Going being Taylorism — The contribution of the Human Relations School to the developement of International HR Management

Within the field of HRM it is generally accepted, that there is a number of social-based institutional factors, that influence on organisation policy and it’s practices and postures. These institutional particularities have their origin in national business systems and reflect the impact of such factors as historical aspects of industrialisation, the political system and traditions, labour, product and capital markets, education e t.c. Such differences lead to difference in management and business traditions and result into the development of distinctive management cultures and value systems.

Finally, these three models could be shortly described as following theses:

Market forces from convergence in HRM approaches towards a US model of HRM.

Pan-European industrial forces generate a convergence in HRM styles among European companies towards a universal European model of HRM which is dramatically different from that of the US model

Fundamental differences between European countries mean either continuing divergence or no convergence in HRM.

HRM and corporate culture. As it was said, the scientific management approach was seriously questioned by American management practitioners. Despite of chronic economic difficulties that USA experienced especially in comparison with the success of Japan, in 1980s it became received wisdom that Japanese firms were surpassing their American counterparts not only in terms of price, but also in terms of quality. The attempt to discover the sources of excellence lead to examination of highly successful organisations, that resulted into derivation of 8 cultural values that were viewed as significant.

Characteristics of the excellent organisation

Bias for action: managers are expected to make decisions even if all the facts are not available

Stay close to the customer: customers should be valued over everything else

Encourage autonomy and entrepreneurship: the organisation is broken into small, more manageable parts and those are encouraged to be independent, creative and risk-taking

Encourage productivity through people: people are the organisation’s most important asset and the organisation must let them flourish.

Hands-on management: managers stay in touch with business activities by wandering around the organisation and not managing from behind closed doors

Stick to the knitting: reluctance to engage in business activities outside of the organisation’s core expertise.

Simple form, lean staff: few administrative and hierarchical layers and small corporate staff.

Simultaneously loosely and tightly organised: tightly organised in that all organisational members understand and believe in the organisation’s values. At the same time, loosely organised in that the organisation has lower administrative overheads, fewer staff members and fewer rules and procedures.

S o, what is the future of HRM? W hat should it’s future directions be? W

e have entered the age of non-stop human innovation, where our race goes to the agile and the inventive. H uman resources, physical resources and capital in this conditions are vulnerable as never before. T he future of HRM is nothing less than to confront the dilemma of human and physical resources, creativity and destruction, change and continuity. M

odern corporation cannot be like simply manufactured things that the sales force is then trying to sell to customers. The workplace must be customized not just to what customers are asking for, but to what growing, learning and developing seek to learn, to discover, to express.

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