Significance Of Human Resource Management Research Articles

Is HRM catching on?

There has been, and continues to be, a heated debate about the take‐up and significance of human resource management (HRM) across the economy. Much of that debate has proceeded at the conceptual and normative levels with very little recourse to empirical data. Reports on findings from two extensive pieces of fieldwork conducted over two different time periods (1987‐89 and 1992‐94), which show considerable experimentation with many elements of the HRM model. Discusses the factors inhibiting a fuller embrace of HRM.

The significance of human resource management: a reconsideration of the evidence

Since the publication of the seminal American texts in the early-to-mid-1980s, we have witnessed several years of debate about the academic significance of human resource management (HRM). The debate has been made difficult by the definitional confusion surrounding the term itself. It would be wrong, however, to dismiss HRM on the basis of this confusion. This paper offers a review of the seminal and important works in the HRM canon. It organizes the literature into two broad strands of meaning. The first sees HRM as a practitioner movement or new pattern of management strategy in employment relations, typically emphasizing employee commitment and union substitution. The second sees HRM as a broadly based theoretical development concerned with the relationship between employee relations and strategic management in the firm. While recognizing the links between the two strands, this paper assesses the academic merits of each approach and reaches a series of conclusions on the problems and potential of the s...