204 ANALYSING HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
Discussion—leadership and employee
development in HRM
The above company case studies depict two very different stances on employee
development. The approach taken in the automobile company was typical of
a soft HRM approach with its emphasis on encouraging employees to feel
they had real influence over their job, skill development, and ultimately, the
success of the company strategy. The management with key responsibilities
for training and development evidently paid attention to fostering a culture
of EI, but were unable to secure the full cooperation of many other parts of
the organization in their endeavours (Pinnington and Bayraktaroglu 1998,
1999). Consequently, employees’ development was seriously confined to spo-
radic and individual exercise of initiative rather than a concerted programme
of collective skill development. Unfortunately, one outcome of this for the
company was that it gained a reputation in some quarters for failing to commit
to the quality and development strategy that had been agreed in partnership
with the trade unions.
One way of learning from the case studies is to reflect on the com-
pany’s experience asking how, in the future, managers and employees in
similar circumstances might act? Prima facie, managers with responsibilities
for employee development must deal proactively with obstacles within the
organization, and employees probably could have asserted themselves more
forcefully to grasp the opportunities available to them. One shortcoming
that was identified at the time within the automobile company in another
research study on quality management (Hammersley and Pinnington 1999a,
1999 b; Pinnington and Hammersley 1997) was that top-level management
were steadfast in their commitment to economic capital and its productivity
objectives, but ambivalent in their support for cultural capital and employee
development goals. So, without digressing into a debate on the significance
of senior management commitment, the main problem as we see it is: How
should HRMfollow the strategy of the business(primarily economic capital
development)and concurrently serve its employee development function(cul-
tural capital development)?
The evidence in the automobile company case study is that whether by
design or by chance, people working with the HRM function chose to focus
chiefly on their sphere of activity and to exert influence cognizant of the
realpolitik of employee development. A stronger and more ethical stance we
propose would have been appropriate. Ultimately, increased exertion of will
and a more apparent management effort towards securing achievement of
development goals has the potential to benefit the company and its employees.
Managers and employees faced a myriad of decision points and interpersonal
events when they could have legitimately and efficaciously asserted the cultural