Critical review of HRM essay
07-28, 2015
每个公司把人力资源管理与公司战略方向保持一致,把人力资源战略与更广泛的商业策略相结合。相关理论表明，区分人力资源管理战略方法的关键点是注重整个人力资源管理系统。人力资源管理的研究主要是证明，精细的人力资源管理系统能创造更高的经济价值。这些精细的人力资源管理系统被称为“最佳实践”或“高绩效工作系统”或“人力资源包”或“最好方法”。因此“最佳实践”是指一系列创新的人力资源管理在实践中使用的某些组合,实现共同互利,并且相互影响。
近年来，“最佳实践”的人力资源管理水平，逐渐成为了研究的核心话题。为确定最佳实践人力资源管理的概念，Jeffrey Pfeffer专心于研究一些其他研究人员的贡献，这其中包括在90年代初英国和美国的大多数文献。
Every firm make its HRM to be consistent with its strategic direction and combine HR strategy with wider business strategy. It's been noted, an element that differentiates the strategic HRM approaches is the focus on the entire HRM system.HRM research has focused on demonstrating that more sophisticated HRM system creates more economic value. These complex HRM systems are referred to as "Best Practice" or "high performance work system "or "HR Bundles" or "one best way". Thus "Best Practice" is referred to a range of innovative HRM practices used in certain combinations or bundles, which attain synergetic benefits through an interactive and mutually reinforcing impact.
In recent years it's been an increase in research, and considerable level of interest regarding "Best Practice" HRM. Jeffrey Pfeffer worked harder to identify the notion of Best Practice HRM along with the contribution of many other researchers from UK and US in early 90's.
According to Pfeffer a particular bundle of HR practice can increase company profit and can have competitive advantage. The basic idea behind "Best Practice" HRM is to improve employee's behaviour, lower absenteeism and labour turnover, high productivity etc which is of primary concern to most of organisation.
HR bundles are perceived to be as good for workers as well e.g. employment security, training and development, high pay etc. However, there are studies reports and research has been done that there are doubts to have a precise or general sorts of HR practices that leads to high commitment bundle.
It's also been argued that high commitment HR practice is actually to persuade employees to work hard for little gains. Besides, that there are number of problems with the notion of "Best Practice" in terms of meaning of clearly defined practices and their consistency with each other and whether its universally applicable.
In last few years, many authors have started to see review papers to summarise the contribution and looking for evidence of any act of agreeing on the HR practices that develop the high commitment paradigm and the nature and strength of the link between HRM and performance. They have also compiled a list of high commitment HR practices from number of sources, which are called components or factors of best practice/high commitment HRM.#p#分页标题#e#
Pfeffer outlined 7 practices and further 2 were added by Marchington and Wilkinson, which contributed to the debate about best fit HRM or high performance management. The notion of "best practice" HRM might be familiar to most professional in HRM and IR but it might be worth repetitive the main elements in the list produced by Pfeffer. I will try to illustrate whether or not these factors do actually constitute "best practice" the name might imply.
Employment security can contribute to psychological contract makes to open and trusting employment relationship. Workers expect to maintain their job and if appropriate through internal transfer. Workers are treated as critical assets in long-term viability and success of organisation e.g. in Japanese companies employees are offered some degree of security in return for agreeing to mobility and flexibility in their employment.
Selective hiring can help to achieve human capital advantage and to retain competitive work force by recruiting outstanding work force. It's been achieved through sophisticated selection techniques e.g. according to WERS survey 20 % of all workplace, employ 10 or more people routinely use personality tests and performance tests, which is common in most organisation. Organisations also look for a interpersonal and team working skills in addition to technical ability.
Extensive training is also one of the key factors of best "practice". After having competitive work force organisation try to ensure that these people remains outstanding in their field not only in professional way but also working in team and interpersonal relation. It helps to synergise the contribution of talented and exceptional employees and also is an element in organisational process advantage. e.g. WERS survey about off the job training increased between 1998-2004 particular for technical and professional workers.
Employee's involvement and participation and workers voice is also taken seriously by many organisations. Workers are treated in a positive manner. They are not only informed about organisation problems and issues but also been trusted. Team working provides basis from which to offer their suggestions and contribute to improvement in organisational performance. Workers participation provides management a clear idea for its actions and their opinions have been put forward by employees before decision.
Self managed team is identified by most employers as a fundamental building block in their organisation. It is something which is for as reference. It is the key factor which an employer look for in new recruits. Team working leads to decision making and to achieve of more creative solutions. Traditional regime of work is not effective as compared to self manage work, which leads to employees satisfaction
High compensation contingent on performance helps to attract and retain high quality labour. According to Pfeffer there are two elements to this practice, first, higher-than- average compensation and, secondly, performance related rewards. Employees get an idea to deserve superior contribution. Huselid included two factors, first, the proportion of the work force, that have access to company incentive schemes and the proportion whose performance appraisals are used to determined their compensation. UK study focuses on merit and performance related pay. According to WERS survey, performance related pay scheme operated in 40 % of workplace in 2004 and applied to both management and non managerial staff.#p#分页标题#e#
Reduction of status differences has some of its roots in the practices of Japanese organisation. The main idea behind this factor is that it seeks to break down artificial barriers between different groups of staff, which encourages and support team working and flexibility in workers e.g. in Japanese companies, it convey messages to manual workers and lower grade staff that they are valuable assets who deserve to be treated in similar way like senior staff e.g. staff uniform, shared canteen and parking facilities.
It's been found that high commitment HRM is been more practice in public sector rather than private sector with the exception of two areas, the use of personality test and incentive pay systems. Besides that private sector rarely offer paid benefits' in "work life balance". Small firms also implement high commitment HR policies, and it has the potential to implement in an informal and flexible way in order to retain competitive staff. There is clearly strong support for the idea that size of an organisation makes a major difference to the kind of HR policies and practices adopted by management.
Adopting individual HR practice can easily be dismissed, as nothing more than a short term practice. The combination of certain HR components can make an effective "bundle". Certain minimum number of components' is likely to make "high commitment" HRM, which can be found in a range of different areas of practice such as selection, training and development etc.
It is argued that there is contradiction between different HR practices when combined to form a bundle because of differences between organisations, sectors, and countries. At this point, the main job is to find out the bundle that seems to work and then get all organisations to apply this without deviation. It is assumed that synergies are achievable with the adoption of all practices and if one is missing then it affects the whole system. This approach is named "multiplicative" or "synergistic". It is better to utilise all practices, rather than adopting these activities alone, because each practice is interconnected to each other.
Bundling together HR practices may seems to work but what happens if one of the practices contradicts with the other e.g. employment security is conditional on an agreement that pay rates can be reduced, similarly number of studies in which team working took place against lay-offs and reduced level of pay.
It is argued that there are issues regarding employment security by many authors. According to Delaney and Huselid (1996), filling vacancies from within and creating opportunities for internal promotion is used as proxy for employment security. Pfeffer(1998:183) tends to view compulsory lay-offs and downsizing as undermining employment security and found alternatives to these by proportionately reducing working hours to "spread the pain" to reduce its cost; reducing wages to reduce labour cost; freezing hiring to reduce overstaffing etc. Security is offered if it is convenient to the employer, like with Volkswagen, New Zealand Post and Carlton and United Breweries all earning praise for "downsizing sensibly". Besides that Lincoln electric shred profit averages around 70% of individual employee's salaries and it enabled the company to maintain employment when business falls because "profit sharing fall and labour expenses decreased.#p#分页标题#e#
Similarly if we talk about self-managed teams and team working it is hard to determine to what extent teams manage themselves, and much depends on decisions concerning, responsibility for organising work schedules and control over quality(Marchington,1999). It is also assumed that self-managed teams are difficult to implement in practice. Team members are lack interest to take advantage of the opportunities for greater involvement.
Similarly arguments are made regarding training and development. There are issues that it's crucial to know what type training should be provided and who will be responsible to manage this. Regarding high compensation contingent on performance there are alot of criticism on performance related pay especially in the US. In UK much more critical about the value of incentive pay as it is better to include the whole reward package as it is not restricted to pay alone which leads to organisational performance whether it's on individual, team, departmental etc. Employees involvement and participation is also been targeted of criticism, as its been argued that management has more power than workers, so the employment relationship is not complete and not legally been defined in detail but its only open to disagreement and interpretation on how it is enforced on daily basis.
The proxies suggested by many authors are so wide that it is really hard to compare results. Besides, it is found that these HR practices and its proxies can't work in every organisation or every country because of its different context, environment and cultural differences.
It is also mentioned that there are inconsistencies between the studies, with some ignoring one factor but including another, as we have seen in Pfeffer findings, related to employment security. In opposition to Pfeffer some authors have mentioned employee voice other than that achieved through self-managed teams and employee's involvement.
The study of "Best Practice" HRM also brings methodological issues associated to the factors of HRM. It is found that there is problem in choosing appropriate measures of performance because it varies in organisations e.g. some companies' uses incentive schemes and some use performance appraisals to determine their compensation, turn over, satisfaction profits etc. Few other issues which are associated with the use of these data sets are, inter alia, the exclusion of hard to measure items, contamination from other (non-HR) influences, doubts about directions of causality. The key issue is that there are many HR practices and it is really difficult to choose the right one, and apart from that, the proxies are sometime uses to measures those factors. Using self-report score and different ways of collecting data are the main methodological issues. Surveys are mostly done by WERS and CIPD which are limited to US and UK.
The main objective of this paper is to find objectives and strategies of employer and then search for HR practices which might be appropriate in different circumstances, but "Best Practice" seems to be problematic. Most practices are less "best" because of the critics and contradiction between different practices. Companies are more concerned about it but employees are not that bothered. Besides that it's not possible to implement a particular set of bundle to any organisation because of differences in organisational context, environment, and cultural background and of course different countries. The concept of "best practice" needs to be analysed more systematically and to how it is to be implemented so that it can be beneficial for both, organisation and employees, to improve their performance.
近年来，“最佳实践”的人力资源管理水平，逐渐成为了研究的核心话题。为确定最佳实践人力资源管理的概念，Jeffrey Pfeffer专心于研究一些其他研究人员的贡献，这其中包括在90年代初英国和美国的大多数文献。
Every firm make its HRM to be consistent with its strategic direction and combine HR strategy with wider business strategy. It's been noted, an element that differentiates the strategic HRM approaches is the focus on the entire HRM system.HRM research has focused on demonstrating that more sophisticated HRM system creates more economic value. These complex HRM systems are referred to as "Best Practice" or "high performance work system "or "HR Bundles" or "one best way". Thus "Best Practice" is referred to a range of innovative HRM practices used in certain combinations or bundles, which attain synergetic benefits through an interactive and mutually reinforcing impact.
In recent years it's been an increase in research, and considerable level of interest regarding "Best Practice" HRM. Jeffrey Pfeffer worked harder to identify the notion of Best Practice HRM along with the contribution of many other researchers from UK and US in early 90's.
According to Pfeffer a particular bundle of HR practice can increase company profit and can have competitive advantage. The basic idea behind "Best Practice" HRM is to improve employee's behaviour, lower absenteeism and labour turnover, high productivity etc which is of primary concern to most of organisation.
HR bundles are perceived to be as good for workers as well e.g. employment security, training and development, high pay etc. However, there are studies reports and research has been done that there are doubts to have a precise or general sorts of HR practices that leads to high commitment bundle.
It's also been argued that high commitment HR practice is actually to persuade employees to work hard for little gains. Besides, that there are number of problems with the notion of "Best Practice" in terms of meaning of clearly defined practices and their consistency with each other and whether its universally applicable.
In last few years, many authors have started to see review papers to summarise the contribution and looking for evidence of any act of agreeing on the HR practices that develop the high commitment paradigm and the nature and strength of the link between HRM and performance. They have also compiled a list of high commitment HR practices from number of sources, which are called components or factors of best practice/high commitment HRM.#p#分页标题#e#
Pfeffer outlined 7 practices and further 2 were added by Marchington and Wilkinson, which contributed to the debate about best fit HRM or high performance management. The notion of "best practice" HRM might be familiar to most professional in HRM and IR but it might be worth repetitive the main elements in the list produced by Pfeffer. I will try to illustrate whether or not these factors do actually constitute "best practice" the name might imply.
Employment security can contribute to psychological contract makes to open and trusting employment relationship. Workers expect to maintain their job and if appropriate through internal transfer. Workers are treated as critical assets in long-term viability and success of organisation e.g. in Japanese companies employees are offered some degree of security in return for agreeing to mobility and flexibility in their employment.
Selective hiring can help to achieve human capital advantage and to retain competitive work force by recruiting outstanding work force. It's been achieved through sophisticated selection techniques e.g. according to WERS survey 20 % of all workplace, employ 10 or more people routinely use personality tests and performance tests, which is common in most organisation. Organisations also look for a interpersonal and team working skills in addition to technical ability.
Extensive training is also one of the key factors of best "practice". After having competitive work force organisation try to ensure that these people remains outstanding in their field not only in professional way but also working in team and interpersonal relation. It helps to synergise the contribution of talented and exceptional employees and also is an element in organisational process advantage. e.g. WERS survey about off the job training increased between 1998-2004 particular for technical and professional workers.
Employee's involvement and participation and workers voice is also taken seriously by many organisations. Workers are treated in a positive manner. They are not only informed about organisation problems and issues but also been trusted. Team working provides basis from which to offer their suggestions and contribute to improvement in organisational performance. Workers participation provides management a clear idea for its actions and their opinions have been put forward by employees before decision.
Self managed team is identified by most employers as a fundamental building block in their organisation. It is something which is for as reference. It is the key factor which an employer look for in new recruits. Team working leads to decision making and to achieve of more creative solutions. Traditional regime of work is not effective as compared to self manage work, which leads to employees satisfaction
High compensation contingent on performance helps to attract and retain high quality labour. According to Pfeffer there are two elements to this practice, first, higher-than- average compensation and, secondly, performance related rewards. Employees get an idea to deserve superior contribution. Huselid included two factors, first, the proportion of the work force, that have access to company incentive schemes and the proportion whose performance appraisals are used to determined their compensation. UK study focuses on merit and performance related pay. According to WERS survey, performance related pay scheme operated in 40 % of workplace in 2004 and applied to both management and non managerial staff.#p#分页标题#e#
Reduction of status differences has some of its roots in the practices of Japanese organisation. The main idea behind this factor is that it seeks to break down artificial barriers between different groups of staff, which encourages and support team working and flexibility in workers e.g. in Japanese companies, it convey messages to manual workers and lower grade staff that they are valuable assets who deserve to be treated in similar way like senior staff e.g. staff uniform, shared canteen and parking facilities.
It's been found that high commitment HRM is been more practice in public sector rather than private sector with the exception of two areas, the use of personality test and incentive pay systems. Besides that private sector rarely offer paid benefits' in "work life balance". Small firms also implement high commitment HR policies, and it has the potential to implement in an informal and flexible way in order to retain competitive staff. There is clearly strong support for the idea that size of an organisation makes a major difference to the kind of HR policies and practices adopted by management.
Adopting individual HR practice can easily be dismissed, as nothing more than a short term practice. The combination of certain HR components can make an effective "bundle". Certain minimum number of components' is likely to make "high commitment" HRM, which can be found in a range of different areas of practice such as selection, training and development etc.
It is argued that there is contradiction between different HR practices when combined to form a bundle because of differences between organisations, sectors, and countries. At this point, the main job is to find out the bundle that seems to work and then get all organisations to apply this without deviation. It is assumed that synergies are achievable with the adoption of all practices and if one is missing then it affects the whole system. This approach is named "multiplicative" or "synergistic". It is better to utilise all practices, rather than adopting these activities alone, because each practice is interconnected to each other.
Bundling together HR practices may seems to work but what happens if one of the practices contradicts with the other e.g. employment security is conditional on an agreement that pay rates can be reduced, similarly number of studies in which team working took place against lay-offs and reduced level of pay.
It is argued that there are issues regarding employment security by many authors. According to Delaney and Huselid (1996), filling vacancies from within and creating opportunities for internal promotion is used as proxy for employment security. Pfeffer(1998:183) tends to view compulsory lay-offs and downsizing as undermining employment security and found alternatives to these by proportionately reducing working hours to "spread the pain" to reduce its cost; reducing wages to reduce labour cost; freezing hiring to reduce overstaffing etc. Security is offered if it is convenient to the employer, like with Volkswagen, New Zealand Post and Carlton and United Breweries all earning praise for "downsizing sensibly". Besides that Lincoln electric shred profit averages around 70% of individual employee's salaries and it enabled the company to maintain employment when business falls because "profit sharing fall and labour expenses decreased.#p#分页标题#e#
Similarly if we talk about self-managed teams and team working it is hard to determine to what extent teams manage themselves, and much depends on decisions concerning, responsibility for organising work schedules and control over quality(Marchington,1999). It is also assumed that self-managed teams are difficult to implement in practice. Team members are lack interest to take advantage of the opportunities for greater involvement.
Similarly arguments are made regarding training and development. There are issues that it's crucial to know what type training should be provided and who will be responsible to manage this. Regarding high compensation contingent on performance there are alot of criticism on performance related pay especially in the US. In UK much more critical about the value of incentive pay as it is better to include the whole reward package as it is not restricted to pay alone which leads to organisational performance whether it's on individual, team, departmental etc. Employees involvement and participation is also been targeted of criticism, as its been argued that management has more power than workers, so the employment relationship is not complete and not legally been defined in detail but its only open to disagreement and interpretation on how it is enforced on daily basis.
The proxies suggested by many authors are so wide that it is really hard to compare results. Besides, it is found that these HR practices and its proxies can't work in every organisation or every country because of its different context, environment and cultural differences.
It is also mentioned that there are inconsistencies between the studies, with some ignoring one factor but including another, as we have seen in Pfeffer findings, related to employment security. In opposition to Pfeffer some authors have mentioned employee voice other than that achieved through self-managed teams and employee's involvement.
The study of "Best Practice" HRM also brings methodological issues associated to the factors of HRM. It is found that there is problem in choosing appropriate measures of performance because it varies in organisations e.g. some companies' uses incentive schemes and some use performance appraisals to determine their compensation, turn over, satisfaction profits etc. Few other issues which are associated with the use of these data sets are, inter alia, the exclusion of hard to measure items, contamination from other (non-HR) influences, doubts about directions of causality. The key issue is that there are many HR practices and it is really difficult to choose the right one, and apart from that, the proxies are sometime uses to measures those factors. Using self-report score and different ways of collecting data are the main methodological issues. Surveys are mostly done by WERS and CIPD which are limited to US and UK.
The main objective of this paper is to find objectives and strategies of employer and then search for HR practices which might be appropriate in different circumstances, but "Best Practice" seems to be problematic. Most practices are less "best" because of the critics and contradiction between different practices. Companies are more concerned about it but employees are not that bothered. Besides that it's not possible to implement a particular set of bundle to any organisation because of differences in organisational context, environment, and cultural background and of course different countries. The concept of "best practice" needs to be analysed more systematically and to how it is to be implemented so that it can be beneficial for both, organisation and employees, to improve their performance.
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