Human resources Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 3

Human resources - Essay Example On the other hand, human resource management has previously been defined as the act of managing an organizations workforce and is responsible for attracting, selecting, training, assessing and the rewarding the workers (Price, 2011). The field of human resource management is also responsible for overseeing an organization’s culture in addition to its leadership as it ensures they comply with the set labor and employment regulations (Aswathappa, 2009). Storye provided numerous dimensions offering various difference points between the concepts of personnel management and human resource management. This paper reviews and discusses some of these dimensions in regards to how they have impacted upon an organization’s structure and culture. Storye suggested that personnel management and human resource management differ in terms of the nature of existing relations and their impacts upon organizational structures and cultures. According to him, the nature of the relations can be viewed through two different perspectives which are the unitarist and the pluralist views (Storye, 1992). In personnel management, which is pluralist, more focus is laid on individual interests than is laid on the group’s interest. The relationships that exist between the managements and the employees are merely on contract basis with one party hiring while the other performs duties (Koster, 2007). Alternatively, human resources management follows the unitarist principles with more focus being laid on the groups’ interest (Aswathappa, 2009). The organization’s culture and structures under the human resources management enables the sharing of missions and visions between the workers and the management. These missions and visions are associated to the goals of the organization and help in fulfilling the organization’s and employees mutual interests (Storye, 1992). This implies that the organizations wants are effectively satisfied by the employees whereas the employees’ needs are efficiently satisfied by their organization (Brumfitt et al, 2001). However, under personnel management, the top management of an organization yields utmost power with most of it being centralized (Storye, 1992). The top level managers have absolute power in the process of making decisions with their personnel managers not being allowed to air their views or take part in these processes (Koster, 2007). This impacts the organizations culture and structures since the employees may not have appropriate channels through which they can air their grievances or views regarding the organizations operations (Aswathappa, 2009). The human resources department allows for the decentralization of the control of an organization with power being shared out between the lower and middle level managements. This facilitates the empowerment of employees and the human resource managers within the organization as they play vital roles in making decisions that are shared and collective (Price, 2011). The process is done for the benefit of both the organizations employees and the management (Brumfitt et al, 2001). In other words, the human resource managements focus more on the approaches known as TQM which implies that an organizations management and its employees have shared authority and power