BR Changes and Challenges for the Human Resources Professional

8/7/2019 BR Changes and Challenges for the Human Resources Professional.

1/4

BOOK REVIEWS 965will be useful to researchers. Each chapter's numerous references pro-vide guides to additional information. The chapter on construct validitycan serve as a refresher for those without a knowledge of psychom etrics.The causal modeling chapter requires more knowledge. The chapterson curriculum, teaching techniques, and OB applications for consultingacademicians are aimed at business school faculty m em bers. How ever,parallel chapters could be written for the core disciplines of OB. Thebook, as a whole, seems targeted to business school faculty members.Practitioners may find other books more useful.Ronald R. Sims and Serbrenia J . S ims. Changes and Chal lengesfor the Human Resources Professional. Wes tpor t , C T: QuorumBooks , 1994, 272 pages , $59.95.Reviewed by Alan Clardy, Principal, Advantage Human Resources,Columbia, M D.

Effective hum an resources mana gem ent (H RM ) is increasingly rec-ognized as a source of strategic advantage for organizations in today'svery com petitive econo m ic clima te. Sims and Sims, working from thisaxiom, set as the goal for this book identifying the issues and attendantchallenges that will confront H R M in the years ahead. In regard to thisgoal, they are somewhat successful in summarizing the prevailing wis-dom of the field. However, this judgment is offered with some caution:The volume suffers from a myopic focus, a redundancy in pre sentation ,and a nagging presence of debatable claims.The first two chapters establish the foundation for the more strate-gic business partn er role in to which H RM is evolving. In the early daysof industrialization, H R M (then called "P ersonn el") bega n in the back-waters of organizations, operating as a payroll and hiring office. Overtime. Personnel grew in stature and importance, so that by the 1980s,H R M had m oved into senior planning and decision-making circles. Th eforces driving this ascendancy were the new trends buffeting organiza-tions along the entire human resources interface: labor force changesin demographics and diversity, globalization, tougher competition, theshift to a service economy, new organizational forms (such as lean orvirtual production systems), and a growing contingent workforce (withless job securify and company loyalty). H RM becam e the fulcrum onwhich to leverage improved p erform ance and qualify of worklife. In ad-dition to the traditional HR skills in recruiting, selection, compensation


2/4

966 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGYHow ever, effective H R M can only be as good as the strategic plan onwhich it is based, and strategic planning must take into account the in-

ternal an d external factors impacting the organization. In the followingchap ters, Sims and Sims review seven factors affecting strate gic plan ningfrom a n H R M viewpoint. Each of these chapters is structure d along sim-ilar lines: a review of the subject (which usually outlines major laws inthe field), challenges presented, organizational responses (which typi-cally cover wh at organizations a re doing to ad dress the challeng es), anda glimpse of the future.A n increasingly diverse workforce is one key challenge that imp actsvirtually all aspects of HRM. The authors review various laws coveringdiversity and em ploym ent. How ever, they focus the chapte r on the diver-sity issues impacting the disabled. Exp erienced H R M professionals willbe frustrated by this narrow focus, by the gen eral brom ides offered (suchas: "Evaluation and p romotion criteria should be based on job perfor-mance and job requ irem ents") and by certain questionable claims (suchas: "Many organizations still require separate training for women anddisabled individuals"). On this latter point, no reference or elaborationis offered for an assertion that most HRM practitioners would regardskeptically, at best. This set of criticisms can be recycled and applied tothe remaining chap ters as well.Cha pter 4 covers employee compensation. H ere , the co m pensationchalleng es are aligning pay with business strategy, paying for perfo r-mance through non-traditional programs such as skill-based pay, andfactoring in team performance into paym ent programs. Ch apter 5, onbenefits, acknowledges the pull of family, child/elder care and workingw om en on benefits offerings. They claim tha t effective bene fits man -agement will probably be the most important challenge affecting HR

managers in the future.Chapter 6 covers hum an resources information systems (H R IS). T heauthors offer a primer on terms and concepts in what is otherwise adisappointing chap ter. W orkforce training nee ds (sum m arized next)include the usual suspects: service, quality, intercultural, literacy, teamwork. Downsizing is examined in Chapter 8, wh ere the rea de r is advisedto look for alterna tives to downsizing prior to cutting staff. The authorsdo ma ke a good argum ent for a rightsizing strategy that reengin eers an dadjusts workloads in tande m w ith staff red uctions. Finally (Ch apte r 9),ethics in HR M are covered. How ever, the authors do not articulate aframew ork of what "ethic s" m eans and tend to eq uate legal com pliance


3/4

BOOK REVIEWS 967There are several basic problems with this volume. The first is theSims's list of challenges itself: Why should H RIS be listed as a primary

challenge, for example, when attention to such arguably more importantissues as the future of legislative and regulatory reform, or the problem sof building a comm itted and productive workforce in a rising sea of con-tingent workers are not more fully addressed? A second problem is evenmore fundamental: The authors have combined two different books intoone. In reading it, I was not sure whether I was reading an introductionto the fundamentals of HRM or a review of trends impacting HR M . Interms of the former, the reader would be bette r advised to simply pickup a competent introductory text. For the latter, one would be equallyif not better served by the Coates, Jarra tt and Mahaffie volume. FutureWork (1990) or by Bridges'/ofe Shift (1994). Third, the authors tend torepeat information, so that one reads this book with a continuing sense ofdijh. vu. Better editing should have caught this problem. Finally, thereare a number of difficult, if not dubious, assertions sprinkled throughoutthe text. The example offered earlier about separate training for womenand disabled people is but one of a chain of 10 or so question marks Ifound threaded through the text.

The HRM professional will find less that is new but m ore that is toquibble about in this volume. Students starting out may benefit from theintroduction to HRM provided but would be counseled to shop arounda bit before putting their $60 down here .REFERENCES

Coa tes JF, Jar ratt J, Mahaffie JB. (1990). Future work. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Bridges W. (1994). Jo b shift. New York: Addison-Wesley.

George Henderson . Cultural Diversity in the Workplace:Issues and Strategies. Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1994, 288pages, $65.00 hardcover, $19.95 softcover.Reviewed hy Alan Auerbach, Associate Professor, Wlfrid Laurier Uni-versity, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Personnel diversity in the workplace is itself a diverse top ic that p ro-vides lots of work for employers, social scientists, lawmakers, and politi-cians. That's partly because of the many conflicting pressures on employ-ers. They must obey the letter and spirit of applicable federal and state(or provincial) laws, all the while selecting for the requisite skills. They


4/4

Documents

BR Changes and Challenges for the Human Resources Professional