I have been speaking prose without
knowing it''.
This situation in Book Club Associates (BCA) in the 1970s and 1980s
illustrates how learning organisations existed before the term was invented.
The business strategy was to become the market leader in book clubs and the
chief executive in the 1970s, Tony Gould-Davies, recognised that this was
simply a matter of being better than anyone else at recruiting members,
selecting books, selling to members and fulfilling their orders. He recognised
that there was a lot of ``understanding'', i.e. knowledge, in the organisation and
a lot of data about the buying behaviour of members. This knowledge had to be
shared and the data analysed and disseminated. He focused on the data
analysis first and set up an operational research department whose sole
function was to study the data and distribute it in order to inform marketing
and operational decisions. His successor, Stan Remington, enhanced this
approach by ensuring that operational research data was used. At board
meetings and marketing conferences he insisted that the market leadership
which the business had now achieved could only be sustained if BCA made
effective use of its understanding and expertise. He vigorously challenged
people to explain what they had learned from a successful approach such as a
new advertising style ± why it was successful and how that success could be
repeated in the future. He would be angry with people who came up with ideas
that they had clearly not thought through in the light of an understanding of
previous experience. He held management and marketing conferences and set
up project teams to analyse experience and develop new initiatives. This was
all done without any reference to the concepts of the learning organisation or
knowledge management. The role of HR in all these processes was to facilitate
the dissemination of learning through workshops, projects and conferences
and, later, to take responsibility for coordinating the preparation of business
plans which incorporated the outcome of the learning activities.
Employee Conclusion
Relations The development of personnel/human resource management over the last
22,6 twenty years has been evolutionary. There has been no major discontinuity or
changes to the paradigm. Although brought in from the USA, human resource
management was not a brave new world. True, different perspectives emerged,
but they developed through an understanding of the progress that had been
586 made in the past and an assessment of likely directions in the future. This
assessment was conducted in the light of an appreciation of the changes in the
business and economic contexts to which personnel management has to
anticipate and respond.
The concept of HRM has been severely criticised ± mysteriously, by Keenoy
and Anthony (1992) who asserted that HRM can be regarded as an ``archetypal
and unredeemable Jamesonian post-modernist cultural product'', and
ferociously by Hart (1993) who believes that the whole concept of HRM is
``amoral and anti-social, unprofessional, reactive, uneconomic and ecologically
destructive'. It is said by Legge (1989; 1995) to be full of internal contradictions,
such as problems over commitment, and rhetoric ± managements may claim
that they are adopting a new approach but reality is different. To some HRM is
pernicious, to others it simply does not work. But as Guest (1999) points out,
these views are contradictory ± how can the practice of HRM be evil if it doesn't
happen?
The problem with HRM is that it is a construct largely invented by
academics and popularised by consultants. Some managements have always
preferred a unitarist approach and have exploited their workers ± HRM may
have provided a language to justify that approach but was not responsible for
it. Practitioners who read only a small proportion of the huge range of academic
literature on HRM ± the HRM industry ± must wonder what it is all about.
``What's in a name?'' we say; ``Does it matter a jot what we call it?''. ``isn't it more
important to concentrate on what we do?'', ``How does all this philosophical
discourse help us?'' What we observe is that when academics produce lists of
``HRM practices'' they look suspiciously like the personnel practices we grew up
with. The research conducted by Guest (1999) on workers' reactions to HRM
referred to the following HR practices: opportunities to express grievances,
opportunities to benefit from training, information on business issues, single
status, effective systems for dealing with bullying and harassment, serious
attempts to make jobs interesting and varied, promotion from within, employee
involvement, stated policies for avoiding compulsory redundancies, paying for
performance, profit sharing, and use of attitude surveys. Any or all of these
practices, with the possible exception of no compulsory redundancies, could,
and did, exist in reasonably progressive firms before HRM appeared on the
scene. What is so unique about them that they have to be dignified by being
paraded under an HR banner unless HRM is simply being used as a synonym
for personnel management?
As theory, HRM has little or nothing to offer personnel professionals. Indeed
its language, however propagated, can cause a rift between general business
management and the personnel function. Naturally, personnel people are The name has
interested in the evidence that progressive personnel practices contribute to changed
improved business performance (Huselid, 1995; Patterson et al., 1997) but they
are more interested in establishing what practices or bundles of practices are
likely to be most effective in their organisations. If they are assured that
bundling is a good thing, what should they do about it? If they are told (Gratton
et al., 1999) that there is a gap between HR rhetoric and the reality in many 587
businesses, they are interested in bridging that gap (and, incidentally, Gratton
et al. provide no guidance on how this could be done). If they are informed that
they should be strategic, they want to know what that means in practice and
how they can act as effective strategists. Generating and disseminating case
study material of what works and why it works is the most important
contribution that can be made by academics, the Chartered Institute of
Personnel and Development and management consultants.
Good practitioners ± and there are a lot of them about ± do not simply want
prescriptions. They do need explanations and illustrations of how things do
and do not work. They can think for themselves but they will benefit from
information about interesting developments and good practices whether or not
they are described as HR practices. What they are called is irrelevant. What
matters is what they are and how they work. Above all, practitioners want to
build on success. They know what worked well in the past but they are aware
that the context is changing continuously. They want to know what is likely to
work well in the future. They accept the contention of Purcell (1999) that: ``We
need to be much more sensitive to processes of organisational change and
avoid being trapped in the logic of rational choice''. This means that
practitioners must be aware of evolving business needs and how new ideas and
good practice might fit those needs, however they are described. In its
essentials the game has remained the same but they way it is being played has
altered. Whether or not the name has changed is immaterial. New practices are
developed and operated individually or ``joined up'' because they meet the needs
of the situation. What matters is what works.

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Employee
Relations Abstracts from the wider
22,6 literature
``The name has changed but has the game
590 remained the same?''
The following abstracts from the wider literature have been selected for their special relevance to
the preceding article. The abstracts extend the themes and discussions of the main article and act
as a guide to further reading.
Each abstract is awarded 0-3 stars for each of four features:
(1) Depth of research
(2) Value in practice
(3) Originality of thinking
(4) Readability for non-specialists.
The full text of any article may be ordered from the Anbar Library. Contact Debbie Brannan,
Anbar Library, 60/62 Toller Lane, Bradford, UK BD8 9BY. Telephone: (44) 1274 785277; Fax:
(44) 1274 785204; E-mail: dbrannan@mcb.co.uk quoting the reference number shown at the end
of the abstract.

A chameleon function? HRM in the 1990s


Hope-Hailey, V., Gratton, L., McGovern, P., Stiles, P. and Truss, C.
Human Resource Management Journal (UK), Vol. 7 No. 3 97: p. 5 (14 pages)
Looks at the assumptions that underpinned the models of human resource
management developed in the 1980s in the UK, and notes that these are still
currant ± the human resource literature continuing to advocate that human
resource management should be integrated with business strategy;
responsibility for human resource issues should be devolved to line managers;
and human resource management should be able to demonstrate its contribution
to the organization's business performance. Despite this unanimity, questions
whether these objectives have been achieved. Reports research from the Leading
Edge Forum research project, set up by Glaxo (pharmaceuticals), Citibank
(investment banking), Hewlett Packard (computers), W H Smith (retailers),
Lloyds Bank, BT (telecommunications), KJS (fast-moving consumer goods) and
an NHS trust, which looked at these companies' human resource strategies, and
finds a diversity of practice that indicates that human resource management no
longer conforms to the 1980's models. Argues that the way that human resource
management is practised varies according to the needs and culture of the
organization, and as such, conforms to no particular stereotype.
Theoretical with application in practice
Indicators: Research implications: ** Practice implications: **
Originality: * Readability: *** Total number: ********
Reference: 26BC342
Cost: £18 (plus VAT)
Best practice and best fit: chimera or cul-de-sac? (human resource The name has
management) changed
Purcell, J.
Human Resource Management Journal (UK), 1999 Vol. 9 No. 3: p. 26
(16 pages)
Evaluates the claims made for a ``best practice'' approach to human resource
management, often called high commitment management, that promote it as
591
being universally applicable and likely to result in improved organizational
performance. Questions the research that is used to back these claims,
discussing the flaws in the arguments that link human resource management
to organizational performance and business strategy. Identifies the limitations
within the research, suggesting that it neglects the other organizational
processes that might also be at work within organizations and fails to identify
the organizational circumstances in which particular human resource
management practices are successful. Also criticizes the contingency/best fit
approach that links human resource systems to operational strategies. Sees the
search for best practice as a cul-de-sac and the idea of contingency/best fit as a
chimera. Instead, identifies the analysis of how and when human resource
factors affect organizational change as a more fruitful line of research.
Wholly theoretical
Indicators: Research implications: *** Practice implications: *
Originality: ** Readability: ** Total number: ********
Reference: 28AY995
Cost: £24 (plus VAT)

Evolution and current status of university HR programmes


Kaufman, B.E.
Human Resource Management (USA), Summer 1999 Vol. 38 No. 2: p. 103
(8 pages)
Relates the history of human resource management in the USA from the 1920s,
when it first emerged. Identifies a split, even in these early days, between the
approach to industrial relations which centred on ``scientific'' people
management, the provision of welfare benefits, training and non-union
employee consultation, and the approach which recognized the right of workers
and the wider community to have a say in the management of the organization,
through recognition of trade unions and the establishment of protective
employment laws. Believes this split is essential for understanding the
development of human resource education within US universities. Outlines
the development of human resource management programmes in the
universities through to the 1990s, setting out how the emphasis within them
has shifted as the focus on industrial relations has moved towards personnel
management and then towards human resource management. Charts the
factors that have influenced these shifts. Assesses the current status of
Employee university-taught human resource management programmes, indicating their
Relations strengths and weaknesses.
22,6 Theoretical with application in practice
Indicators: Research implications: * Practice implications: **
Originality: ** Readability: *** Total number: ********
592 Reference: 28AT628
Cost: £18 (plus VAT)

Human and inhuman resource management: saving the subject of


HRM
Steyaert, C. and Janssens, M.
Organization (UK), May 1999 Vol. 6 No. 2: p. 181 (18 pages)
Criticizes the literature on human resource management as being too oriented
towards normative models and too dependent on ``best practices'' and
theoretical frameworks borrowed from other disciplines. Demonstrates this by
reviewing the literature on human resource management and pointing to its
reliance on organizational psychology, strategic management theory and best
practice models such as total quality management. Calls for a more reflexive
approach to the question of what human resource management is and what it
does. Looks at the different theoretical approaches that can be taken to human
resource management to understand their value and to develop new ways of
theorizing about human resource management. Considers a Foucauldian
perspective on human resource management before turning to the potential of
creating concepts in which the nature of human resource management can be
explored, reflected on and developed into further concepts. Focuses on the
concept of the ``in/human'' of human resource management, exploring how
``human'' is conceived in this context and what is excluded.
Wholly theoretical
Indicators: Research implications: *** Practice implications: *
Originality: ** Readability: * Total number: *******
Reference: 28AR206
Cost: £18 (plus VAT)

Similarities and differences in European conceptions of human


resource management: towards a polycentric study
Clark, T. and Pugh, D.
International Studies of Management & Organization (USA), Winter
1999-2000 Vol. 29 No. 4: p. 84 (17 pages)
Adopts a polycentric approach to ascertain variation in concepts of human
resource management (HRM) between seven European countries. Underlines
that the study focuses on HRM concepts not practices, spells out the
shortcomings of previous ethnocentric studies. Conducts the study by
comparing, analysing, and checking the content of 10,000 word essays on The name has
HRM concepts written, on request, by academics from the seven European changed
countries. Identifies common elements of competitive advantage acquisition,
decentralization of HRM issues from state to firm and from specialist to line,
and integration of HRM into business strategy. Indicates differences between
the countries in perceiving HRM as separate specialism, e.g. Spain has yet to
see HRM as a contributory factor in effective company management, suggests 593
that variation in trade union influence creates significant national variation in
perceptions of HRM concepts. Concludes that international pressures will drive
countries and companies to adopt similar HRM concepts, regulation and
practice.
Comparative/evaluation
Indicators: Research implications: ** Practice implications: **
Originality: ** Readability: ** Total number: *******
Reference: 29AT354
Cost: £18 (plus VAT)

Of believers, atheists and agnostics: practitioner views on HRM


Grant, D. and Oswick, C.
Industrial Relations Journal (UK), Sep 1998 Vol. 29 No. 3: p. 178 (16 pages)
Canvasses the views of UK practitioners in human resource management/
personnel management on whether human resource management (HRM) exists
as something distinct from personnel management, or if it is a fancy title for the
same thing. Uses a religious metaphor to describe the range of opinions
encountered ± believers to denote those who believe that HRM is distinct from
personnel management; atheists for those who do not; and agnostics for those
who are undecided. Presents the results of the survey, finding that just over 50
per cent could be categorized as believers; 39 per cent as atheists; and nearly 13
per cent as agnostics. Analyses these responses to understand why the
practitioners arrived at their conclusions. Finds a link between membership of
the UK's Institute of Personnel and Development and the belief in HRM ± the
believers and undecideds being far more likely to be members of the Institute
than those who felt that HRM and personnel management were the same.
Concludes that there are deep divisions among the practitioners on the issue of
HRM versus personnel management. Discusses the link between belief in HRM
and membership of the Institute of Personnel and Development, raising the
possibility that the Institute is promoting HRM and garnering support for it
among its members. Considers why and how this could happen.
Theoretical with application in practice/Survey
Indicators: Research implications: ** Practice implications: **
Originality: * Readability: *** Total number: ********
Reference: 27AX243
Cost: £24 (plus VAT)

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