Chapter 12 - Human resource roles Flashcards
Personnel function
The HR responsibilities and tasts that are bundled in an HR department and performed by HR professionals
Legge’s 3 HR ambiguities
- Substaintial overlap between personnel management as a set of activities for all managers and PM as a specialist function - who is in charge vs who is the expert
- HR successes are easily claimed by the others and HR failures are easily blamed on the PM and their department
- Tension between the employer/employees needs and the mediating role of personnel managers
What do personnel managers need to overcome the 3 ambiguities?
power and authority
3 viscious circles that block the overcoming of the 3 ambiguities
- lack of power, and HRM is a victim of decision making
- lack of priorities of personel managers
- The personnel department’s inability to authorize collective bargaining agreements CBAs
Conformist innovator role
mainly emphasizing the economic value of employees
HR acts in line with the business, speaks the language of CEO, CFO, etc
and identifies with managerial values and criteria
Deviant innovator role
Balance between economic value and human side of organizing
- identify with different sets of values; takes a powerful independent professional stance
- open to alternatives
Problem-solver role
PM capable of delivering the basic HR practices –> credibility and good reputation for PM department
Tyson’s 3 Weberian ideal types of models
- the clerk of works model
- the contract manager model
- the architect model
the clerk of works model
PM is an administrative support activity with no involvement in business planning; all authority is in line managers
Activities - recruitment, record-keeping, and welfare
the contract manager model
confronting unions with a regulatory system as part of a comprehensive policy network; acting in behald of the line managers
Activities: TU agreements, reactive responding to problems, and day-to-day issues with TUs
The architect model
create and build the organization as a whole
Activities: explicit policies that seek to influence the corporate plan
The personnel function is represented within the dominant coalition in the organization
Carol’s 3 roles
- delegator - enables line managers to serve as primary implementers of HRM systems
- technical expert- comprise highly specific HR-related skills in areas such as remuneration and management development
- innovator - HR manager recommend new approaches in solving HRM-related problems
Storey’s 4 HR Role model
Dimensions: action orientation and strategic (long-term) vs tactical (short-term)
- Advisors - internal consultants (strategy + non-interventionary)
- Handmaidens - primarily customer-oriented in the sevices they offer (non-inventionary + tactical)
- Regulators - formulate, promulgate, and monitor observance of employement rules (tactical + interventionary)
- Changemakers - seeking to put relationships with employees on a new footing (interventionary + strategy)
The most used model: Ulrich typology (4)
Dimensions: people vs process, and strategic vs operational
- administrative expert role - HR profs. designs and delivers effiecent HR processes ( operational + process)
- Employee champion role - involvement in day-to-day problems, concerns and need for employees (people + operational)
- Change agent role - - managing transformation and change (people+strategic)
- Strategic partner role - aligning HR strategies and practices with business strategy (strategic + process)
The HR Competence Survey (HRCS) - 5 domain factors
- Business knowledge
- HR delivery
- Strategic contribution
- Personal credibility
- HR technology
strategic contribution
high-performing organizations have HR profs involved in the business at a strategic level
They manage culture, facilitate fast change, and are involved in a strategic decision making
personal credibility
HR profs must be credible to both their HR counterparts and the business line managers whom they serve;
they need to promise and deliver results ans establish a reliable track record
Must have effective writing and verbal communication skills
HR delivery
HR profs deliver both traditional and operational HR activities to their business in 4 major categories
- designing development programmes
- structure and HR measurement
- attractingg, promoting, retaining, and outplacing appropriate people
- designing performance-based measurements and reward systems
Business knowledge
HR profs must understand the business and industry of the organization they serve, inculding applied understanding of the integrated value, the firms value proposition (how it creates wealth) and labour (legislation)
HR technology
HR profs need to be able to leverage technology for HR practices and use e-HR/web-based channels to deliver value to their customers
What positive relationship Boselie and Paauwe found?
- between HR delivery and the position of the personnel function
- Personal credibility and personnel function
The new HR competence model (6)
- The credible activist
- The operational executor
- The business ally -
- The talant manager and org designer
- The culture and change steward
- The strategic architect
3 levels in the model of Ulrich linked to the 6 domains
- Relationships - credible activist
- Systems and processes - operational executor and business ally
- Org capabilities - talent manager, culture and change steward and stratgey architect
What does the motivation of line managers to implement certain HR practices depend on?
The leeway they get for it
In what cotext HR managers have more leeway for strategic choice and org change?
low degrees of institutionalization
It is likely that change agent and strategic partner roles will occur in this context
Whose statement is “HRM is on the table”?
Jack Welch
personnel managers in the 60s - 70s
reactive, passive, risk averse, not business oriented, not capable of affecting management decisions, not involved in d-m, lack of influence, operating in a vacuum
What are the two essentials to effective HR?
HR delivery and Personal credibility
