Functional Requisites of Human Resources: Personnel Professionals' and Line Managers' Criteria for Effectiveness

Abstract

A comparative survey of organization evaluations of criteria for human resource excellence and relevance to line organization's needs describing attributes of effectiveness requisite to success in human resources is presented. The relationship between personnel managers' ranking of criteria, their perceptions of line managers' rankings of the criteria and what line personnel organizations actually value, discloses critical areas of agreement among personnel managers in comparison to discrepant perceptions of line organizations' evaluation of priorities for achieving effectiveness. Personnel managers' rankings of criteria for human resources (planning, staffing, appraising, compensation, training and developing, improving work relations, establishing effective work relations, and international personnel management) diverges from perceived and actual line managers' ordering of the same criteria. Objective and subjective differences indicate personnel managers simultaneously overvalue compensation, establishing work relations, training and development, appraising performance and undervalue line organizations' relative priority for planning, staffing, and improving work relations. Findings demonstrate descriptive insight of human resource organizations' extrinsic views and line managers in business corporations' intrinsic evaluations concerning organization efforts to achieve effective human resource management. Survey results highlight, with respect to criteria for managing human resources just how far out of sync personnel organizations are in crucial areas affecting line managements' human resources goals. Concomitant requirements for establishing better understanding of dialectics and more effective dialogue between line managers and personnel professionals in important areas are reviewed.