Procuring, training, maintaining and managing qualified personnel within a business organization has taken its place alongside managing other resources such as raw materials. The entire process has been termed, "human resources management, identifying the resource role that individuals within an organization are expected to perform. The field of human resources is replete with productivity studies, time-motion studies and theories based on personal interviews, but managers continue to clamor for ways to get the absolute maximum benefit from their workers. This research examines two books, Strategic Human Resources and Management and Machiavelli, and compares and contrasts their approaches to the area of personnel management. Particular attention is paid to how the two books approach human resources within the General Motors corporation.
Fombrun, Tichy and Devanna collected 25 articles within the parameters of the Center for Research in Career Development at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business. Some of the articles they wrote themselves; others were written by human resources professionals. Two articles consist of interviews with these professionals.
This book is divided into four parts: environment, strategy and organization; the strategic role of the human resource systems; strategic issues in human resources management; and, human resources from the perspective of the chief executive officer (which is where the two interviews appear).
The first part of the book focuses on relationship (or conflict) between manager and worker, and the shifts which have occurred in recent years. Each of the articles in this section was written by one or a combination of the editors. The overriding theme of this section is that increasing productivity through improved management of the human resource will continue to be of prime importance to managers for the near-term. Four human resources systems (selection, apprais...