A different perspective on the world of HR - and on the underlying control structures of the world of work itself - is presented in today's post in our ongoing series, in which
Grumpy Lecturer weighs in on the topic 'If I could change one thing about HR...'.
Grumpy Lecturer describes himself as "a senior lecturer in Organisational Behaviour and Industrial Relations at a northern university".
Grumpy Lecturer: If I could change one thing about HR...I would not change anything about HR. There is nothing wrong with the current version of Human Resources Management (HRM): it has achieved mass levels of false consciousness about employment. But I would like to see HR professionals consider this fact.
The world of work has changed radically over the past 30 years, both in
content, as to what modern jobs entail, and in how the employment
relationship is ideologically approached by governments and employers.
This is not the forum for debating the reasons for the change in job
content but it is worth mentioning that somewhere in the world the jobs
in mass manufacturing that we once were reasonably good at are still
being performed in the same 'traditional' way.
However, the management of the employee relationship can be briefly
commented upon. If we look, briefly, at the various methods of designing
work - Taylorism, Fordism, JIT Management, Cell Manufacturing, Job
Flexibility, HRM (Hard Systems Approach) - each is concerned with
increasing worker productivity (effort) and managerial control in the
workplace.
If we also look at the role of management theory - that is the
sociological and psychological strategies employed in the workplace
(such as Human Relations Movement (Emery & Trist), Team Working, Job
Enlargement/Enrichment, Participation Schemes (On Managerial Terms),
Performance-Related Pay, HRM (Soft Systems Approach), Employee
Involvement Schemes, etc) - each represents an alternative or
complementary way of also increasing worker productivity (effort) and
managerial control in the workplace.
So who controls the employment relationship is of prime importance. This
is a fundamental point that we have tended to lose sight of in this
post-industrial period.
Employers have tried numerous ways in which to exert their control
throughout history. Probably the first attempt was slavery. This
obviously would not be appropriate today but that does not mean that it
does not still exist in the UK. Feudalism with its reciprocal 'tit for
tat' work for accommodation worked in its own way. However, capitalism
is the tour de force of employer control. The options available through
capitalist production for employers to achieve control are numerous. The
prime suspects being Scientific Management (F. W. Taylor), Content
Theory (Needs Theory... yes, that pyramid) based on the contributions of
Mayo, Maslow, McGregor, Herzberg and others and finally the Process
Theories of Vroom, Porter & Lawler and others.
Employers can control employee effectiveness and efficiency by paying
for increased output (Scientific Management Theory) or ensuring the
organisation provides all the 'needs' an employee requires satisfying
('Needs' Theory). A near impossibility but this does not prevent the
avalanche of managerial texts describing ways in which employers can
achieve this near impossibility. Finally, Process Theories, the 'in'
fad, whereby employers gain control by having employees achieve targets.
The theory goes that in achieving these targets employees become elated
with their achievement and thus, so the theory states, contribute more
to the organisation. Obviously employers can 'pick and mix' these
strategies.
What has occurred over the past 30 years is a definite movement away
from pay as a motivator. Pay as a motivator, unfortunately, has its
problems. The main problem is 'fairness' as to how wealth is distributed
both within the employing organisation and in the wider society. With
this approach seen as divisive and confrontational by employers there
has been a concerted move by them to find an alternative control
mechanism. Human Resource Management (HRM) fills the void perfectly. It
removes pay from the agenda and focuses on the social trivia of work.
But more importantly, it requires a totally new behavioural approach to
be adopted by employees towards their employers.
Rather than see work as confrontational as to pay and conditions of
work, employees are encouraged to believe that the interest of both the
employer and the employee are congruous and thus the focus of debate is
redirected to the fate of the organisation. A fate contained in the
hands of all those who have contact with that organisation. This social
engineering has been marketed under the guise of a 'stakeholder
society'.
From my own observations this managerial sleight of hand has been fairly
easy to achieve. Again this is not the forum but such things that have
contributed to this social reengineering debate would include the
following.
Sociologists and sociology have been deterred from contributing to
management textbooks and discussions on work. The sociologist brings
nothing to the table but discussions on power relationships in the
workplace and the wider implications of work on the society in which it
takes place. The psychologist on the other hand moves the debate to
people's needs, attitudes or personalities which are much easier to deal
with than the social structure of work, power relationships and work
ideologies, which are the province of the sociologist.
The psychologist's contribution also offers 'practical' technical
options or remedies for 'human problems' in the workplace. Their
contributions are also devoid of class conflict debates and political or
power based ideologies. The shift to a reliance on psychological
contributions to management textbooks has contributed significantly to
the process of social reengineering with regards to the attitude of
employees to the workplace.
Business/Management Schools thrive on the requirements of the
marketplace driven by the requirements of the employer. This in turn has
spawned other organisations of social engineering such as the CIPD who
have devised their own qualifications in which the world of work is seen
through the perspective of the employer.
As to whether employees really believe in the world of work painted by
the orthodoxy of the management texts is another debate but it would be
interesting to discover. Are we all team-players in the presence of the
manager whilst looking for another job on the net? We have been
programmed to answer 'yes' to the interview question as to whether we
are team players. What else have we learned to say to conform?
The XpertHR Employment Intelligence guest blog post series continues today with a particularly thought-provoking entry from leading US HR blogger Paul Smith, author of the always-excellent (and highly recommended) 