Introduction
Modern day human resource management (HRM) at best can be described as the catalyst or mentor of the workforce of any organization, where it nurtures and unifies all employee qualities to optimize the organizational performance. Before appearing in its current avatar, HRM was known as Personnel Management, when its scope of human resource management was limited within keeping track of employee performance or the disbursement of employee benefits.
However, certain turn of events in the global business environment that caused evolution in the business world, also catapulted personnel management to HRM and then to Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) amid an environment where humans are considered as the prime capital of business, over and above the resource and financial capital. One can realize the significance of HRM from the observations of Kontoghiorghes (2003), who states, "competitiveness will ultimately depend on their [HR managers’] capability to configure people and design a system for optimal execution of strategy" (p.28).
However, the issue of configuring human capital is complex in nature, where one would face questions such as what does the phrase, human capital mean, what can HR do to help employees feel as important to the organization, and how an HR manager would humanize the workforce. This essay therefore, explores the HRM literature to find answers to the above questions.
The Concept of Human Capital
Around 1970s, the researchers started focusing more on the hidden value of employees that resulted in a series of research findings which firmly positioned humans as the main capital of business. For example, the leadership researchers such as Burnes and Bass (Kuhnert & Lewis, 1987) or Greenleaf (Smith, 2005) started propagating the value of transformational leadership that focused on enhancing the intrinsic qualities of the employees, while management researchers started emphasizing on utilizing the hidden as well as unique values of them, which can be observed in the works such as Barney’s (1991) Resource-Based View (RBV), or in the findings of Carmeli and Tishler (2004). Those endeavors established the fact that an employee possesses both extrinsic and intrinsic qualities that are unique in nature and the organizations can garner competitive advantage by exploiting the same.
Going by the above findings, it appears clear that the phrase human capital refers to a package of two elements, such as skill and knowledge, where knowledge contains two subsets such as explicit and tacit knowledge, which together is often referred to as Intellectual Capital. According to Nonaka and Takeuchi (McLean, 2004), explicit knowledge is what is already known and can be used or stored, while tacit knowledge is clue to new knowledge that waits to be deciphered. Thus, from this perspective, one can see that any organization holds virtually an unlimited horizon of opportunities with the reservoir of tacit knowledge of its employees. The above explanation thus clearly posits the fact that human capital is an extremely important for any organization, since that provides its endless horizons of business success. Alongside, it also fairly hints that a successful management of the above capital is the main condition to gain the desired organizational outcome.
Role of HR to Mobilize Human Capital
It is assumable that it would be impossible for the HRM to exploit the human capital unless the employees feel themselves important to the organization. In this regard, the literature on HRM provides four clues. One, the HR should adopt a holistic, employee-centric attitude (Smith, 2004; Boxall & Macky, 2009); two, the HR manager should ensure more participation of the employees in the decision-making processes by equipping them with adequate training and knowledge (Boxall & Macky, 2009); three, the HR manager should ensure a constant flow of intrinsic rewards to intrinsically motivate the employees (Ryan & Deci, 2000); and four, the HR should take care of each employee at an individual level, besides being ready to provide guidance and assistance whenever the employees require them (Smith, 2005). Thus according to the literature, the main role of an HR manager should be to imbibe self-belief in each employee regarding his/her inherent potentials and acquired skills, besides making them aware of the values of the same and adept in utilizing the same.
Humanizing the Workforce
The HR manager should be able to utilize intrinsic rewards to imbibe human values in the employees, besides creating human bondage at various layers of the organization, such as bondage among small group members, bondage of pride for being a member of the organization, or bondage with the bonhomie workplace environment (Greenleaf, 1977, in Smith, 2004). Accordingly the manager/leader should convert the workplace as the second home for the employees, so that they crave to return there each day for creating and enjoying happiness through work and other activities.
In this regard, the necessity of employee attitude building comes to the fore. Since attitude is formed by three components such as cognitive, affective, and conative component and the behavioral journey should be from cognitive to conative (Ray, 1974), the HR manager can formulate a strategy depicted as below:
Figure 1: Strategy for Employee Attitude Building
[Conceptualized from Boxall & Macky (2009); Huselid (1995); Ray, 1974)]
Conclusion
The HRM is assigned to configure the human capital, which contains both extrinsic and intrinsic components that offer unlimited opportunities of organizational success. Therefore, the HRM should begin its journey with an employee-centric attitude and try to exploit the human capital through appropriate measures in areas such as training, rewards, care giving, attitude-building, and workplace ambience. For that matter the HRM requires formulating strategies and to sharpen it constantly by utilizing the feedbacks as well as utilizing innovative ideas.
References
Barney, J.B. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of Management, 17, 99-120. Retrieved January 22, 2016, from http://www.business.illinois.edu/josephm/BA545_Fall%202015/Barney%20(1991).pdf
Boxall, P. & Macky, K. (2009). Research and theory on high-performance work systems: Progressing the high involvement stream. Human Resource Management Journal, 19(1), 3-23. Retrieved January 22, 2016, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1748-8583.2008.00082.x/full
Carmeli, A. & Tischler, A. (2004). The relationships between intangible organizational elements and organizational performance. Strategic Management Journal, 25(13), 1257- 1278. Retrieved January 22, 2016, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/smj.428/epdf
Huselid, M. A. (1995). The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity, and corporate financial performance. Academy of Management Journal, 38(3), 635-72. Retrieved January 22, 2016, from http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=69310211512209311700800212709801412 402503301004505701808811112006410412210606511601402402705711100703000308 607408300400211903001104808803504812512700302711612611411902706907106402 908307707110812311700211200609612602609009711000100508601811500309907011 6&EXT=pdf
Kontoghiorghes, C. (2003). Identification of key predictors of organizational competitiveness in a service organization. Organization Development Journal, 21(2), 28-42. Retrieved January 22, 2016, from http://search.proquest.com/openview/b00e12ff92d2f9080a0fa092efe789aa/1?pq- origsite=gscholar&cbl=36482
Kuhnert, K.W. & Lewis, P. (1987). Transactional and transformational leadership: A constructive/developmental analysis. Academy of Management Review, 12(4), 648-657. Retrieved January 18, 2016, from http://www.turknett.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/07/TransactionalandTransformationalLeadership.pdf
McLean, L.D. (2004). A review and critique of Nonaka and Takeuchi’s theory of organizational knowledge creation. Retrieved January 18, 2016, from http://www.mcleanglobal.com/public/MGC/publications/Nonaka%20and%20Takeuchi.p df
Ray, J.J. (1974). Projective tests can be made reliable: Measuring need for achievement. Journal of Personality Assessment, 38(4), 303-307. Retrieved January 22, 2016, from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ103343
Ryan, R. M. & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 68-78. Retrieved January 22, 2016, from https://home.ubalt.edu/tmitch/641/deci_ryan_2000.pdf
Smith, K. (2005). Servant leadership: The leadership theory of Robert K. Greenleaf. Retrieved January 18, 2016, from http://www.carolsmith.us/downloads/640greenleaf.pdf
