Grumpy Lecturer: If I could change one thing about HR...

The world of work has changed radically over the past 30 years, both in content, as to what modern jobs entail, and in how the employment relationship is ideologically approached by governments and employers. This is not the forum for debating the reasons for the change in job content but it is worth mentioning that somewhere in the world the jobs in mass manufacturing that we once were reasonably good at are still being performed in the same 'traditional' way.

However, the management of the employee relationship can be briefly commented upon. If we look, briefly, at the various methods of designing work - Taylorism, Fordism, JIT Management, Cell Manufacturing, Job Flexibility, HRM (Hard Systems Approach) - each is concerned with increasing worker productivity (effort) and managerial control in the workplace.

If we also look at the role of management theory - that is the sociological and psychological strategies employed in the workplace (such as Human Relations Movement (Emery & Trist), Team Working, Job Enlargement/Enrichment, Participation Schemes (On Managerial Terms), Performance-Related Pay, HRM (Soft Systems Approach), Employee Involvement Schemes, etc) - each represents an alternative or complementary way of also increasing worker productivity (effort) and managerial control in the workplace.

So who controls the employment relationship is of prime importance. This is a fundamental point that we have tended to lose sight of in this post-industrial period.

Employers have tried numerous ways in which to exert their control throughout history. Probably the first attempt was slavery. This obviously would not be appropriate today but that does not mean that it does not still exist in the UK. Feudalism with its reciprocal 'tit for tat' work for accommodation worked in its own way. However, capitalism is the tour de force of employer control. The options available through capitalist production for employers to achieve control are numerous. The prime suspects being Scientific Management (F. W. Taylor), Content Theory (Needs Theory... yes, that pyramid) based on the contributions of Mayo, Maslow, McGregor, Herzberg and others and finally the Process Theories of Vroom, Porter & Lawler and others.

Employers can control employee effectiveness and efficiency by paying for increased output (Scientific Management Theory) or ensuring the organisation provides all the 'needs' an employee requires satisfying ('Needs' Theory). A near impossibility but this does not prevent the avalanche of managerial texts describing ways in which employers can achieve this near impossibility. Finally, Process Theories, the 'in' fad, whereby employers gain control by having employees achieve targets. The theory goes that in achieving these targets employees become elated with their achievement and thus, so the theory states, contribute more to the organisation. Obviously employers can 'pick and mix' these strategies.

What has occurred over the past 30 years is a definite movement away from pay as a motivator. Pay as a motivator, unfortunately, has its problems. The main problem is 'fairness' as to how wealth is distributed both within the employing organisation and in the wider society. With this approach seen as divisive and confrontational by employers there has been a concerted move by them to find an alternative control mechanism. Human Resource Management (HRM) fills the void perfectly. It removes pay from the agenda and focuses on the social trivia of work. But more importantly, it requires a totally new behavioural approach to be adopted by employees towards their employers.

Rather than see work as confrontational as to pay and conditions of work, employees are encouraged to believe that the interest of both the employer and the employee are congruous and thus the focus of debate is redirected to the fate of the organisation. A fate contained in the hands of all those who have contact with that organisation. This social engineering has been marketed under the guise of a 'stakeholder society'.

From my own observations this managerial sleight of hand has been fairly easy to achieve. Again this is not the forum but such things that have contributed to this social reengineering debate would include the following.

Sociologists and sociology have been deterred from contributing to management textbooks and discussions on work. The sociologist brings nothing to the table but discussions on power relationships in the workplace and the wider implications of work on the society in which it takes place. The psychologist on the other hand moves the debate to people's needs, attitudes or personalities which are much easier to deal with than the social structure of work, power relationships and work ideologies, which are the province of the sociologist.

The psychologist's contribution also offers 'practical' technical options or remedies for 'human problems' in the workplace. Their contributions are also devoid of class conflict debates and political or power based ideologies. The shift to a reliance on psychological contributions to management textbooks has contributed significantly to the process of social reengineering with regards to the attitude of employees to the workplace.

Business/Management Schools thrive on the requirements of the marketplace driven by the requirements of the employer. This in turn has spawned other organisations of social engineering such as the CIPD who have devised their own qualifications in which the world of work is seen through the perspective of the employer.

As to whether employees really believe in the world of work painted by the orthodoxy of the management texts is another debate but it would be interesting to discover. Are we all team-players in the presence of the manager whilst looking for another job on the net? We have been programmed to answer 'yes' to the interview question as to whether we are team players. What else have we learned to say to conform?

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