Human Resource Management in Modern Organizations Essay

Human Resource Management in Modern Organizations - Essay Example Skilled, loyal and motivated employees remain perhaps the only reliable asset and competitive advantage of modern corporations. The overwhelming importance of balanced and effective HR management is one of the cornerstones underlying each major organization. Performance of modern organizations depends not only on hard and attenuating work of the personnel but also on the â€Å"human side† of the employees: their competence, motivation, attitudes, communication and other variables. As Gunnigle et al (2002) observe, â€Å"†¦HRM is the core of company’s general efficiency and the basis for effective management† (p.383). A company’s failure to effectively manage its human resources is likely to result in considerable operational difficulties and may seriously damage the business (Beardwell, 2003: 15). The below overview of the major concepts and theories underlying modern HRM practices demonstrates how effective management of human resources contributes to the development of a stable workforce and a healthy organization. The origins of human resource management as a separate discipline can be traced back to the beginning of the last century. Throughout the last century, theorists and practitioners worked intensively to discover the theories explaining human behavior at the workplace in order to raise the effectiveness of labor. As Alan Price (2000) states, HRM hasn’t come out of nowhere: there is a long history of â€Å"†¦efforts to improve our understanding of factors that affect human behavior in the workplace† (p.62). Though many of modern HRM principles had been developed by that time, the year of the discipline’s official birth was 1981, when Harvard Business School introduced a special course that served a blueprint for the global spread of human resource planning and management (Price, 2000).