Human Resource Management in a Business Context

John Kew, John Stredwick

• Publisher: CIPD - Kogan Page
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781843984047
• eBook ISBN: 9781843984511
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Gestione delle risorse umane
• Index: Business

Highly accessible and student-friendly, Human Resource Management in a Business Context is the core text for the CIPD Level 7 Advanced module, Human Resource Management in Context, and is also essential reading for other undergraduate and postgraduate HR and business degrees. In clear and easy to navigate chapters, which consider government policy, regulation, the world economy and demographic and social trends, this book provides the firm theoretical background that you can apply in practice.

Human Resource Management in a Business Context is packed with international case studies, examples and activities that will actively engage you with the different areas of knowledge and allow you to work through the material step-by-step. This edition is fully updated to include an even broader range of global case studies with extended coverage from China and India and updates to policies and legislation. The online resources available have also been expanded on, and now provide additional case studies and activities, alongside lecturer's guides, PowerPoint slides and annotated web links.

CHAPTER 1

Human Resource Management in Context

LEARNING OUTCOMES

When you have completed this chapter, you should be able to understand, explain and critically evaluate:

• the distinction between the general and the task environment
• the relationships between the environment, organisations, and strategy
• the STEEPLE model of environmental analysis
• the difference between placid, dynamic and turbulent environments, and their impact on organisations
• the identification of key environmental factors
• the use of SWOT analysis
• models of organisational structure – bureaucracy, divisionalisation, matrix organisations, networks and virtual organisations
• the use and limitations of strategic alliances
• the advantages and disadvantages of HR outsourcing and shared service centres
• stakeholder analysis
• E-V-R analysis.

CASE STUDY 1.1

VIETNAM, IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

In the early 1960s, the US intervened in the civil war in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese, under the political leadership of Ho Chi Minh, and the military leadership of Vo Nguyen Giap, had driven the French colonial government out of Vietnam in the 1950s, and the country had been divided in two – North Vietnam, under communist control, and South Vietnam, with a pro-Western government. The Northerners and their South Vietnamese communist allies, the Vietcong, had started a guerrilla civil war in the south against the South Vietnamese government.

The Americans had overwhelming military superiority, and won every pitched battle between the two sides, including the North’s biggest attack, the Tet Offensive in 1968, when Vietcong soldiers infiltrated into the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon, and even penetrated the US embassy.

Even so, in the end it was the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong who won the war. The Americans lost over 50,000 dead (compared with more than a million Vietnamese dead), and in 1975 they finally pulled out of Saigon. The next day, April 30 1975, the North Vietnamese army took the presidential palace in Saigon, and the unified communist republic of Vietnam was born.

Why did the Americans lose? Firstly, the North Vietnamese understood that ultimately the war was political, not military. If they could pin down the Americans for long enough, public opinion in the US would turn against the war and the loss of American life, and political pressure at home, would force the Americans to pull out. Ho Chi Minh also had a clear aim: to unify Vietnam under the communist banner. The Americans did not. Were they supporting the South Vietnamese government, fighting the Vietcong, seeking to defeat North Vietnam, or to stop the advance of world communism? An example of their ambivalence was the decision not to invade North Vietnam with a ground force, but to bomb the country, including its capital, Hanoi.

Secondly, the Americans had no clear strategy for fighting a guerrilla war. Their strategy was based on their overwhelming advantage in firepower, but this was of little use when every Vietnamese could be a potential guerrilla fighter. A typical example of this was the way the Americans could do nothing to prevent the infiltration of fighters and equipment into Saigon in 1968. The ‘overkill’ approach used by the Americans also caused hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, which helped to turn public opinion in the US, and throughout the West, against the war.

In 2001, after the Al Qaida attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, a US-led coalition invaded Afghanistan, ostensibly to capture the Al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who was based there. Afghanistan looms over nineteenth century British military history. In 1842, in the First Anglo-Afghan War, a British army was wiped out almost to a man, after conquering the country with little difficulty. In the Second Anglo-Afghan war of 1878–80, the British learnt the lesson that it was very easy to intervene militarily in Afghanistan, but very difficult to withdraw. The British army went in with overwhelming military force, won the war, imposed political terms, and then quickly withdrew without attempting an occupation. The Russian intervention in the 1980s followed much the pattern of the 1840s. After suffering heavy losses from guerrilla action, they were forced into a humiliating withdrawal.

The American-led invasion followed much the same pattern. The Taliban government was quickly overthrown, although Osama bin Laden evaded capture. However, the Taliban then led a long and very effective guerrilla war, which tied down thousands of US and British troops. The war became increasingly intelligence-led, as the guerrillas merged into the civilian population. The Americans also developed the tactic of using pilotless drone aircraft to attack Taliban bases, both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Failures of intelligence led to many cases of innocent civilians being killed in drone raids.

In 2003, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq. Again, there was a backdrop to the action. In 1990, Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, had invaded and occupied its neighbour Kuwait. A massive, widely-based but US-led, coalition had expelled him from Kuwait in a brilliant military campaign. This operation had unequivocal limited objectives – to liberate Kuwait – and commanded a high level of world support. The 2003 war was different. This time, the Americans had much less world support, did not have the unequivocal endorsement of the UN, and were unable to make it clear to the world exactly why the invasion was happening. Was it to depose Saddam Hussein (regime change)? Was it because Saddam was alleged (incorrectly) to possess chemical and biological weapons (the so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction’)? Was it to protect ethnic and religious elements in the Iraqi population who had been persecuted by Saddam – the Kurds in the north, and the Shi’ites in the south? Was it to fight world terrorism and in particular Al Qaida? Was it a desire on the part of the US president, George Bush Jr, to complete the job which his father George Bush Sr had started as president in 1991? Or, as many observers cynically suggested, was it to seize control of Iraq’s huge reserves of oil?

The Americans believed that they would be welcomed as liberators, and for a brief period there was relief among many Iraqis at the overthrow of Saddam, particularly among the Kurds, but also to some extent among the Shia in the British-occupied southern part of the country. However, the Americans had underestimated the underlying religious and political divisions in the country. Iraq was an artificial country, invented after the First World War from the wreckage of the Turkish empire. The Shia had close links with their co-religionists in Iran, while the Kurds had much more in common with the Kurdish minority in eastern Turkey than with the rest of Iraq.

Although the Shia were the majority in the country, the Saddam government had been dominated by the Sunni minority, who were strong in Baghdad and central Iraq. The Sunni population was generally hostile to the Americans because they had overthrown Saddam, and they quickly started a guerrilla campaign against the Americans. The Shia sought revenge on the Sunni, while Al Qaida, who had previously had no influence in Iraq, took advantage of the chaos to move into the country.

The Americans were again involved in a guerrilla war, just as in Vietnam, and again they reacted in a heavy-handed fashion, launching punitive operations against guerrilla-controlled towns, and making little effort to reconstruct the country or to win hearts and minds. American casualties rose into the thousands, and Iraqi casualties into the hundreds of thousands.

Again, just as in Vietnam, the war was increasingly unpopular in the US, and the guerrillas realised that in order to win, all they had to do was to outlast the Americans. In 2009, the US announced that its troops would cease to play a combat role, although 150,000 US troops remained in the country.

The Middle East continued to be volatile. Few foresaw the Arab Spring in 2011, the Syrian civil war, and the rise of so-called Islamic State, which rapidly occupied vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.

What has an account of wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq got to do with business? What lessons can we learn from the wars that are relevant to business environment and strategy? A surprising amount.

• The need for clear objectives. If a business does not know what it wants to achieve, any amount of strategic planning is irrelevant. There is a clear contrast between the totally clear objectives of Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, and the confused objectives of the Americans in both Vietnam and Iraq.
• An understanding of the environment. The guerrillas in both Iraq and Vietnam were totally at ease in their local environments. The Americans, on the other hand, did not understand the motivation of their enemies in Vietnam, or the complex political environment in Iraq. The Vietnamese also understood and exploited the political environment in the US.
• Understand the competition. The Americans did not understand the strengths and motivations of their enemies in either Vietnam or Iraq.
• An understanding of one’s own resources. The Vietnamese made the most of their limited military resources, while the Americans were hamstrung when the enemy in both Vietnam and Iraq neutralised their key resource, their overwhelming firepower.
• The importance of organisational structure. The difference in structure...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• List of figures and tables
• Preface
• CIPD qualifications map
• Links to the CIPD HR Profession Map
• Walkthrough of textbook features and online resources
• Chapter 1 Human Resource Management in Context
• Chapter 2 The Managerial Context of Human Resources
• Chapter 3 The Competitive Environment
• Chapter 4 Government Policy
• Chapter 5 Regulation
• Chapter 6 The World Economy
• Chapter 7 Demographic and Social Trends
• Chapter 8 Technology
• Chapter 9 Ethics, Social Responsibility and Sustainability
• Chapter 10 Strategic Management
• Chapter 11 HR Delivery, Strategy and Performance
• References
• Index