HRM3704 NOTES

Formal HR practices evolved only at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, The researcher McKee has successfully described these paradigm shifts in business life and has also identified the evolving role of HRM function. The categories of change that McKee has identified within businesses can be group^ into four distinct periods: The mechanistic period. - Associated with the 1940s and 1950s when manufacturing was the driving force in industry. Period saw the birth of the personnel/industrial relations profession. The main focus of the HR function was of an administrative nature. Period also saw the emergence of benefit programmes as an area of interest. The legalistic period. - 1960s and 1970s saw an unprecedented amount of legislation in the social and employment areas. Legislation began a trend towards the regulation of the workforce beyond the union contract and company rules. Training and development began to emerge as a separate and specialised area of HRM and continues to play an important and vital role. 1970s, the first HR information systems application (the computerisation of the salary database) was started. The organistic period. - Tremendous organisational change started to take place in the 1980s - globalisation, mergers, acquisitions, re-engineering, and downsizing HRM function faced numerous challenges (e.g. an increasingly diverse workforce and an increase of awareness of work and family issues). Movement towards cost and profit centres became an important issue for HRM, as did the implementation of more command-and-control policies and procedures to save the organisation from failing to deal with the turbulent environment. Period seen as the height of HRM specialization.