HRM -MANAGING PARADOX

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  1. International Studies Center

Human Resource Management

  1. HRM -MANAGING PARADOX

  1. “As we continue to operate in an era of rapid change, managers will have to become more skilled in managing paradoxes and competing demands….”

  • Gareth Morgan

  1. Budapest, 11 May, 2005


INTRODUCTION

Modern businesses of the 21st century are rarely just black or white, therefore the ability to manage the paradoxes and live with uncertainty are critical. Most executives find they need to balance between two almost equally good choices and follow-up accordingly. For example: compete or collaborate, teamwork with individual achievement, and firmness with compassion. The ability to change and adapt to the rapidly changing business environment is a difficult task.

Paradox is an event or phenomenon involving apparent contradictory, mutually exclusive elements that are both valid and operate simultaneously. Putting this in other words this event or phenomenon containing opposite ideas that make it seem absurd or unlikely although it is or may be true in fact. Fundamentally paradox is a mental construct.

This list represents some examples of paradoxes:

  • Conscientiousness increases performance but discourages creativity and innovation.
  • Intelligence leads to higher performance, but greater boredom and dissatisfaction. (Training)
  • Learning a task increases performance of that task but lessens the performance of other tasks. (training)
  • A specific goal leads to higher performance but leads to a neglect of other important goals.
  • Rewards for performance increases performance but decreases performance on tasks not rewarded
  • It often happens that not the candidate who scored highest points during testing is offered the position, but someone, who fits the company culture, and organisation and the actual team best
  • The management should consider the trade-off between recruiting employee with high level of experience and advanced skills or recruiting employee with relatively low skills and investing into training and development.

Some of them and other paradoxes are going to be discussed in details in this paper.

HRM AS PARADOX

Human resource management should emphasise the importance of people not only as workforce, but as competitive force in the broadest possible sense of the word. One important lever is to consider employees as experts in their jobs and reap the benefits of their knowledge and experience.

The competent human resource management directly influences on the results of the company activities. As separate area of management, HR has achieved but thus primary activities of HR departments was practically dissolved in different types of classifications, systems, estimations, procedures, etc. Paradox: HR function is perfect on the organization, but absolutely useless as a matter of fact. The researches conducted among company’s top management have identified common trend that HRM employees are far from business activities (Dikanova, 2004). For this reason recently many companies began to refuse to do routine functions of HR, and some transferred a part of personnel management to external advisers.

People-Power Paradox

Many of the firms believed that although their competitive advantage depended on the quality of their people, personnel management was of only secondary importance. This phenomenon is called 'the people-power paradox': the failure of organisations to use their people-power despite realising the importance of so doing.

The people-power paradox, then, is one that needs to be solved. An assessment of the value of the people in an organisation is important, but is also at the centre of the paradox. Put another way, the paradox couples the belief managers have that people are the power in an organisation with an inability to tap this power to any meaningful extent.

People make the difference, and that is why the HR function is prominent within most organisations. But to what extent has HR succeeded in using the potential power of people? But too often, companies have found that the benefits of each initiative are not sustained, or are marginal, or the bottom-line effects are unconvincing.

HR is essential in many ways for company operation and maintenance, but it has not really solved the problem of unleashing the potential of a company's employees. Some management gurus, in attempting to understand the people-power paradox, have even suggested it is impossible for management use the real power of employees. Instead, 'chaos' is seen as an essential ingredient for the emergence of many aspects of worker potential. This phenomenon has drawn attention of scientific society. For example, in his books on complexity and chaos in management, Professor Ralph Stacey (Professor of Management and Director of the Complexity and Management Centre at the Business School of the University of Hertfordshire in the UK) proposes that intangibles such as 'knowledge', 'strategy', 'innovation' and 'creativity' cannot be managed: they emerge as a result of powerful informal and chaotic processes.

Much of Stacey's analysis may be correct as far as the informal and intangible aspects of business goes, but this does not mean that these soft aspects of business cannot be managed. Companies can change the potential of individuals. But whereas early HR initiatives have concentrated on the organisation, managing the people-power paradox requires a refocusing on the individual. This means that managers need to change the focus from aspects of environment within the organisation and the way work is designed to transforming the way the people perceive themselves, their work and the organisation. Managers require tools that can provide both a rigorous evaluation of the value and utilisation of human capital within an organisation, and methods for improving that capital.

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RECRUITMENT & SELECTION

Recruitment and selection is a matchmaking process, in the steps of which the right person is found for the right position. However, several pairs of dilemmas can rise during the process. The options one may make can be equally good, but awareness is important to handle outcomes of the choice.

The very first dilemma in recruitment and selection, whether it should be carried out in-house or should be outsourced. Both of them can be equally good, with different advantages and disadvantages.

Outsourcing recruitment can provide free time for other HR functions, such as HR consultancy within ...

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