BRIEF HISTORY OF HUMAN

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN
RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
 HRM – FROM THEN TO NOW

 HRM started from a point, went through a

number of refining stages before its present
form, which could still change with time.
 As humans change, the discipline of HRM will
as well undergo such metamorphosis to suit
the prevailing demands and conditions
dictated by the wider social, economic,
environmental, legal, political and
technological factors.
THE STAGES OF HRM’S EVOLUTION
 The Craft Stage
 Industrial era

 Scientific Management era

 Paternalistic era

 Industrial Psychology era

 Human Relations era

 Human Resource Management

THE CRAFT STAGE
 This was around the early civilisations in Egypt
and Babylon.
 Training was the main focus, and it was done to
maintain adequate supply of craft workers.
 Efforts were made to identify talents of people
whenever they came together as a community
in order to undertake projects.
 Around the 13th century in Western Europe,
craft training had become very popular.
THE CRAFT STAGE (CONTD.)
 Recruits were taken as apprentices and
underwent training for a period of time.
Quality service was closely monitored.
Conditions of employment were regulated by
production methods.
 The craft stage was best suited for the
domestic industries; the master had his
assistants (apprentices) who lived with him
most of the time during the training period.
INDUSTRIAL ERA
 This period was around the time of the
Industrial Revolution (19th and early 20th
centuries).
 The Industrial Revolution earlier helped to
move people away from the poverty of rural life
to factories in the cities, however, work
conditions dehumanised workers.
 Due to the inhumane nature of work during
this era, some activists intervened to assist
those factory workers who were severely
underprivileged at the hands of their greedy
employers.
INDUSTRIAL ERA (CONTD.)
 The nature of work was transformed
significantly in two main ways:
 Subdivision of tasks into smaller bits both at
management level and shop floors;
 Growth in manufacturing, requiring large
hierarchies and close supervision.
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT ERA
 The Scientific Management focused on job design,
selection, and compensation. The name
associated with this movement is Frederick W.
Taylor (1856-1915).
 Scientific Management involved:

 An increase in size of work organisations

 Specialisations emerged at management level and

shop floors
 Growth in personnel work such as staffing

 Concern for role specification, careful selection,

training and placement.
SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT ERA (CONTD.)
 The objective of Scientific Management was
to make work more efficient by analysis of
what was required and the careful selection
and training of workmen. There was also the
emphasis on cooperation between management
and workers.
 According to Taylor "planning should be the
result of cooperation between management
and workers and that a provision should exist
for compensating the personnel with financial
incentives".
PATERNALISTIC ERA
 Robert Owen worked for the welfare of
workers and tried to develop a spirit of
cooperation between workers and
management. Investment in human and
machines.
 He adopted a paternalistic attitude towards
his employees, and regarded workers as
children who must be cautiously guided,
trained and protected. He worked for the good
of workers and tried to improve their working
conditions.
INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY ERA

 Applications of Psychology to business and

industry began around the 1890s and 1900s as
psychologists studied selling techniques and
ways of testing job candidates.
 The father of Industrial Psychology is Hugo
Munsterberg, and his key contributions were:
 Analysis of jobs in terms of their physical,
mental and emotional requirements.
 The development of testing devices for
selecting workers.
INDUSTRIAL PSYCHOLOGY ERA
 During this era, greater emphasis was given to
individual and group relationships in the work place.
 The role of Psychology and Sociology in the
understanding of individual and group behaviour in an
organisation was emphasised.
 Top management personnel began to realise that
human resources are the most valuable assets that any
organisation possesses and that without these, other
resources are useless.
HUMAN RELATIONS ERA

 The Human Relations school of thought opposed

Scientific Management, especially for its
overemphasis on; specialisation of work, tight
systems of payment, and absence of personal
motivation.
 The Human Relations approach emphasised informal
relationships and employee morale as contributors
to organisational effectiveness.
 This approach stressed that attention must be given to
industrial conflicts and dehumanising potential of
Scientific Management School. The main advocate for
the Human Relations approach was Elton Mayo
(1933).
HUMAN RELATIONS ERA
 Elton Mayo and others of the Harvard
Business School conducted experiments at the
Hawthorne plant of the Western Electric
Company at Chicago.
 The experiment ...

 The basic conclusion was that sociological and

psychological phenomena often exerted even
greater influences on output than the physical
conditions of work. Therefore, management
must be mainly concerned with the informal,
spontaneous behaviour of work groups and the
sentiments and attitudes of employees.
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
 The term Human Resource Management
(HRM) originated in the USA in the late 1970s
as a label for the way certain blue-chip
companies such as IBM, Xerox and Hewlett
Packard were managing their people.
 In order to give themselves a competitive edge
over their rivals, these companies managed
their people according four underlying
principles (Guest, 2002)
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
(THE FOUR PRINCIPLES ACCORDING TO GUEST)
 Strategic integration – people must be managed in
a way that contributes to the organization’s goals and
strategies.
 Commitment – people must be managed in a way
that ensures their genuine commitment to the success
of the organisation.
 Flexibility – HRM policies must be structured to
allow maximum flexibility for the organization, so it
can respond to ever-changing business needs.
 Quality – the notion of quality must run through
everything the organization does.
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
 Itcombines the tenets of all other previous
movements and is more comprehensive in the
management of the human resource of any
organisation.
 HRM has now become a profession and has
integrated issues of law, health and safety,
CSR, organisational culture, climate and
politics.