Every day we go to work and we will cross path with someone who works for HR or if we walk pass HR. We get a bit nervous especially if we get a call from HR. Don’t you ever wonder, what they really do, what goes on in HR office or what is HRM or Human Resources Management. Yes, we all know they fire and hire people but do we really know the functions of HRM?
Bakke (1996) wrote that; “The general type of activity in any function of management…is to use resources effectively for an organizational objective…The function which is related to the understanding ,maintenance, development, effective employment, and integration of the potential in the resource of ‘people’ I shall call simply human resources function.”
So, what is HRM? According to Heathfield, Human Resource Management (HRM) is the function within an organization that focuses on recruitment of, management of, and providing direction for the people who work in the organization.
Most pundits claim that HR shall be more effective in case of appropriate integration with specific organizational and environmental context, (Purcell and Boxall, 2000). Individuals such as Ferna´ndez & Sa´nchez (2005) are said to have grouped the contingency relationship under three generic categories namely: strategic, environmental and organization variable. Furthermore, they pointed out best HR practices that will best fit the business strategy and would yield increased organization performance (Niniger, 1980). Organizational variable like size, structure, technology, (Jones, 1984) internal political relationships (Pfeffer and Cohen, 1984) and environmental variables like labor, technological change, competition and macro-economics (Kanter, 1983,) all the above mentioned people have made an impact on organizational strategy in HR.
This shows that resource, capabilities and behavioral theory...