Human Resource Strategies [antikvár]

Introduction Graeme Salaman In this volume we present a selection of what we regard as the best and most interesting contributions to the growing area of research and activity that is known as human resource strategies (HRS). This encompasses the attempt to identify, and where necessary change, organizational structure, work design, organizational culture, and personnel systems so as to generate the behaviours and attitudes necessary to achieve whatever it is that senior managers intend the organizations to achieve. This approach assumes (with reason) that organizational systems and structures vary; that to some degree they can be changed, and that the forms they take can have a significant influence on organizational effectiveness. The HRS approach assumes that it is possible and fruitful to coordinate organizational structures and organizational strategies. It is therefore important to assess the current contribution - positive and negative - of all aspects of those organizational systems and structures which impact on employees' behaviours and attitudes, and when appropriate to change them in the necessary direction. This seems like obvious good sense and in principle the articles in this volume support this project. But it is also likely to be a difficult and even contradictory project. We would be doing you no favours if we minimized or disregarded the difficulties. This volume seeks to present both the advantages and the difficulties of the human resource strategies approach. It assumes that enthusiasm is not enough: managers are best served by being clearheaded, dispassionate and well-informed. However, it is far from easy to identify the changes to structures and systems that will expedite the fulfilment of an organization's objectives. There are those who, from messianic zeal, short-sightedness or personal interest, will push a particular package of solutions. Paradoxically, they thus merely replace one set of sacred nostrums with another, by insisting again that there is only one best way. Our approach rejects any univer-salistic solution, whether it be the old-fashioned virtues of (much maligned) bureaucracy or the currently fashionable mix of flatter structures, deregulation and devolution. Bureaucracy, with its distinctive features - clear job descriptions, clear lines of responsibility and authority, selection based on merit, career structures, precise rules and procedures, etc. - has more in its favour than is currently acknowledged. These bureaucratic principles make trains run to schedule, keep aeroplanes properly maintained and enable the Open University to function. They also