These events had both positive and negative repercussions on the HRM function
(Jacoby 2003 ). On the positive side, the rapid spread of collective bargaining
actually worked to the advantage of HRM in several ways. For example, in an
eVort to avoid unionization many companies quickly established or strengthened
their personnel programs. Also, once the companies were unionized they needed
to add personnel and labor relations staVto conduct collective negotiations with
the union and administer the contracts. And,Wnally, unions pushed for wage
standardization, job classiWcation systems, formal grievance systems, and written
employment rules, all of which required personnel/labor relations staVto develop
and administer. The new government labor and social insurance laws had much the
same eVect.
But there were also several distinctly negative eVects. The early part of the 1930 s
eVectively eviscerated many corporate labor programs and left others badly wea-
kened. The HRM function had also lost a great deal of professional prestige, worker
conWdence, and public approval. Now HRM appeared to many people as a largely
empty promise, a set of techniques to manipulate workers, and a covert tool for
union avoidance. Most damaging, however, was HRM’s loss of power and inXu-
ence at the strategic level. While the tactical and administrative parts of HRM may
have experienced net growth in the latter part of the 1930 s, the new collective
bargaining model had little place for the strategic component built on the unitarist/
mutual-gain (and paternalist) vision of Welfare Capitalism. Collective bargaining
was now widely seen as the preferred method to govern and administer employ-
ment, unions were the new source of innovation and strategic change, and cooper-
ation and goal alignment were replaced by conXict of interest, power balancing and
adversarial negotiations (Kochan et al. 1986 ). Indicative of this new viewpoint is the
dramatic turn-around of opinion of Leiserson. By the late 1930 s he has abandoned
the non-union HRM model and declares: ‘Popular judgment now favors collective
bargaining... The organization of labor and collective bargaining [are] necessary
and inevitable’ ( 1938 : 40 , 43 ).
The events and pressures associated with the Second World War ampliWed and
extended these disparate trends in HRM in the United States. In most of Europe
and Asia, HRM had gone into arrested development in the 1930 s and then largely
disappeared amidst the economic devastation of the Second World War. Illustra-
tively, the International Industrial Relations Association continued to hold confer-
ences in Europe in the 1930 s but the topics shifted from plant-level personnel work
to world economic planning, and then, with the outbreak of war in 1939 , the
association disbanded (Kaufman 2004 a).
During the war both collective bargaining and government regulation of
employment expanded and solidiWed in the United States, thus further limiting
HRM’s independent room for maneuver. But there were also a number of positive
developments. The hiring boom set oVby the war created a need for recruitment
and selection specialists, while concerns with holding down turnover grew apace.
the development of hrm 27