The Evolution of Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management is a diverse field that aims to bring out the best in employees in order to accomplish organizational goals while facilitating personal development of the employees as well. Most organizations in various industries have embraced Human Resource Management as a core function of the organization and are reaping its benefits. Although field of HRM is a comparatively recent development, its roots can be traced back to the pre-industrial era.

During the pre-industrial era the closest thing to the employer-employee relationships was the relationship between landowners and slaves. Here the landowner had the slave/s at his disposal and had complete power over him/them. Although it is a violation of human rights according to present standards, slavery was commonplace until it was abolished in many parts of the world.

The industrial revolution resulted in the creation of the factory system. Now the relationship shifted to, owners of factories and workers. It was during this time that The theory of Scientific Management was put forward by Frederick Winslow Taylor. In Scientific management, ways in which efficiency of a factory could be increased were discussed. Although some of these methods included training of employees and selecting the employees with the right skills, even this was a long way from the modern HRM approach because among the basic assumptions in Scientific Management were the notions that, man is an "economic animal" and that money was the primary factor in motivating employees.

An improvement of Scientific Management came in the form of the "the Modern Management Theory" by Henry Fayol. In this theory fair treatment of all employees is argued while giving more consideration to the proper treatment of employees. In this theory Fayol also claims that people can be motivated by more than just money. This was a major milestone in the road towards modern Human Resource Management because employee motivation and fair treatment of employees are key areas in modern HRM.

After the modern management theory and its successors came into place, the Human relations movement began taking shape. With this came the labour movement and the state got involved in the protection of employee rights. This resulted in a tripartite relationship between the state, employer and employee that aims to bring stability to the industry while working for the benefit of all three parties.

Now with the state involved and legal matters involved in the field of employment, organizations felt the need of "Personnel Management". personnel management, as the name implies is meant to manage employees in an organization. It focused mainly on getting the right employees for the organization to perform a job while also fulfilling the legal requirements and ensuring that employee rights are not violated.

While Personnel Management was effective in the short term, it did not produce significant improvements for an organization in the long run. Thus organizations opted for another option that would be fruitful in the long term. This was the beginning of Human Resources Management. Like the name says, HRM considers employees as a "resource" to be developed. Therefore, a key area in HRM is providing development and career advancement opportunities to employees. In other words HRM aims not to provide just a job, but to provide a career to their employees. Human Resource Management aims to attain organizational objectives by simultaneously developing its employees, and this approach has been proven to be successful.