Welcome!
The Companion Website aims to augment the textbook by providing additional material for the following purposes:
- To illustrate the content with examples and case studies, such as the mini-case studies on total rewards and talent management in Part 5.
- To pick up topics which fall between the major areas covered in the book, as found in the article on emotional behaviour at work which draws on psychology, organizational behaviour, and employment relations, in Part 1.
- To give examples of processes and skills, such as negotiation techniques, in Part 6.
Some of the material is discussed in the book, and the examples cited should be read in conjunction with the relevant chapters in the book.
The field of human resource management (HRM) is changing constantly. These social, technological, legal, economic, and political shifts mean there can be no firm base for managerial theories except those found in the broadly defined fields of the social sciences. Interestingly, in the area of HRM, there is a sense in which we are all social scientists: every new human resource (HR) policy is an experiment in the relationship between managerial intention and the consequential employee behaviours. The highly context-specific nature of HRM results in difficulty for practitioners when making predictions about precisely what will happen in an organization, whatever HR strategy, policy, or actions are applied. This is an argument for ‘logical incrementalism’, that is, taking one step at a time, trying out ideas and being flexible and cautious before committing to large budget spends and new policy directions.
For this website, this means we should review our offerings periodically, about every six months, in order to edit existing postings, and to add new material as necessary.
The material on the website is divided into the seven Parts used in the book:
- Part 1 Understanding organizational behaviour
- Part 2 Human resource management
- Part 3 Sourcing and selection
- Part 4 Developing people
- Part 5 Rewards
- Part 6 Employee relations
- Part 7 Employment law
For the reasons given above, the content of the website will change from time to time.
I hope all readers of Essentials of Human Resource Management will find this website a useful and worthwhile addition to this 6th edition of the book.
Shaun Tyson, October 2014.