People Management in an Organisational Context

 Managing People and Organisations

Aim of this introductory blog entry under the parent theme of this blog site 'HRM' is to first introduce the concept of people management.

Management is defined as planning, organizing, leading, and controlling organizational resources effectively and efficiently to meet the goals of the organization's mission and vision. 
Organization is defined as "a system of consciously coordinated activities or forces of two or more persons" (Barnard, 1938, p.73 cited in Mahoney & Gabor, 2010, p.12).

People are an essential part of an organization and people management is "All the management decisions and actions that directly affect or influence people as members of the organization rather than as job-holders." (Henderson, 2011, p.2) and is crucial to the success of an organization

In 1950s workers were managed differently than the modern people management approaches. People management was executed in the same manner as other resources in an organization, for example, technology resources. Workers were identified as a cost and treated as such (a part in a machine within the production line). Personnel management (PM) or Personnel administration (PA) was referred to as this method of managing people that predominately reflected Taylorist (founded by Frederick W. Taylor in 1856-1915) organizational approach. 

HR in its early stages had a bad reputation with the view of it being costly. However as "HR should not be defined by what it does but by what it delivers – results that enrich the organization’s value to customers, investors and employees." (Ulrich, 1998 cited in Henderson, 2011, p.4) is a perspective that led to, in 1980s HRM becoming more favorable. The common wisdom of the Japanese organization work and manufacturing processes and inefficiency of traditional approach resulting from negative activities, for example, disruption to production for financial gains by the workers; led HRM adoption and evolution throughout the years.

The Japanese-style (soft HRM) versus American-style (hard HRM) study conducted by Bleechler et al (1996) was particularly interesting of the method used. Analyzing data collected not only from the Japanese companies and American companies in their respective country but also from American-based companies in Japan and Japanese-based companies in America. The results based on an empirical study led to the lack of support to the well-known difference between American and Japanese style HRM dimensions (formality,  explicitness, time horizons, participation, scope, the frame of reference, justice, and individualism).

Based on my working experience for both American and Japanese based company in Australia, people management was quite different and was not quite straight forward in identifying the people management approach used in the two companies without conducting a survey. However, in its essences both had an HRM approach to the extent of Strategic-HRM. Interestingly in the American affiliate, working in two different departments the people management was quite distinct within the same company.

In addition to the research study done investigating organizations between countries; comparing against the ideal types of 'personnel management' and 'human resource management' with the acceptance of diversion from these ideal types due to other factors such as influence by the country in which it operates; it was apparent to me another modern aspect that needs to be considered (but not limited to) part of the study and that is the modern organizations' needs for acquisition of value-adding companies that might or might not be following the same people management approach. This inevitably leads to a mix of practices among different departments.

Experiencing this mix in people management in between departments of the same company led me to accept the fact that in real life the two approaches in its entirety will be hard to find and as studies have stated by Henderson (2011) "best fit"  between business strategy and using specific bundles of HRM practices varies according to the organizational context.

 

References:
Beechler S., Najjar M., Stucker K. and Bird A. (1996) Japanese-style versus American-style Human Resource Management Overseas: Examining Whether the Data Support the "Facts". [Pre-print] Available from http://lms.esoft.lk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2306 [Accessed 28 December 2020]

Henderson I. (2011) Human Resource Management for MBA Students. 2nd Edition. [Online] CIPD. Available from http://lms.esoft.lk/mod/resource/view.php?id=2307 [Accessed 28 December 2020]

Herath D. (2017) Introduction to Human Resource Management. [Lecture] People and Organisations: Principles and Practice in Global Contexts MN7181, Esoft Metro Campus, 28 December 2020.

Mahoney, J.T. and Gabor A. (2010) Chester Barnard and the Systems Approach to Nurturing Organizations. [pre-print] Available from https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://business.illinois.edu/working_papers/papers/10-0102.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwiNnc2R_ovXAhVEBBoKHffDCdwQFgihATAZ&usg=AOvVaw2q9c0XplsklCEvhOo7ZyNH [Accessed 28 December 2020].