The full concept of HRM emerged in the mid-1980s against the background of
the popularist writers on management who flourished in that decade. These
included Pascale and Athos (1981)^7 and Peters and Waterman (1982)^8 who
produced lists of the attributes that they claimed characterized successful
companies. These popular 'school of excellence' writers may have exerted
some influence on management thinking about the need for strong cultures
and commitment (two features of the HRM philosophy) but, as Guest (1993)^9
has commented, they were right enough to be dangerously wrong.
The concept of HRM has gone through three stages:
- The initial concepts developed by American writers in the 1980s.
- The take-up of these comments by British writers in the late 1980s and
earlier 1990s who were often sceptical about the reality beyond the
rhetoric and dubious about its morality. - The assimilation of HRM into traditional personnel management.
The two initial concepts of HRM have been christened by Boxall (1992) as the
'matching model' and the 'Harvard framework'.
The matching model of HRM
One of the first explicit statements of the HRM concept was made by the
Michigan School (Fombrun et al. 1984)^10. They held that HR systems and the
organization structure should be managed in a way that is congruent with
organizational strategy (hence the name 'matching model'). They further
explained that there is a human resource cycle (an adaptation of which is
illustrated in Figure 2.1) which consists of four generic processes or functions
that are performed in all organizations. These are:
- Selection - matching available human resources to jobs.
- Appraisal- (performance management).
- Rewards - 'the reward system is one of the most under-utilized and
mishandled managerial tools for driving organizational performance'. It
must reward short- as well as long-term achievements, bearing in mind
that 'business must perform in the present to succeed in the future'.