chapter 29
....................................................................................................................................................SOCIAL
LEGITIMACY
OF THE HRM
PROFESSION
A US PERSPECTIVE
....................................................................................................................................thomas a. kochan
29.1 Introduction
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
Thehuman resource management profession faces a crisis of trust and a loss of
legitimacy in the eyes of its major stakeholders. The two-decade eVort to develop a
new ‘strategic human resource management’ (HR)^1 role in organizations has failed
to realize its promised potential of greater status, inXuence, and achievement. This
chapter focuses on these developments in the USA by putting the current situation
in a longer historical and comparative context and outlines the values, power
relationships, and institutional factors that shape the role of HR. I then suggest a
Portions of this chapter build and expand on Kochan 2004.
(^1) For the sake of simplicity I will use the term HR in a generic fashion in referring to those
responsible for managing employment relations, recognizing the speciWc terms have changed over the
years from personnel, to industrial relations, to human resource management, and perhaps to other
terms yet to come.