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Introduction

Note the clear headings and sub-headings and structure of the essay
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This is the kind of
introduction that is needed for all essays
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The essay is divided into three broad sections
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Section two
examines the factors shaping the diffusion of HRM in Irish industry
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The Origins of Human Resource Management
While much controversy surrounds the nature, content and form of HRM, there is broad
agreement that its origins began in the development of Personnel Management
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These include:

(i)

The birth of Personnel Management,

(ii)

The Welfare Phase,

(iii) The Scientific Management School,
(iv) The Emergence of the behavioural Sciences,
(v)

The Labour Relations Era,

(vi) Post World War II, (vii) The 1980s –1990s
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This gives a
‘finished’ look
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The Birth of Personnel Management
A concern with the way in which people are managed can be
traced back to the emergence of the Industrial Revolution in
the 18th Century within Britain
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The Industrial Revolution was to
have a profound effect on the management of labour
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For the

owners of capital, the challenge became one of planning, organising, directing and
controlling the
Note that a space has been inserted
between each paragraph
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The Welfare Phase
By the late 1880s, a lack of economic and political power led to a deterioration of
working conditions and a concern with the conditions within which people worked
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This phase of
development grew out of paternalism when a number of Quaker-owned companies,
motivated by their religious beliefs, introduced a series of voluntary initiatives to
improve the working conditions of their employees
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The entry of
women in large numbers into the workplace during World War I fuelled concerns with
Health and Safety issues
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The Scientific Management School
With the end of First World War and the economic depression that followed
organisations began to largely abandon their welfare role
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A

body

of

work,

known

as

the

FW

Taylor’s

Scientific

Management School of thought, emerged in the US and had a profound effect on the
direction of Personnel Management
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As a result of this Scientific approach, the focus of Personnel Management
shifted towards issues of efficiency, profitability and the design of work systems
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2

The Emergence of the Behavioural Sciences
In response to the highly calculative approach adopted by the Scientific School, a
human relations school of thought emerged in the 1940s which challenged Taylorism’s
belief in formal work structures and the over simplification of motivation
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As a result the personnel management function began to focus
on matching the needs of employees with those of management, through the creation of
informal structures and managerial styles
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It was
not until a number of Dublin-based employers attempted to break the hold of the trade
unions during the 1913 lockout that management and labour began to formally organise
themselves in large numbers
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The introduction of national
wage rounds galvanised the central role that pay bargaining held at that time
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Post World War II
Following the Second World War, the role occupied by Personnel Management
developed and expanded as negotiations became more sophisticated and extended
beyond issues of pay to the terms and conditions of employment
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The 1980s –1990s

Note that the essay is typed using the
standard font style, Times New Roman, the
standard font size of 12 and 1
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By the 1980s, as the Irish economy began to enter an
economic recession, employment retrenchment came to the fore of management
agendas
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For the personnel function, the focus shifted towards issues of redundancy
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What this historical development highlights, and which Stredwick (2000) proposes, is
that the role of the HR manager, and the HR function itself, has changed dramatically
since the turn of the century
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Factors shaping the Diffusion of HRM

By the 1990s, a new concern to develop proactive strategies that would link the
management of employees to wider business concerns came to the fore
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Note how abbreviations are presented
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The
abbreviation can be used thereafter
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Recent reforms of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) regime, the completion of the Single
European Market (SEM) and the emergence of ‘tiger’ economies in the Pacific
Rim have intensified competition across a range of products and service markets
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The creation of the SEM in particular has led to the deregulation of public
utilities, particularly within the airline, telecommunications and transport industries,
and the opening up of the ‘public procurement’ market to international
competition
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In short, the growing intensity of
competition and the imperative of imposing tighter controls on public spending has led
organisations to promote major revisions to their traditional approaches to managing
their employees
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Within the public sector, this growth in competition has resulted in the
introduction of ‘consumerist principles’, which advocates a re-design of services
to make them more user friendly and accessible
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The most significant trend to date is the substantial loss in membership that unions
sustained in Europe during the 1980s
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In contrast to the post world war II period when management
tended to react to more assertive trade union pressure, declining trade union power in
the 1980s facilitated the proactive introduction of major changes to work practices
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Within Ireland during the mid 1990s trade unions began to
develop a new understanding of their representative role
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A growing literature has emerged which suggests that just as the composition of the
workforce has changed, so too have the values of employees or the priorities that they
now seek from employment
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The significance of this
for HRM is that employees have become more responsive and open to HRM objectives
and less content with traditional approaches, which were viewed as rigid and
hierarchical
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Significant changes to the structures of organisations also occurred during the late
1980s, which were to radically alter traditional employment relationships
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This change to organisational structures
saw the responsibility for operational and financial issues shift towards divisional
levels, which introduced a degree of transparency to bottom-line contributions
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Gunnigle and Flood (1990) point to the emergence of the ‘excellence’ literature in
the US as a contributing factor in the diffusion of HRM
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Based on research within top US corporations, Peters and Waterman found that the
management of human resources was key to securing greater competitiveness
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By the late 1980s, many HRM commentators began to claim that Personnel
Management as an approach to the management of employees has largely failed to
achieve strategic importance within organisations
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Associated with this, there
emerged within the US during the 1980s a number of new models of workplace
management that advocated a more proactive and individualistic approach
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The Difference between Personnel Management and HRM

Much of the discussion that dominated this subject area in the late 1980s centred on
defining HRM and whether it constituted a new and distinctive approach to the
management of people
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The second is where HRM
refers to the integration between HRM policy areas themselves in order to pursue a
more integrated and proactive role
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The final position suggested is where HRM
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represents a distinct approach to workforce management with an explicit underlying
philosophy that advocates employee commitment rather than control
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These include (i) the policy objectives of HRM, (ii) the HRM policies
themselves, (iii) the cement which binds such an approach and (iv) the organisational
outcomes that HRM seeks
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These are in effect the ‘pillars’ upon which HRM rests
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These he defines to be (i) the beliefs and assumptions
underlining each approach (ii) their strategic orientation, (iii) the role of line
management and (iv) key levers upon which each approach focus
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3 in the
textbook)
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In contrast to personnel management, Storey (1995)
identifies a key characteristic of HRM as the critical role of line management in
implementing and managing workplace practices and policies
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Finally, Storey (1995) regards HRM as
adopting a unitarist rather than a pluralist approach to the management of employees
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In
contrast, pluralism, regarded as characteristic of Personnel Management, recognises the
diversity of interests that employees have and manages them accordingly
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Legge (1995), in reviewing the literature that differentiates between HRM and
Personnel Management, highlighted the problematic nature of such attempts
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Firstly, while teamworking is viewed as a core component of
HRM, individual performance-related pay, another key characteristic of HRM, focuses
on rewarding employees on an individual basis
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The devolvment of operational HR responsibility has
meant that HR functions are now faced with the challenge of ensuring their continued
role within organisations
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Note the correct referencing
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Conclusions
As this topic suggests, Human Resource Management presents important issues for the
analysis and operation of employment relationships
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Whatever the perspective adopted, as Beardwell and Holden
(2000: 28) suggest:

Two important points cannot be overlooked: first, it has raised questions
about the nature of employment relationship that has stimulated one of the
most intense and active debates to have occurred in the subject over the past
40 years; and second, the management of employment relations and the
question of employee commitment to the employment relationship remain
at the heart of the debate
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Bibliography
Armstrong, M
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), London: Kogan
Page
Beardwell, I
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(2000): Human Resource Management: A
Contemporary Perspective, (3rd ed
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, Tichy, N
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(1984): Strategic Human Resource
Management, New York: Wiley
Guest, D
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Guest, D
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Storey (ed
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Gunnigle, P, Morley, M
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, Turner, T
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, and Flood, P
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, Heraty, N
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(2002): Human Resource Management in
Ireland, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan

Legge, K
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and Wilkinson, A
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K
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and Walsh, J
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, and Storey, J
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(ed
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(1992): Developments in the Management of Human Resources, Oxford: Blackwell
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(2000): An Introduction to Human Resource Management, Oxford:
Butterworth-Heinemann
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and Fell, A
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9

Note that the references above are in alphabetical order
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A number of additional references are also included in the bibliography as these
were used as general reading material and to develop the author’s knowledge
of the subject area

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