Human resource management : a critical approach, 2nd ed.

• Main Author: Edited by David G. Collings, Geoffrey T. Wood And Leslie T. Szamosi.
• Format: Book
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2020
• Subjects: Personnel management.
• Online Access: http://dspace.uniten.edu.my/jspui/handle/123456789/15701

In recent years, many countries – most notably the US and the UK – have had to contend with much economic and political turbulence and uncertainty. Bound up with this has been the issue of how fi rms employ, manage and reward their people. On the one hand, systematic failures to generate and maintain occupational and employment security and to provide decent livings in either employment or retirement for a signifi cant proportion of the population have been blamed as one of the principal causes of populist backlashes ( Wood and Wright 2016 ). Despite almost three decades of debate in the mainstream literature around the nature of human resource management (HRM), its intellectual boundaries and its application in practice, the fi eld continues to be dogged by a number of theoretical and practical limitations. On the other hand, exponential increases in managerial pay, and a dislocation between pay and organizational well-being and sustainability, have been blamed on failures in managing and governing the reward systems aimed at senior managers. This book is intended to provide students with a relatively advanced and critical discussion of the key debates and themes around HRM as it is conceptualized and operationalized in the early part of the twenty-fi rst century. Thus, the current contribution is intended to be in the tradition of Storey (2007 ) and Legge (1995 ) and aims to provide students with a well-grounded and intellectually rewarding critical overview of the key issues surrounding HRM from theoretical and practical perspectives that combine theory with practice. In doing so, we draw on contributions from leading scholars in the fi eld who provide detailed discussions on key debates in their respective offerings. In this introduction, we provide the context for the book though considering a number of overarching themes within which key debates in the fi eld of HRM are situated. Specifi cally, we provide a summary discussion of the theoretical and intellectual boundaries of HRM, consider its emergence in historical context and identify some of the pervasive contradictions and limitations which prevail in the literature. Finally, we provide a short outline of the structure and content of this volume.