HR: To Control or to Serve?

 

Breaking Bogart (10)

It's been a while, y'all. Life has been quite the hellish loop, but I am back to posting on my favorite place to espouse 3/4 baked ideas: Breaking Bogart. On the topic of breaking bogart, lets ponder the question of the roles human resource organizations have to play:

To Control or to Serve?

This question began to surface as I read through three articles assigned for this first week of OLP 4401. I asked myself what the role of HR fields really were and what they should be. As I am very new to this field, I did not (and likely never will) have the satisfying and whole answer. Despite this, I will push to explore the question in my discussion here today. With so many overlapping and integrated layers, I believe there is a truthful, rich, and candid discussion to be had here.

Control

I learned what HRM was an abbreviation for (Human Resource Management) and began to think about what it takes to manage a workforce, group, and just humans in the more general sense. At some level, management hopes to exert some kind of control over a group in order to guide (with as much or as little force as they deem palpable/necessary) human participants to contribute to some kind of goal. Often this goal is to produce or perform in some way. However, as the framework of HR fields grew and shifted, the responsibilities of Human Resource Management, Human Resource Development, and Organizational Development all began to overlap. It seems to me that as societies of the world and their interconnectivity increases, the duty of HRM, HRD, and OD also ever-increasingly necessitates intentional collaboration between their fields of study. This breakdown of territories and artificial societal barriers then also has led to a continued, deliberate investment in the humans within their organizations with less and less need for HR gatekeeping.

Serve

Just in the way that humans are not clinical, mathematical creatures, so to then, can HRD not survive and thrive as a science or practice that relies on a single methodology or way of thought. This in and of itself could likely sustain a lengthy dissertation on the matter. What I have to say here is that HRD and its sciences are multi-layered, multi-faceted, and hold essential essences of social actions and understandings. Psychology, economics, and many other sciences all play an integral part in understanding and performing within the field of HRD. HRD must even consider the culture of the peoples they are serving and developing. Those many layers then also exist within the overlap of HRD, HRM, and OD. And then coloring each of these layers of study and understanding is yet another set of frameworks: how all these concepts apply to the...

• Organizational Level
• Process Level
• Individual Level

Struggle

What also stood out to me was that despite HR fields understanding of all this, the general consensus seems to be that HR fields must also conform to the global culture which now persists so aggressively. I am claiming here that HR has followed in the footsteps of massive overproduction, consumerism, and the downfalls of globalization. Despite repeated claims of the need to refocus on the individual, many of the topics of discussion within the 3 articles attempt to then also frame people as mere raw material in the cog of HR which serves to further the aspirations of ever-expanding production and globalization. The articles discussing the HR fields acknowledge that these conditions exist and persist, but do little to explore how they could best serve the people in their organizations in spite of this climate. I believe this attitude serves to be detrimental to the rest of HRD's goals to develop, educate, manage, guide, and support the people they train and aim to serve. My claim here is not acknowledged as an issue or hindrance within, "...Twenty-First-Century HR..." Rather, it is framed as a challenge that can be met and its human victims served and supported through HR collaboration, growth, and community. I believe that in order to truly develop people and organizations in the ways set forth by these articles, they must truly re-center organizations and workforces on the people. Instead of how these articles discuss the struggle now: which is to state the need to do so, then re-frame the need as a necessary step to conglomeration.

These were the key concepts and points that stood out to me, my best efforts at analyzing their claims, and some of my opinion on the matter as I began to digest such a complex issue.

Articles:

• Human Resource Development ≠
  Human Resource Management:
  So What Is It?
  • Jon M. Werner
• Human Resource Development: Performance is the Key
  • Swanson, R.A. (1995)
• The Making of Twenty-First-Century HR: an Analysis of the Convergence of HRM, HRD, and OD
  • Wendy E. A. Ruona and Sharon K. Gibson

If you read this far, thank you. Peace out!

-Vaughn.