Strategic Human Resource Management

Abstract

Human Resource Management (HRM) has become the predominant term to describe the theory and practices relating to the way people are managed at work. In previous times (and indeed even now in some places) other terms have been used which, in varying degrees, broadly correspond. These other terms include personnel management, personnel administration, people management, employee relations, human capital management, industrial relations and employment management. Each of these terms reflects the diverse antecedents of HRM and they also reveal aspects of the differ ent ideologies associated with these approaches. For example, some early forms of personnel management had a ‘welfare’ parentage, others carried traces of a social-psychological ‘human relations movement’ history (Mayo 1949). Each of these traditions reflected a primary focus on individuals and small groups. Conversely, the terms ‘industrial relations’ and ‘employment relations’ reflect the collectivist (pluralist) approach to management-worker relations which, at times and in places, were dominant throughout much of the 20th century in Europe, North America and beyond (Clegg 1979; Dunlop 1958; Flanders 1964; 1970; Fox 1974). This tradition was devel oped in North America and beyond with ideas about mutual gains and union-management partnerships (Kochan and Osterman 1994). The disci plinary roots of the field include aspects of labour economics, industrial sociology, psychology and law.