An Overview of Human Resources

Introduction:

Human Resource Management is an offshoot of the management discipline, which emphasis on how to attract, hire, train, motivate and retain employees. Skilled employees become a cause of competitive advantage in this global village, who continually faces the turbulent environmental changes taking place in the business world. The researcher found that Human Resource practices are too important to have an impact on the achievements of organizational objectives in the world of competition (Khan, 2011).

Human Resource is the back bone in managing the organizational resources and its performance efficiently and effectively. Better the human resource management, better the production of the organization. Managing the human capital effectively guarantees the right person at right place at the right time, which helps the organization to achieve its strategic objectives. Human resources of any business are vital assets who convert inputs up to finished goods, thus enhancing the profits by meeting the societal challenges and meeting the needs of society().

The traditional act of personnel manager/HR manager as an HR administrator is inadequate for existence in this turbulent business world (Payne, 2010). In the present era HR manager should act as a business partner and HR manager simultaneously. Due to rapid changes in technology and excessive use of information technology, business has emerged in a global community and this emerging field has become a “Global Strategic Management”. This emerging meadow is the amalgamation of strategic management and global business environment which forms strategies globally, expanding the business across the territorial boundaries to compete globally().

The human resource management of any setup, institution, firm, having ongoing turbulent milieu changes, is unable to be a stagnant phenomenon. By aligning the business strategies with the human resource management, the organization can obtain the competitive edge in the industry. Firm can optimally utilize the appropriate opportunities with the help of the strategic human resource management. Strategic amalgamation is a predictable requisite in creation of evenness between human resource strategy and organizational strategy. Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) remained the utmost, authoritative and the most significant emerging concept in the arena of business and management during the past twenty-five years(; ).

Strategic human resources are referred to the development of the strategies which can assist motivating employees to produce more quantity/better quality and performance. The concept of SHRM emerged and got popularity in the USA during late 90s(). The importance of strategic human resource management in an organization cannot be overemphasized due to the fact that human beings are the pushing force behind any organization. In this respect, organizations must be able to implement well-planned and well-thought out strategic human resource ideas that will be transported out to coordinate and transmit the human capital into increased productivity. A strong human resource strategy will allow an organization to have a good relationship with its workers and to coexist peacefully and in a mutually beneficial manner with its host community.

Convergence of HRM is supposed to be the effect of global rivalry, which demands more efficient and more effective solutions (). Another example of organizational convergence is the movement toward Western-style organization. At times, a blueprint model for nonprofit organizations has been advanced, founded on the construction and funding of specific organizational structures.

The ‘convergence hypothesis’ stated that ‘best management practices’ could be applied everywhere, irrespective of the different political, ideological and cultural environments. National culture can impact on organisational culture by the development of organisational values which are influenced by a manager’s basic assumptions that have been developed by their own sets of behaviours and norms. The differences in management practices should also be viewed in the same way as many scholars attribute this to the ‘country of origin effect’ which comes about through clashed between organisational factors and local culture (Aycan, 2005).

The relation between globalization and convergence has been examined in various ways within the social sciences. Political scientists often show how globalization produces the convergence of political institutions, systems or political economies (Radice, 2000). A prominent economic approach has been to chart the convergence of markets and real wage dispersion (e.g. Alderson and Nielson, 2002).

Divergence is about organizations who are maintaining their culturally based dissimilarities (McGaughey & De Cieri, 1999). Webber (1969: Cited in Ralston, 2008, p. 29) defined divergence as “… socio-cultural influence is the driving force that will cause individuals from a society to retain the specific values system of the societal culture through time, regardless of other possible influences, such as technological, economic and political change”.

This research paper aims to Convergence and divergence issues in strategic management with the help of Balanced Scorecard in HR management and the sector in which we are going to investigate our model is banking sector of Pakistan.

Banks play vital role in any society because they expressively subsidize in the expansion of an economy by accelerating the business. Banks similarly support the saving plans and other instruments of the government’s fiscal approach in their development. One function of banks is credit facility or provision, Credit energies economic actions by permitting companies to invest further than their current cash in hand, individuals to acquire homes, and also help governments to finance new infrastructure projects. Globalization and advancement in technology led banking sector to experience rapid transformations in last few decades.

State Bank of Pakistan and private sector commercial banks and insurance companies set up their in-house T&D establishments. Gradually, the leading universities set up Public Administration departments and with this developed the basic know-how among the industrialists about Human Resource Management. This led to the setting up of separate Human Resource Departments by not only the leading organizations, but also by the smaller ones.