Assignment on Human Resource Management (HRM) (Sample-4)

 
1.      Introduction:

For the last 25 years the importance of human resource development is growing rapidly all over the world. Human resource development increases the performance of an organization through developing the capabilities of employees. Human resource development augments job satisfaction among the employees and profitability and productivity of organizations.
Employees are very important organizational resource. For maximizing the organizational output with minimum input, organization must give importance to improve employee’s skills, productivity, efficiency and proficiency. Management must give importance on human resource development to attain organizational goal and it is possible to achieve by providing different training and education among the employees.    

2.      Understand the role of human resource development within organizations:

2.1  Compare and contrast 3 pioneer definitions of the term ‘human resource development’ (HRD)

Swanson (1987) stated that “human resource development is a process of improving an organization’s performance through the capabilities of its personnel. HRD includes activities dealing with work design, aptitude, expertise and motivation. He focused on organizational performance”.

Jacobs (1988) described that “Human performance technology is the development of human performance systems and the management of the resulting system, using a systems approach to achieve organizational and individual goals”. His gave this definition on basis on organizational and individual performance.

According to the Smith (1989) “Human Resource Development consists of programs and activities, direct and indirect, instructional and/or individual that positively affect the development of the individual and the productivity and profit of the organization”. He give importance on training and development, organizational performance.[1]

  

2.2  Assess the need for human resource development in organizations.

Despite the convergence of business practices that is claimed to be a feature of economic globalization there are still huge variations between countries. The bulk of firms are small town and village enterprises which are underpinned by family and community ties. This results in organizational cultures characterized by cohesion and uniformity and where employees are prepared to work hard for long hours. The principal business drivers for all sizes of firm are productivity, cost reduction, and profit. HR practice is still predominantly administrative in larger firms. It is not viewed as a strategic function and most directors are not interested in soft measures. The principal purpose of induction is to instil loyalty and many employers are reluctant to provide additional training. Employees who wish to expand their knowledge and skills so that they can get a better job have to do so in their own time through private study (relying on support from family and friends). Those with foreign qualifications have better career prospects because they are viewed as talented employees.[2]

2.3  Evaluate the internal and external barriers to Learning and Development

Most of the barriers are internal but still there are some external factors. External factors pressurized employees to increase sales, improve quality and speed of service. External factors sometimes break downs people if he is not careful about his job, duty and responsibility and development process is very slow to him. Hiring new employees is another barrier to learning and development. Sometimes management hire experienced employees from outside which may hamper learning and development process of an employee in the organization. Another external barrier of development is price competition where participants are competing with each other from various angles. Sometime strike, price war, interrupted supply, government hard-line affect the learning and development process.

Internal barrier are long lasting and it is more harmful than external factors. Most of these barriers are prepared intentionally. Few of the barriers are made intentionally to teach something to the employees. It may have some short time good feedback but if those barriers continue for long period of time then those have adverse effect on employees. Another big barrier of learning and development is employees and management attitude. Sometimes employees are less willing to learn new things and to cooperate each other. Sometimes management shows toughness and negligence to the employees. Technical improvement is another barrier to the learning and development. Wrong justification and choosing wrong process to learn and development work are other barriers.  

Individuals may experience psychological barriers to learning as a result of:

·         pride

·         self-image

·         old habits

·         lack of confidence

·         lack of motivation

·         lack of time

·         cynicism

·         need for simple solutions

·         previous bad experiences [3]

3.      Be able to critically analyze learning and development theory.

3.1  Evaluate learning and development theories (Mention and explain 3 theories discussed in the lecture).

Four orientations to learning (after Merriam and Caffarella 1991: 138)

Aspect	Behaviourist	Cognitivist	Humanist	Social and situational
Learning theorists	Thorndike, Pavlov, Watson, Guthrie, Hull, Tolman, Skinner	Koffka, Kohler,Lewin, Piaget, Ausubel, Bruner, Gagne	Maslow, Rogers	Bandura, Lave and Wenger, Salomon
View of the learning process	Change in behavior	Internal mental process (including insight, information processing, memory, perception	A personal act to fulfil potential.	Interaction /observation in social contexts. Movement from the periphery to the centre of a community of practice
Locus of learning	Stimuli in external environment	Internal cognitive structuring	Affective and cognitive needs	Learning is in relationship between people and environment.
Purpose in education	Produce behavioural change in desired direction	Develop capacity and skills to learn better	Become self-actualized, autonomous	Full participation in communities of practice and utilization of resources
Educator's role	Arranges environment to elicit desired response	Structures content of learning activity	Facilitates development of the whole person	Works to establish communities of practice in which conversation and participation can occur.
Manifestations in adult learning	Behavioural objectives Competency -based education Skill development and training	Cognitive development Intelligence, learning and memory as function of age Learning how to learn	Andragogy Self-directed learning	Socialization Social participation Associationalism Conversation

[4]

3.2  Evaluate the concepts of Personal and Organization Development (Clearly mention the differences between personal and organizational development with examples from your own workplace).

The early days of developmental theory focused on children, and how they developed thinking abilities.  Jean Piaget pioneered child development stages. While he did not include stages for adulthood, it was the good start to the understanding of how humans develop.

Abraham Maslow introduced the idea of stages of adult development, with his hierarchy of needs.  While his theory is well-known throughout the world, there is little empirical evidence to support that his hierarchy reflected how adults actually develop.  Later, psychologists like Erik Erikson, Jane Loevinger, Lawrence Kohlberg, Clare Graves, and others, focused on researching and offering different frameworks to better explain the stages of adult development.   They began to try to understand how some adults were able to develop to different levels of orienting themselves to their world and to their life.  Each of the researchers identified meaning-making systems, or stages, that are more effective in dealing with the complexities of life than the previous stages.   These researchers all found that the stages unfold in a specific sequence, and that each stage transcends and includes the previous stages.

Bill Torbert brought developmental theory into leadership and organisation development with his 1987 book “The Corporate Dream”.  He calls the process Action Inquiry. He writes that Action Inquiry is “a way of simultaneously conducting action and inquiry, as a disciplined leadership practice that increases effectiveness” (2004, p1).    Regardless of positional power, anyone can practice action inquiry.   A diligent practice of Action Inquiry can expand a person’s Action Logic, which is described as a person’s strategies and schemas for reflecting on and making sense of their life experiences.  So the later and more developed a person’s Action Logic, the more effective they are in managing complexity.

Since 1987, a number of authors have written about stages of making sense of the world, and how it relates to leadership and organizations.   To name a few, Kegan’s In Over Our Heads  (1994) includes a chapter on management; Beck and Cowan’s Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change(1996); Barrett’s  Liberating the Corporate Soul: Building a Visionary Organization (1998); and a number of books by Ken Wilber, including A Theory of Everything: An Integral Vision for Business, Politics, Science and Spirituality (2001).

In the domain of Leadership Development, Bill Joiner and Steven Josephs built on the work of Torbert with what they call Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change (2007).  They say that being mindful about following a development plan can increase leadership agility, make a difference in the world, and help leaders enjoy the person they become in the process.[5]

3.3  Identify and explain 4 factors influencing tourist demand in a tourist destination area of your choice.

Most influencing factors which influence tourist demand in Eastern Caribbean Currency Union:

  • Income Factor: Income as a prime factor which influence people to go for travelling. Tourism demand directly depends on income.  According to Witt and Witt (1992), “tourism is a luxury good with an expected income elasticity of demand above unity”. Most of the experiment found that the income elasticity is above two in most of the cases.

• Price Factor: it is another important factor. Relative price between the sending and receiving country are adjusted by the bilateral exchange rate and relative prices between the receiving country and other competitors. If the relative price level is higher in receiving country, the lower demand for tourism.  

• Tourism Shocks: there are some factors which influence tourist very much like sporting events, world fairs, oil crises, travel restrictions, terrorism, social conflicts, political instability and so on. All of the factors are dummy variables.

• Supply Factors. This factor is not that much influential but sometimes it is important. Some of the supply factors are accommodation capacity and public investment as a ratio to GDP etc [6].

3.4  Apply and analyze 2 theories or models relevant to understand and motivate the tourist demand in the above chosen destination.

According to the Maslow, people first fulfill their basic needs then go for other luxurious needs. Travelling is not a basic need and it is a luxurious needs. When people have adequate money and time to travel they will go for that. Every human do everything for a reason but it is not easy to determine. For motivating tourist, first of all it is needed to know which things attract tourist most. Pearce, Morrison and Rutledge (1998) defined tourist motivation “as the global integrating network of biological and cultural forces which gives value and direction to travel choices, behaviour and experience”. Sometime people visit Thailand and some other palaces of the world. They choose their destination for some specific reasons and those reasons are act like motivation. Prebensen (2007) has written in her research regarding travel motivations, “once an individual has the right motivation to travel, the type of holiday and destination is often decided based on his/her perception or value of the various options in the marketplace”. She furthermore states that “people then go on holiday for many reasons and they participate in the ‘production’ of the holiday in various ways”. Tourist motivation is the way to stimulate a person to travel a certain place [7].

4.      Understand the organizational factors that influence learning and development.

4.1  Analyze the influence of organization leadership and culture on learning and development

Leaders nurture and develop executive management support for learning within the organization. Senior managers will take initiative on learning and development. Top executive management will organize some training and educational courses to increase performance of employees which will give the organization a long-term corporate value. Top management will treat intellectual skills as an organizational resource. Management will chose such kind of training program which will be really helpful to individual and organization as well. Before implementing the learning and development program management will assess return-on-investment. If it is profitable then they will implement otherwise they will stop the program. They will select program according to the present and future value added program. Organizations culture is another important factor to influence employees on learning and development. If maximum employees are motivated, new employees will be eager to learn new skills and knowledge from experience campaigners. Managers and employees can setup good discipline around learning and development practices within the organization [8].

4.2  Critically analyze the impact of an organization’s environment on human resource development

The human resource development work best when employees are satisfied and motivated otherwise the program will go to vain. Normally employees become satisfied when

·         People are engaged in their work

·         There is mutual respect and trust between employees and manager

·         People feel they are treated fairly

·         There is a clear sense of purpose

·         Employees are able to balance their work and personal responsibilities

·         Employees feel safe (i.e., free from harassment and/or discrimination)

The activities of HRD depend on the organizational environment. If all the members are motivated enough and skilled then need less development activities. If all the members are not motivated then the organization doesn’t need any kind of motivation but if few of them are motivated then need to motivate others. Top label management can change the scenario if they want according to the situation demand. 

4.3  Critically analyze the impact of organization strategy on human resource development.

An organization’s HRD provision represents the pivotal component of the ‘bundle’ of HR practices required for a ‘high road’ HRM strategy. A key image is that of a high performance working where high level skills and high discretion in the performance of work. Key implications include:

·         employees are recruited for a skilled working role that will require learning and change

·         line managers are fully involved in the development of their staff to such an extent that the differentiation between learning and working becomes virtually impossible to discern

Leadership is said to be a key variable in linking strategy, culture and the commitment of employees. Using the Design School model of strategic work, HRD became a feature where senior managers sense important environmental trends and signals in HRD terms. A contrasting view is where strategies can emerge from the actions of employees.

5.      Know how to develop an effective performance management program.

5.1  Analyze the nature of a performance management program and assess the links with learning and development

The PMP is a structure to promote an ongoing communication process between the employee and supervisor, concentrated on factors like achieving workplace results, development and performance. By using appraisal cycle, PMP create collaboration and development. This is a time frame where an employee’s performance is directly justified or verified for record or rating. The time duration of this cycle depends on various scope and type of given appraisal. Development of employees and evaluation and needs of development is very essential. Development is the process to increase the capacity to perform by improving work process, introducing higher levels of responsibility or introducing new skills or through training or other various methods. Those development activities and programs strengthen competencies and job related skills, and encourage good performance. Employees are able to adapt any kind of changes in the workplace like new technology.  

5.2  Apply effective performance measures in two different practical situations from organizations

Program name: Economic Development Administration (EDA)

Outcome of performance measure- Jobs created or retained in distressed communities as a result of EDA investments.

Explanation: The purpose of the program is to create and retain jobs in economically-challenged communities. The key indicator of program effectiveness is number of jobs actually created and retained as a result of EDA investments. EDA uses data collected and estimated by grantees and discounts those data by 25 percent to account for outside factors, such as the state of the economy. The discount factor is based on a study that found that EDA dollars were responsible for 75 percent of the jobs created in EDA-funded projects. This is a long-term outcome measure used to measures jobs at three, six and nine year intervals.

Program name: Patent and Trademark Office

Outcome of performance measure- Average Patent Pendency

Explanation: The Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) issues patents and registers trademarks. A primary measure of the processing time of patents is pendency. Patent pendency is the estimated time in months for a complete review of a patent application, from the filing date to issue or abandonment of the application. PTO collects the data used in this measure from their internal Patent Application Location Monitoring (PALM) System.[10]

 5.3 Critically evaluate a range of motivation theories

Acquired Needs Theory (mcclellan)

Some needs are acquired as a result of life experiences

• need for achievement, accomplish something difficult. as kids encouraged to do things for themselves.
• need for affiliation, form close personal relationships. as kids rewarded for making friends.
• need for power, control others. as kids, able to get what they want through controlling others.

Again similar to maslow and alderfer.

These needs can be measured using the TAT (thematic apperception test), which is a projection-style test based on interpreting stories that people tell about a set of pictures. 

Cognitive Evaluation Theory

This theory suggests that there are actually two motivation systems: intrinsic and extrinsic that correspond to two kinds of motivators:

• intrinsic motivators:  Achievement, responsibility and competence. motivators that come from the actual performance of the task or job -- the intrinsic interest of the work.
• extrinsic:  pay, promotion, feedback, working conditions -- things that come from a person's environment, controlled by others.

One or the other of these may be a more powerful motivator for a given individual.

Intrinsically motivated individuals perform for their own achievement and satisfaction. If they come to believe that they are doing some job because of the pay or the working conditions or some other extrinsic reason, they begin to lose motivation.

The belief is that the presence of powerful extrinsic motivators can actually reduce a person's intrinsic motivation, particularly if the extrinsic motivators are perceived by the person to be controlled by people. In other words, a boss who is always dangling this reward or that stick will turn off the intrinsically motivated people.[11]

6.      Understand the importance of Human Resource Development

6.1  Evaluate the growing recognition of the importance of human resource development in enhancing organization performance.

Human resource development enhances organization performance. HRD is the long-range human development program which is very much essential for the organizations of their daily operations. Nowadays HRD becomes the part and parcel of an organization. Managers will identify the weaknesses and strengths of an organization and make plan to continue the development program or stop the program. He is also responsible to find out internal and external threats and opportunities. He will find out the factors which has effect on development. If there is any technical development, manager will take steps to train the employees to adapt current technology. Manager will do the cost/benefit analysis to estimate the impact of HRD on the organization. He will measure the performance and productivity of employees at regular basis. HRD improves the skills and performance of employees and if all the employees become skillful and knowledgeable it is easy to attain organizational success.        

6.2  Demonstrate an understanding of processes relating to human resource development

HRD efforts should use the following four phases (or stages):

n  Needs assessment

n  Design

n  Implementation

n  Evaluation

Need Assessment Phase:

n  Establishing HRD priorities

n  Defining specific training and objectives

n  Establishing evaluation criteria

Design Phase:

n  Selecting who delivers program

n  Selecting and developing program content

n  Scheduling the training program

Implementation Phase:

n  Implementing or delivering the program

Evaluation phase:

·         Determining program effectiveness – e.g.,

n  Keep or change providers?

n  Offer it again?

n  What are the true costs?

n  Can we do it another way?

7.      Understand the purposes, relevance and value of specific management development initiatives and programs.

7.1  Assess the importance of management development to organization performance

Management development is very important and it plays a very vital role to improve organization performance. Management development means train managers for better operation and maintenance. Managers have great responsibility and they have to know all the information regarding organizational business. Managers have to do directing, staffing, organizing, controlling and planning. Managers will be good communicator for running the business very smoothly. Normally managers always take the support or business owners and they try to mitigate operation and maintenance cost. They are very much concern about finance. Managers must concern about the distribution of wages, company policy and the administration. Manager will work for the organization but not for any specific individuals. For career development managerial and personal skills is very vital. Management course helps managers to learn many qualities like leadership, motivation, communication, and so on [9].    

8.      Conclusion:

Human resources development, in a sense, represents a broad vision of the relationship between individuals and society regarding their capabilities and capacities for sustainable economic development. However, when human resources development is directed towards a specific sector, in this case the public sector, the focus changes to a specific process of dealing with the attraction of people into, their retention in, and subsequent departure from that sector. It attempts to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization by maximizing individual and collective productivity. It also attempts to create a healthy relationship between the organization and its people; that is, both its human and non-human environments.

Reference:

1.      Swanson R. A., Holton E.F., Holton Ed, Foundations of human resource development, 2001, page-4

2.      Harry, W. 2007. East is East. People Management, 29 November: 36–8.

3.      Yahoo Answers website, Retrieve on: 15/05/12, Available at: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070801013554AAAWdmt

4.      Learning theory, Retrieve on: 15/05/12, Available at: http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-learn.htm

5.      O’Loughlin D., Personal and organizational development: some maps for the Trip, December 6, 2010. Retrieve on: 15/05/12, Available at: http://mdi.com.pk/management/2010/12/personal-and-organizational-development-some-maps-for-the-trip/

6.      Tsounta E., What attracts tourist to paradise, December 2008, Retrieve on: 15/05/12, Available at: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2008/wp08277.pdf

7.      Phan Tai, Tourist motivation and activities: a case study of Nha Trang, Vietnam, May 2010, Retrieve on: 15/05/12, Available at:  http://munin.uit.no/bitstream/handle/10037/2586/thesis.pdf?sequence=2

8.      Olga W. and Jane L. B, Leadership influence on corporate change involving distance training, Retrieve on: 15/05/12, Available at: http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring101/wasyluk101.htm

9.      Wikipedia website, Management development, Retrieve on: 15/05/12, Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_development

10.  Example of performance measure, Retrieve on: 15/05/12, Available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/part/performance_measure_examples.pdf

11.  Theories of motivation, Retrieve on: 15/05/12, Available at:  http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/motivation.htm