Critically compare and contrast 'hard' and 'soft' models of human resource management.

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Critically compare and contrast ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ models of human resource management.

Human resource management (HRM) initially emerged in the US in the 1980’s and then extended into the UK. (Morris et al. 2000). 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, 1991).

Writers have developed many definitions for HRM; Armstrong (1999) defined it as

‘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 writers 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 writers 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, 1989) 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, 1999)

 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, p. 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 order 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 rhetoric may differ from reality and what may be the right method for one company may not be the right one for another.

The ‘soft-hard’ dichotomy arose mainly from the work of American academics Beer et al (1985) who developed the Harvard model that reflected the softer human relations and the matching model of Fomburn et al (1984) which reflected a harder strategic management influence (Morris et al. 2000). It was in the work of Guest (1987) and Storey (1992) were the terminology of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ was first used. Even though they both acknowledged the division between the two models they incorporated both the hard and soft versions within their own models or theories of HRM (Truss et al. 1997)

When they defined the terms, key distinctions emerged immediately these were that the soft approach was associated with the human relations movement and the utilisation of individual talents in contrast to the hard model which stressed ‘ the quantitative, calculative and business-strategic aspects of managing the “headcount resource” in as “rational” a way as for any other factor of production’ (Legge, 1995).

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Soft HRM is noted to be ‘concerned with people’s behaviour both individually and collectively’ (Johnson and Scholes, 2002) and it can be compared with McGregor’s Theory Y. This is the notion that ‘man will exercise self-direction and self-control in the service of objectives to which he is committed’ (McGregor, 1960, p. 326 cited in Truss et al, 1997). This theory leads to the believe that if an employee is committed to the company for which he works, he will use his own initiative and be self-motivated to work harder for the organisation and in many ways become a core competence ...

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