Human Resource Management

This research will begin with the statement that years ago, the primary focus of a Human Resources Management (HRM) was to foster a sense of leadership, loyalty, and vision for the organization in question.&nbsp. Although these core fundamentals are still a primary focus of HRM to this day, the fact of the matter is that an evolution has taken place in the way that organizations engage their HRM to differentiate and hone their advantages.&nbsp. For instance, as opposed to previously, HRM currently has a high level of focus upon the social aspects of creating a positive environment, administering to the needs of the individual, and seeking to refine and hone the goals of the individual as well as that of the organization to achieve a greater degree of synergy and symbiosis. Accordingly, there has been much debate about the relationship between Human Resources (HR) practices and organizational performance. Hiltrop concluded that there existed links between HR practice to organizational performance although the evidence was weak. Other authors have made contributions to the body of knowledge by attempting to explain the nature of this relationship. For example, Becker and Huselid proposed a causal model that suggested that HR practice impacts on employee behavior while Wright and Snell posited that HR practice impacted employee skills and behaviors. However, common to all the models proposed by the various authors, is a linearity in the relationships, for example, the model of HR and firm performance proposed by Becker. Conversely, Wright and Gardner suggested “reverse causation” which suggests that as organizations perform better, they invest more in their HR practices. Their argument seems to suggest that performance may not necessarily be driven by HR practice but is nevertheless linked to it. The same authors also proposed the “implicit theory” hypothesis which suggests that the observed relationship between HR practices and the organization’s performance stems not from any true relationship but rather from the implicit theories of organizational survey respondents, i.e. to say it is due to subject bias and not true relationships.