The Evolution of Human Resource Management

The first 200 words of this essay...

Introduction

In recent years, organisations have come under increasing pressure to change. Much of this pressure has stemmed from changes in the economic environment, such as increasing international competitions, slower growth and, in some cases, declining markets, thereby these force companies to cut costs, lower prices and achieve dramatic improvements in productivity (Sparow and Hiltrop, 1997). More and more organisations have started to focus on the added value of people, processes and structures. This new competitive reality faced by organisations calls on different capabilities. However, which kind of the human resource management has value in the modern organisations? Phelps pointed out the answer is only the human resource actions which contribute to the achievement of its goals. Nevertheless, if the HR actions are not helpful to the organisations, are they useless? In this paper, two parts will be discussed. Firstly, the HR actions do contribute to the achievement of the goals; secondly, the HR actions do not contribute to the achievement of its goals. The full arguments are stated below.

The Evolution of Human Resource Management

Schuler and Jackson (1999) described the evolution from personnel management as a two-phased transformation, the first is from personnel management