Human resource management practice A substitute for trade unions Dissertation

Human resource management practice A substitute for trade unions - Dissertation Example Introduction Human resource management is a complete philosophy suggesting management of all personnel related issues in the light of vision of the organization and integrated with the organization’s strategy and policy (Pieper 1990). Traditionally, staff management is mainly targeted on tasks such as staffing, work design and rewarding however now the concept has been broadened to include in it personnel development and strategy specific actions. With this broad change where we talk about realizing the real potential of people and managing them in a way that they produce efficient results (Venter & Van der Waldt 2007) is it suitable to say that modern human resource management practice has substituted trade unions which were common a few years back to make the voice of laborers heard and acted. This research study, therefore, seeks to explore if human resource management practice has substituted trade unions or not. 1.1 Project Aims and Objectives As mentioned above research question guiding this research study asks has contemporary human resource management practice substituted trade unions. Having developed this research question, this research study seeks to attain following aims and objectives. To explore the role of modern human resource management in personnel management and development. To critically evaluate the role of trade unions in modern human resource management practice. To identify factors contributing to decline in trade unions if it is not modern HRM practices. 1.2 Project Approach This research study is primarily focused on secondary data and hence is categorized as desk research; Armstrong (2006, p. 53) defined desk research as â€Å"the assembly, collation and analysis of marketing information which is...Truss et al (1997) explained that hard HRM focuses attention on theory X whereas soft HRM focuses on theory Y. Truss et al (1997) examined that due to wide differences in these two approaches is it possible for an organization to u se both these models in integration; from their research they found that no organizations clearly follows any one of these models and though organizations focuses on commitment and conceptually targets to treat employees as humans (soft HRM concept) in reality where policies and strategic control is in action it is practically hard to stick to soft HRM and hence hard RM elements also come into action (Truss et al 1997). This study also looks into soft and hard HRM concepts and tries to relate it to the need of trade unions and which of the HRM versions may result in increase or decline in the number of trade unions. 2.4 Trade Unions and their Purpose Deb (2009) defined trade union as a representative body where employees are at the receiving end. Shmoop (2010, p. 1) defined labor union as â€Å"an organization established by and for workers to pursue collective workplace goals, benefits, work rules and power†.