Human resource management is both academic theory and a business practice that addresses the theoretical and practice techniques of managing a workforce. While the theoretical aspects of the discipline may also be universal, the same cannot be said of its practice. The paper defines human resource management, the theoretical basis of the discipline, business practice and global or international human resource management. Thereafter, the paper concentrates on global perspective or Issues In International human resource management practice.
Human resource management is the strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization’s most valued assets – the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business. The terms “human resource management” (HARM) and “human resources” (HER) have largely replaced the term “personnel management” as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations.
Human resource management can also be defined as the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization. As a change agent, it is concerned with the nature of and regulation of the employment relationship at the level of the workplace ND broader society. The human resource management model emphasizes. The need to search for new ways of working ; The central role of managing in promoting change ; The treatment of workers as individuals rather than part of a collective workforce ; The encouragement of workers to consider management as ‘partners’ rather than as opponents – ‘us and us’, rather than ‘us and them’. THEORY The theoretical discipline is based primarily on the assumption that employees are individuals with varying goals and needs, and as such should not be thought of as basic business resources, such as trucks and filing cabinets.
It takes a positive view of workers, assuming that virtually all wish to contribute to the enterprise productively and that the main obstacles to their endeavourers are lack of knowledge, insufficient training, and failure of process. It is an innovative view of the workplace management, which, asserts that human techniques when properly practiced, are expressive of the goals and operating practices of the enterprise overall. As an academic theory, the goal of human resource management is to help an organization to meet strategic goals by attracting, and maintaining employees and also to manage them effectively.
The key word here is “fit”, that is, human resource management approach seeks to ensure a fit between the management of an organization’s employees, and the overall strategic direction of the company. The basic premise of the academic theory of human resource management is that humans are not machines, therefore, we need to have an interdisciplinary examination of people in the workplace. That is why fields such as psychology, industrial engineering, industrial and organizational psychology, industrial relations, sociology etc play a major role.
