Tzvetomira Nenova A4 Human resource management is based on the belief that human resources are uniquely important to sustained business success. An organization gains competitive advantage by using its people effectively, drawing on their expertise and ingenuity to meet clearly defined objectives. Human resource management is aimed at recruiting capable, flexible and committed people, managing and rewarding their performance and developing key competencies. It is important to stress that human resource management has not ?come out of nowhere?. HRM has absorbed ideas and techniques from a number of areas. In effect, it is a synthesis of themes and concepts drawn from over a century of management theory and social science research. There is a long history of attempts to achieve an understanding of human behaviour in the workplace. Throughout the twentieth century, practitioners and academics have searched for theories and tools to explain and influence human behaviour at work. Managers in different countries encounter similar experiences: businesses expand or fail; they innovate or stagnate; finance has to be obtained and workers have to be recruited; new equipment is purchased, eliminating old procedures and introducing new methods; staff must be reorganized, retained or dismissed.
Over and over again, managers must deal with events, which are clearly similar but also different enough to require fresh thinking. It employs the techniques for strategic management for the utilization of human resources. It focuses on senior managers? concern with achieving objectives and containing costs. HRM is a mechanism for control and the exercise of power by top management. It encourages employee attitudes and behaviour, which are consistent with business goals. We are often not aware that our subconscious as wells as our conscious mind influences our attitudes and the process by which we reach decisions. As a result we may inadvertently take a position on a subject which is not so much a reflection of our own thoughtful process, but more a reflection of the value systems on which we draw, which have, in large measure, been inherited from our parents and the people with whom we grew up. Hofstede have shown that a wide variety of factors ranging from the degree of personal freedom which we find appropriate in our lives, to the ways in which we view intervention by the state in business affairs, are strongly influenced by the national culture. National cultural differences do exist and these are associated with a certain number of shared values.
The Business plan on Management Software Business Sage Ufsoft
Part 1: Background The Business environment consists of a microenvironment and macro-environment. The microenvironment comprises the forces close to company and affect its ability to serve the customers, such as suppliers, competitors, labour market, financial institutions, and etc. The macro-environment! ^0 can provide and overall picture of the variety of forces at work around an organization! ...
These shared value systems influence people?s attitudes in their adult working lives. These assumptions are supported by the results of a number of studies of transcultural businesses, all of which underline the importance of the influences of culture in the workplace. Furthermore, they point to our tendencies to attribute a ?value? to our shared beliefs as a factor, which may lead to conflict between people in transcultural environment. Hofstede?s evidence derives from his work as a psychologist for an American multinational company with operations in more than fifty countries. Hofstede has derived four dimensions in terms of which the national cultures may be compared. These dimensions are: 1. Individualism vs. collectivism: in an individualist national culture people concentrate on looking after themselves and their close family, whereas in the collectivist culture people have broader and more diffuse commitments to an extended family or community. On the whole the Third World countries are collectivist and industrialized countries are individualist. The most individualist country is Australia, closely followed by the other Anglo-Saxon countries and the Netherlands.
The Essay on The Power of Culture Create a Better Future
The Power of culture to create a better future Culture is a word for people's 'way of life, meaning the way they do things. Different groups of people may have different cultures. A culture is passed on to the next generation by learning, whereas genetics are passed on by heredity. Culture is seen in people's writing, religion, music, clothes, cooking, and in what they do. There are four cultures ...
2. Power distance is the second dimension or the degree of tolerance for differences in power in given national cultures. In the context of formal organizations high power distance or a high tolerance for differences in power means in practice acceptance of strong leaders and of centralization. The Third World countries are marked by high tolerance for differences in power together with collectivism, while most of the Western country show up as both individualistic and low on power distance. 3. Uncertainty avoidance is the third dimension. This derives from the fact that the future is by definition unknowable, which necessarily engenders some uncertainty. Societies respond to uncertainty in different ways, some by cultivating a relaxed stance, while others strive to control the future with a miscellany of planning, procedures and contingency arrangements. When the uncertainty avoidance and power distance scores are crossed there is some loose patterning with more of the Third World countries having a high tolerance for power difference and a strong uncertainty avoidance and most of the Western countries having the reverse profile of low tolerance for power differences and week uncertainty avoidance.
4. Masculinity vs. femininity is the fourth dimension. The words are used here in a deliberately stereotypical way. The differences are socioculturally ascribed or determined and differ quite a bit from society to society. So, the countries which Hofstede designates as ? masculine? are the ones which maximize these sex-role differences, and are ones in which ?tough? values predominate ? performance, achievement, making money, showing off, and so on. The ones designated ?feminine? are those where the dominant values, for men and women are those traditionally associated with the female caring role ? putting relationships first, concern with the quality of life, protection of the environment, etc. The most masculine country is Japan. Venecuela and Mexico are high on masculinity and so are the German speaking group of countries -Austria, Switzerland, Germany itself. At the other extreme Sweden is the most feminine country. Understanding of human resource management There are different understandings of human resource management in different national cultures. Of course there is some cross-culture common understanding of the purpose and the nature of the management task. But there are differences of emphasis, priority and understanding nonetheless.
The Essay on Highly Developed Management Business Power
The Importance of Effective Management Management is a process concerned with coordinating and integrating work activities to achieve the goals of a business, with and through other people. Successful management is about achieving goals. Effectiveness is management is about achieving goals. Efficiency is concerned with the relationship between inputs and outputs. Effective management invariably ...
Here is an illustration of this proposition with regard to three leading European countries, and for Japan and USA. It is perhaps appropriate to start with the USA, generally regarded as the home of professional management. The USA developed management education earlier than anyone else did, and on a larger scale than in any other country. What then is the American understanding of human resource management? That it is about personal success and corporate profit. The emphasis on profit is total. Profit is so important that all other considerations are secondary, even some that in the longer term might ensure or enhance profitability. The ethic of personal success is so strong that, it is rewarded strongly in remunerative and other terms. Ambition is universally recognized as ? a good thing?. Failure is more awful than in Europe, because one cannot pretend one was ?not really trying? in the first place. And success when achieved will legitimize whatever you did to achieve it. What was argued for America is not exclusive to that country, but these features are manifest there to a higher degree than elsewhere? Against this background, is the understanding of management different in France? It can be argued that it, that in France management is about the application of educated cleverness.
The overriding assumption in France is that managers need to be qualified educationally, to be capable in the areas of analysis and synthesis, to be good at logical argument. Wherever possible the French define management as an intellectual task, with capability driven by cleverness. Management here is about Technik. Where Technik is the engineering knowledge and craft skills relevant to the production of three-dimensional artifacts. More broadly management in Germany is about the application of specialist knowledge and experience. Management here is about character, social skills and leadership. Management in the UK is more person-driven than system driven. Leaders enjoy high standing, not engineers or specialists or anyone seen as ?narrowly professional?. People with the right human qualities ? social and political skills, judgement and a touch of charisma ? are presumed to be capable of filling roles in a variety of organizational settings. So perhaps the overriding characteristic of Japanese management is its unlikely combination of hierarchy and solidarity. The Japanese do like hierarchies. There are strong norms of deference and social obligation. Yet these hierarchies do not produce estrangement as in other societies, but coexist with a high degree of solidarity, ?teamliness?, corporate belongingness, together with the suppression of individuality and ascertain stoical inclination.
The Essay on Harvard Management Company
Portfolio to correspond to their benchmark, according to the modern portfolio theory (Markowitz, 1952), whose goal is to minimize the variance for a given return. The main advantage of the optimal portfolio allocation lies in its ability to provide weights on how to invest a given amount of money based on a few inputs. Optimal portfolio allocation is easy to implement, yet it faces some issues and ...
One of the prominent features of Japanese management is the practice of permanent employment. Permanent employees are hired as generalists, not as specialists for specific positions. A new worker is not hired because of any special skill or experience; rather, the individual?s intelligence, educational background, and personal attitudes and attributes are closely examined. On entering a Japanese corporation, the new employee will train from six to twelve months in each of the firm?s major offices or divisions. Thus, in a few years a young employee will know every facet of company operations, knowledge, which allows companies to be more productive. Another unique aspect of Japanese management is the system of promotion and reward. An important criterion is seniority. Career progression is highly predictable, regulated and automatic. Japanese managerial style and decision making in large companies emphasizes the flow of information and initiative from the bottom up, making top management a facilitator rather than the source of authority, while middle management is both the impetus for and the shaper of policy. Consensus is stressed as a way of arriving at decisions, and close attention is paid to worker?s well being.
Not only are there often, different understandings of human resource management but there may also be a variety of differences of style, approach and practice. The orientation to profit and success. On the basis of drive and achievement. A traditional hostility to trade unions. Strong devotion to the managerial prerogative. A love of system ? planning, operating and control. A propensity to divisionalize business, especially in multinational companies. A conviction that all problems can be solved. Proactivity ? taking the initiative, aiming high. Professional ? relevantly educated and well trained. Weaknesses in the education system ? a more humble level in primary and secondary level. Direct, explicit, uninhibited, and often aggressive. Americans typically have a good idea of what they want and pursue their goals with force and consistency. When you come away from a meeting in an American company you know: what is going to happen; who is going to do what; how long they have got to do it; by what day the group will come together again to review progress. Appeal to their self-interest.
The Essay on Project Management culture Analysis Paper
Project Management (Culture Analysis Paper) Successful project management depends on many various variables among which it is possible to point out the information technology as a component of knowledge management. Daveport and Prusak use the example of telephone, noting that having a telephone does not guarantee or even encourage brilliant conversation. For a good knowledge management, ...
Technik, cpecialism, expertise. On basis of specialist credentials. The subject studied, the content of the degree including optional subjects, the nature of training and the content of prior job experience are all more important than in Anglo-Saxon countries. On the basis of relevant knowledge and experience, and what the Germans call Leistung, or demonstrable achievement. Higher relative status of the technical functions. Importance attached to specialist knowledge and experience. The cult of Leistung. Labour relations, through: simple structure of wage bargaining; well- disciplined trade unions; respected legal framework for industrial relations; system of industrial democracy. Failure to develop American style professionalism. German companies more person-driven than system driven. Non-deferential ? much more outspoken and more critical upwards. Strong on sheduling and operational detail. Find the right philosophic starting point. Sell them an operational imperative. Overwhelm them with expertise. Appeal to their desire to be seen as capable and people that can do things.
The Essay on Factors That Project Company Culture
These positive behaviors are expressed through the employee’s customer service. For businesses, customer loyalty and retention are most important. To retain these things, employees would greet customers, converse with them through small, listen, etc. These simple techniques are what give a company its culture. The company’s behavior patterns establish its culture and may be perceived as favorable ...
Be well informed, serious and competent. At the same time is something different. A traditional vein in of anti-industrialism. Industry redefined as a set of organizations that need leaders. On the basis of general credentials pertaining to personality, social and political skills. Semi-American: ?short-termist?; reliance on equity finance rather than debt finance, i.e. share issue not bank borrowings; profit is only possible raison d?etre. Breaking down companies into profit centers, whose performance is manageable and measurable? Humor important in British culture generally, and in British companies where it performs a variety of functions ? tension release, tension reduction, selling unpalatable proposals, establishing group solidarity, coping with failure, and as a way of offering criticism upwards without violating deference requirements Common sense is supreme value. Managing upwards (i.e. managing your superiors) and sideways (i.e. managing people in other departments whose cooperation you need but over whom you have no authority).
Improvisation and ?firefighting?. Manufacturing generally compared especially with the Germans. Production and technical standards have low standing. Delivery performance poor. A certain amount of contrived vagueness. Marked by socio-political subtlety. Superficially deferential; dislike of open conflict. Humor important: a general lubricant, and a way of making criticism acceptable. Appeal to their sense of social duty. (It is expected of you, people will be offended if you do not do it.) With display of effortless superiority. Note the British are not impressed by displays of cleverness, logical consistency, size and scale, or what they see as humourless efficiency. The esteem in which formal evaluation is held. Recruitment is in terms of intellectual elitism and educated cleverness. Note that France is unusual in having a set of institutions, the grandes ecoles, that are above the universities and are entered via nationally competitive examination usually taken two years after the baccalaureate, which only admits to universities. Advancement is on similar basis.
Someone recruited from a name grande ecole is described as being on the voie royale, the royal route to success ? people in this position may well have their careers managed to give them the necessary breadth and the right experience labels. Closer contact, better mutual understandin Intellectual virtuosity. Executive job adverts in France stress educational attainment and often asks for qualities. There has also been a patriotic side to French business since the Second World War. Growth, national glory, repelling ?the American challenge? is ends in themselves. Everything deriving from intellectual, such as: analysis; formulation; formal communication; design virtuosity; numerically; personal presence. Imagination and creativity. The clue is, if it does not help to be clever there is no particular reason to expect French managers to be good at it. Individualism tends to undermine teamwork. Because of impersonality norms it is difficult for French managers ?to get close to people? to motivate and communicate face to face, to energize and change to the corporate culture. Meetings are an opportunity to display verbal style and cleverness. Boss/Chairman may be more inclined to give expose than to inaugurate discussion. Meetings often explore ideas rather than construct shekels (Americans doing business in France find it maddening).
Criticism accepted if cast in rational, logical form. Present them with logically irresistible deductions from first principles. Appeal to their idiosyncratic genius. And if that fails, get le responsible to give them orders. Be clever than they are, with as much style and culture generale. Hierarchy combined with solidarity/ cohesion. Management seen as process, not a series of discrete decisions. Competitive and elitist. Name companies recruit young managers for life from top universities; much emphasis on company induction programs. Managers treated as generalists and circulated through variety of posts, at least on the non-technical side. On the basis of a mix of seniority and ability, with ability increasingly counting for more the higher up one goes. Ability matters but can not be paraded. The group reigns supreme, and owes deference only to seniors. A diffusely cooperative relationship between government and industry. Again rather complex diffuse ?conglomerates? consisting of a manufacturing company-cum-bank-cum-trading house. Managers have lifetime careers in the leading companies; Leaving is unthinkable, mobility is all intra-company.
Consensus, whether natural or managed. Also an element of stoicism: Japanese workers tend to combine a high level of job dissatisfaction with conformist behaviour at work. Stability of companies, financed by long-term bank borrowing. A committed management, whose efforts are not vitiated by inter-company mobility or internal strife. Good products, high quality standards, attention to technical detail, good job-related training at blue-collar worker level, good workforce discipline, workforce with good basic education. The West is still trying to find out what they are! There is a question mark over originality. The Japanese are vulnerable to the hostility of other nations with whom they have favourable trade balances. Meetings are consensual and solidaristic, and hierarchical and deferential at the same time. Decision emerge, rather than are taken. How to get the Japanese to do things Join them. Become an insider, so that you with work with them and are parts of their consensus. No one has found a magic formula yet. But Westerns say they respond to mixture of patience and courtesy, well-prepared competence and a willingness to become immersed in the Japanese process.
This kind of prior and sympathetic understanding should enable individuals to: know how to comport themselves with people from other cultures; know what the strengths of those cultures are and how to play them; be ready to anticipate and mask possible weaknesses; be alert to possible cross-cultural synergies, where two different cultures together can achieve more than either could alone. At least these different systems could be identified: Europe ? Latin, UK/ Ireland, Continental, Nordic ?Tiger? economies ? Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Korea The following summary sets out some areas of similarity and difference in different HRM approaches. Malaysia provided the clearest case of government intervention to sustain HRM. In fact in Malaysia there is a Minister of Human Resources, whose role extends to the management of unions and of the unemployed. Singapore ? there was early government encouragement of the following soft HRM issues: Total Quality Management, and Quality of work-life initiatives Participation Skills Development Fund ? 4% payroll on training and development was the amount encouraged; 2.3% was actually spent Australia, Singapore, France ? decentralization in progress Nordic, German ? limited decentralization, some re-centralization Variable pays, performance pay and non-monetary packages common in Denmark, South Europe less used in other Nordic Profit/productivity sharing in Singapore Wages centrally regulated to drive manufacturing industry growth in Malaysia Performance pay ? a temporary response to recession (Singapore) Recruitment difficulties (South Europe) Trends ? HR Planning/ Staffing Australia ? 25% workforce PT but 70% of these causal Trends ? Career development Increased retirement age ? Singapore; Australia Japan ? lifelong employment or dual labour market Scandinavia ? gender equity in participation Singapore and Australia ? over 50% female participation Everywhere ? few women in management I turn now to some procedures, which HR Managers can use in preparing managers for cross- cultural assignments. It is suggested that person who will be engaged in cross ?cultural exchanges should be trained to carry out the sort of analysis HR Manager has just performed. Although such cultural audits are supposed to reflect national cultures, not individual styles, it is important to be aware of oneself as the carrier of set of conventional attitudes and behaviours. This step applies more to the information sessions needed by someone on short assignment, who needs to be able to manage first impressions without committing some gaffe. It is strongly recommended that the expert cultural adviser be a national of the relevant country, with some training in intercultural communication. 3. Check the initiative/ program for cultural assumptions The undertaking on which the manager is embarking can be checked, in the light of this knowledge, for any unrecognized cultural assumptions which may impede its smooth progress. 1. Margaret Woods, International Business, Chapman & Hall, 1995. 2. Aldag Stearings, Management, South- Western Publishing Co, 1987. 3. Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol.19, 1995. 4. Hofstede, G., Culture?s Consequences, Sage, London, 1980. 5. Hofstede, G., Cultures and Organizations, McGraw-Hill, London,1991.
