Human Resource Management Issues in Developing Countries

Farhad Analoui

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429842634
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Published in 1998, this work brings together 17 individual papers written by academics, practioners and consultants who have dealt with human resource issues in various contexts and developing countries. It covers management, education and training and through these addresses ethnic and gender issues, financial markets in transition economies and agricultural development. Countries featuring in the studies include Bangladesh, Ghana, Pakistan, and Costa Rica - and the authors draw on their own experiences in these countries.

1 Managerial perspectives, assumptions and development of the human resource management

Farhad Analoui

Introduction

What follows in this chapter enables the reader, student, managers (practitioners) and academics alike, to gain a basic but fundamental understanding of how the dominant views and concepts in management (Perspectives) have been developed. What are the main assumptions about for example, 'task' and 'people' and what is their relevance for the emergence of concepts such as 'Personnel Management' (PM) and Human Resource Management' as an umbrella for development of the human resources in context of the work organisations?

To achieve this, the major milestones in the development of the perspectives in management will be examined. Also an exploration of the theories Χ, Y and Z, which have been the main assumptions behind the development of managerial thoughts will be included. And how these theories formed the basis for the development of a need for PM or HRM, of which HRD forms a significant part, will be discussed in some detail. Finally, relevant conclusions will be reached.

The development of management

While it is unnecessary to follow every detail of the evolutionary process of how management as it is today was created and established, it is essential to become familiar with the milestones in the process: each of which reveals the philosophy, value structure, beliefs and most importantly the dominant assumptions which were held by scholars, theorists, developers, trainers and practitioners at different points in time.

Each milestone in the development of management is marked by a new or rather a different set of assumptions about the nature of the work, organisations, people, clients and other concepts such as motivation, reward and the like. Although, at first glance, to the students and practitioner, there seems to be almost no unifying structure for relating the various ideas, concepts and skills in management, the underlying presuppositions and practices provide the basis for rather distinctive perspectives on management. The stress ought to be placed on the overlapping nature of schools of thoughts and perspectives from which the world of work, people and organisations have been looked at and on the fact that each perspective in management provides a basis for the development of the next and the changing ways which have been used to deal with people as resources in organisations.

Perspectives in management

In order to understand the perspectives from which the concept of management has been viewed, created and even promoted, it is necessary to see the inseparable link between management as a discipline and the parallel developments in other disciplines such as organisational studies and sociology, industrial psychology, economics, personnel and human resource management, accountancy and the world of finance. The closest related subject to management is that of organisation and organisational studies (Silverman, 1970; Burrell and Morgan, 1979). The term organisations nowadays, can be employed to describe the personal attention which is given to matters related to the individuals own life and general development, however, when it comes to 'management' it would be unjust to claim that the presence of one (organisation) necessitates the existence of the other (London, 1978).

Organisations, unlike business, administration and projects in the established or temporary states, arise when individuals and groups each pursue their own interests, but also co-operate in the recognition of their common interests, objectives and goals (Mitchell, 1987). In a sense, organisations use knowledge, techniques and resources in order to accomplish the task. In order to achieve this the organisation utilises certain general principles which were originally developed by the early sociologist Max Webber (1947) at the end of the last century, namely the notion of 'role', 'authority', 'harmony', 'status', 'bureau', and 'rationality' (Handy, 1985). It is not therefore unusual to see that organisations were assumed to be rational and logically structured and therefore it was thought that people within work organisations would also behave in a rational manner (Burrell and Morgan, 1979; Kakabadse, 1983).

Since the early days of the development of management the notions of 'order', 'predictability' and even 'rationality' itself have been challenged and questioned (Analoui, 1993). In short, the inseparable relationship between 'organisations' and 'management' theories have meant that management theories evolved, and were based, around the ways organisations were viewed (London, 1987).

From the 'traditional perspective', for example organisations were viewed as hard, easily definable entities which were mechanistically structured and were operating based on the scientific laws and general principles (Blau and Scott, 1966). People, therefore, were treated as components of a mechanical structure and were even described as the 'cogs' of a machine who were expected to behave in an orderly fashion in a predictable environment (Salaman, 1992). Management therefore was simply viewed as a science, the study of the dynamics of the forces within organisations which co-ordinates the activities of the sub-systems and relates them to the environment (Etzioni, 1964; Elliott et. al., 1990). Managers were needed to maximise the utilisation of resources in the most scientific and efficient ways.

The traditional perspective, not surprisingly, did not place the emphasis on 'people' and therefore paid more attention to 'task' at the expense of 'people' and their development. It ignored the need to recognise, for example, what Human Relations theorists refer to as the social system of the organisation, the community of people and their development of norms of behaviour and the presence of informal codes of conduct (McGregor, 1987). In this era, management was seen as the art of getting things done through people (Kakabadse, et. al., 1987) and therefore since people constituted the most important ingredient of the work organisation, managers required not only the skills for carrying out the task but also required the skills of dealing with people (Analoui, 1993).

Inevitably the human relations values, thoughts and beliefs were challenged by the 'open system' and the 'contingency philosophy' which emphasised on the need for flexibility in order to cope with changing markets and expectations (Drucker, 1988). It referred to immediate (contingent or touching) circumstances. Such a perspective treated individuals as those with the potential for development, learning and ultimately the capability of managing themselves. It is therefore not surprising to see that organisations to which the 'open system' managerial principles have been applied and practised are defined as having tentative boundaries and with flexible relationships organised in a complex way (Katz and Khan, 1985). Such organisations, are comprised of sub-systems and they themselves are part of a bigger more complex system. They are being affected by changes in their environment and indeed they introduce change to their internal and external environments. Survival alone is no longer the focus of attention and the goal for managers with open system perspectives, but change and development have become the main concern (Kanter, 1984; 1989)

The parallel between development of organisational theories, the managers and perspectives in management and the underlying assumptions held by their advocates about people can be best shown below.

Development of Management Perspectives Within System Context

Assumptions		Perspectives
Organisation	Closed system	Semi-open (modified)	Open system
People	Cogs of a mechanical Structure	Social agents of work community	Complex Socio- technical and information system
Approaches to Management	Classical management	Human relations	Contingency system

It is important to remember that each set of assumptions concerning the nature of the organisation, its principles and approaches to its management provided a basis for practices and procedures which over time became a domain of belief and values system. These sets of dominant values systems which are often referred to as schools of thought, encapsulated other approaches with their own prescriptions of 'right' and 'wrong' practices. However, the overall dominance of a set of distinguishable values, beliefs and thoughts remained dominant within the boundaries of each perspective.

Traditional perspective

A major attempt was made in the early days of this century by Taylor (1911) and his followers who saw the organisation as a hard, tangible mechanical system with a tendency for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables and figures
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Managerial perspectives, assumptions and development of the human resource management
• Chapter 2 Just like home but at work: gendered negotiation in private and public domains
• Chapter 3 Career development: a case study of managerial women in the Ghanian Civil Service
• Chapter 4 HRM issues and implications of the process of 'localisation'
• Chapter 5 Tacit knowledge and HRD for development work
• Chapter 6 Application of the learning theory in public sector: the case of decentralisation in the Philippines
• Chapter 7 Training and transfer of learning: international dimensions
• Chapter 8 The new public administration - new challenges for development and implications for the development training institutions
• Chapter 9 Experiencing the experience of small groups
• Chapter 10 Use of task groups and teams for management of human resources
• Chapter 11 Measuring human development: some improvements on the human development index
• Chapter 12 Measuring and forecasting human resource needs in developing countries: SAM approach