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Showing posts with the label HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

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MANAGING PROJECTS

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Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
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Employment Relations in Emerging Economies: China and India

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The chapter situated the analysis of employment relations in China and India in a comparative capitalist framework, incorporating its critique by critical perspectives. It identified the similarities and differences in the economic patterns of development in the two economies with respect to each other as well as compared with other industrialised economies. It outlined the comparative capitalism approach and its critique before focusing on the challenges and advantages of applying it to China and India. Finally, it reviewed recent research in the ‘second wave’ of comparative capitalist tradition and how this has evaluated and augmented the comparative institutional analysis with respect to China and India. The section on China explored the historical pattern of the development of the Chinese institutional context in which the state-party dominates the economy through SOEs and stateowned banks. Weak corporate governance structures are supplemented by institutions of f...
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Comparative HRM in The Context of Financialisation, Financial Crisis and Brexit

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There are noticeable differences in the way that the employment relationship is regulated in different countries, such that we can identify different national employment systems. National employment systems can be compared on the basis of similarities and differences in the extent and patterns of institutionalised regulation of the employment relationship. Different countries’ employment systems are embedded in and shaped by their wider business systems. Historically, Germany, Japan and the USA have adopted different employment paradigms based on, respectively, social partnership, welfare corporatism and a managerially led model. Each of the three paradigms has been embedded in distinctive business systems that have in turn produced and supported distinctive strategies for achieving competitiveness in domestik and international markets. Since the 1980s, each system has come under intense pressure to change in response to forces that many observers believe are encour...
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Employee Voice

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The topic of employee voice comprises three distinct but related concepts: employee involvement, employee participation and industrial democracy. The difference between these constructs is best understood in terms of variations in employee power and influence. Broadly speaking, there is a continuum ranging from narrow task-based employee input (employee involvement) through to elements of co-determination or joint decisionmaking (participation), extending to full-blown employee ownership (industrial democracy). The topic of voice has a long history. Interestingly, while employee involvement is nowadays ascendant, this is a relatively recent phenomenon. In the past, the field has been dominated by the themes of participation and industrial democracy. The current hegemony of employee involvement can be tracked to the 1980s and the emergence of neo-liberalism and various influential HRM models. While employee involvement is currently ascendant, developments at EU level hav...
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Employee Reward

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This chapter began by outlining seven key objectives and these are revisited here: Historically, the area of HRM that we now recognise and understand as employee reward primarily concerned wages and payment systems and the ways in which these could be used to exert control over both sides of the wage/effort bargain, enlarge the area of managerial control and so maximise organisational profitability. In the contemporary era, employee reward is defined more broadly to include base pay, variable pay, benefits and non-financial rewards. Reward is now recognised by many employers as a key strategic lever that can be used to shape employee behaviour such that it supports and reinforces business goals. Strategic approaches to reward emphasise the importance of matching reward systems and practices to corporate strategy, and integrating reward such that it complements other HR policies and practices. Debates persist, however, as to the precise contribution that reward can ma...
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Performance Management

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There are differences between performance measurement and performance appraisal. Approaches to performance measurement are typically represented in a performance appraisal process. Performance appraisal has limitations that result in part from the many competing aims it seeks to achieve. The ethics and probity of performance appraisal have been questioned, and some have represented it as a management tool that enables managers to monitor and engage in constant surveillance of their employees. Information and communication technology will change the nature and scope of performance management. Effective performance management will need to address changes in organisational structure and composition, in particular, in relation to an increasingly global and competitive market and a diverse and ageing workforce. In the future, performance management will be less about individual performance and more about how current performance mitigates the damage of past performance. ...
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Employee Engagement

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This chapter has illustrated the complex nature of employee engagement. It has demonstrated the extent to which it is a managed workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and at the same time able to enhance their own sense of well-being. In broad terms, it can be understood as cognitive, emotional and physical role performance characterised by absorption, dedication and vigour, and dependent upon the psychological conditions of meaningfulness, safety and availability. CIPD defined the drivers of employee engagement as having opportunities to feed your views upwards, feeling well-informed about what is happening in the organisation and believing that your manager is committed to your organisation. a)     The IES concluded that the main driver of engagement is a sense of feeling valued and involved. The main components of this are said to b...
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The Employment Relationship and Employee Rights at Work

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This chapter examined the employment relationship and its regulation through the contract of employment under three key themes. It then examined some of the ‘hot topics/current issues’ within the legal regulation of the employment relationship and sought to link them to contemporary HR practice. Formation Distinguishing contractual and statutory employment rights a)     All employees have a contract of employment. b)     All employees are protected by some statutory rights – these include day one rights and other rights that require some qualifying length of service. T he contract of employment a)     Employment contracts are contracts of personal service between an employer and an employee. b)     Employment contracts are based on the theory of market individualism, where individuals are seen as rational and self-interested. c)     Employment contracts are subject to the common law. d) ...
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