The Human Resource Function in Educational Administration (7th Edition) - Hardcover

Castetter, William Benjamin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0139271120 ISBN 13: 9780139271120

Publisher: Prentice Hall, 1999

Synopsis

With its comprehensive approach, this classic book is designed to cover each of the eleven processes related to the human resource function. The book focuses on the management of the school system's human resources and discusses whose qualities and performance determine system outcomes in educational administration. Includes current research, reform movements, political developments with educational significance, and new approaches to long-standing problems with the humans resource function. Covers unionism, litigation deriving from discrimination, public criticism of poor teaching, and poor teacher appraisal practices in their present form. For school administrators.

About this title

From the Publisher

In this Sixth Edition, Castetter maintains his balance of principle and practice as he brings into focus the rapid rate of change surrounding the human resources function--including economic, ethical, political and regulatory aspects--and the interconnection of the function to the systems internal and external environments.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Every employee of an educational organization is influenced by the human resource function. This influence begins prior to employment through recruitment and selection processes and continues throughout the employment period of an individual. Whether or not this influence is positive depends on how well the human resource function is managed by those responsible for making important decisions about individuals as employees and about the overall operation of the human resource function in the educational setting.

Some of the decisions involve old issues ever new, while other decisions involve new issues yet to be broached by many educational organizations. Within this edition, both types of issues are addressed. Issues that have been and continue to be a mainstay of the human resource function are examined from both traditional and novel perspectives. Emerging human resource issues are introduced, and best practices relating to these issues are examined.

This edition, like the seventh edition, is organized into three parts. However, some of the chapters from the previous edition have been deleted, and other chapters have been combined. Most importantly, each chapter has been revised, and each chapter contains web links.

The three parts of this edition reflect pre-employment considerations from a strategic planning perspective, core human resource functions common to every organization, and continuity of employment considerations pertaining to enhancing the employment life of individuals as employees. Considerable emphasis is placed on the readability of these parts from a student perspective.

Part I introduces the human resource function and places the human resource function within the strategic planning context. Informational needs for linking human resource functions and strategic planning processes are examined from a policy perspective.

In Part II, core human resource functions associated with recruitment and selection, induction, development, performance appraisal, and compensation are addressed from several perspectives. Emphasis is placed on policy decisions and administrative decisions relative to these different human resource functions, and current research is brought to bear on these topics.

The focus of Part III is on the employment continuity process and benefits associated with continued employment. Attention is afforded to collective bargaining within the school setting, and the role of human resources as related to collective bargaining.

What's New in This Edition

In maintaining its signature orientation among competing textbooks, this eighth edition follows the general systems approach to the human resource function from a strategic management perspective as set forth in previous editions and expands current knowledge in this area from several viewpoints by drawing from emerging research, by expanding current knowledge about human resource practice, by addressing new systemic reform efforts confronting public school districts, and by linking recent Web-based information illustrating current practice of the human resource function in each chapter. Again, as with past editions, attention is devoted to the concerns of those administrators responsible for administering the human resource function in the educational setting and to those employees subjected to the human resource process in fulfilling job assignments. Both perspectives are addressed in this new edition by the following:

• Clarifying the role of strategic planning and identifying systemic reform efforts pertaining to competency-based testing and institutional report cards that impact the operation of the human resource function
• Illustrating the importance of mission statements for shaping the direction of human resource functions and supplying on-line working examples from exemplary public school districts
• Providing a mosaic depiction of the human resource components emphasizing the interrelatedness among planning, recruitment, selection, compensation, appraisal, development, and other continuity processes necessary for a competent work force
• Exploring fundamental components of the intra structure necessary for developing and maintaining an information system that can be used to inform those responsible for administrating a human resource process
• Examining proactive policy issues bearing on the recruitment and selection of employees and differentiating between the equal employment opportunity perspective and the affirmative action perspective as related to the procurement of employees
• Including Web-based references for legislative acts governing the employee procurement process and linking these acts to practice in the field setting
• Viewing recruitment and selection both from an organizational (employer) and from an individual (applicant) perspective and including emerging research findings addressing the recruitment and selection from both perspectives
• Offering methodologies for assessing selection practices as related to both legislative mandates (disproportional impacts) and practical utility that can be tailored to and performed by an individual school district
• Exemplifying different quantitative and qualitative models that can be used to evaluate the internal consistency of a compensation system used by a school district for paying nonunionized employees
• Presenting criteria for defining a relevant labor used to establish salaries based on common educational practices and alluding to specific economic principles such as ability to pay, cost-benefit, scale of economy, and supply and demand
• Advocating specific experimental designs and planning techniques that can improve the assessment and development of staff improvement programs for all groups of employees
• Differentiating among different types of performance assessment systems and providing a decision matrix for choosing among performance assessment systems according to purposes(s)
• Dissecting fringe benefits according to entitlements and privileges within the employment continuity process and explaining differences between defined contribution and defined benefit plans
• Classifying contractual items and proposals within a master agreement according to legislative definitions (mandatory, permissive, and illegal) and to personal preference (person concerns, organizational concerns, and general concerns)

Finally, by addressing past practices, examining present practices, and suggesting future practices, the eighth edition offers those responsible for, and those subjected to, the human resource function in the school setting with viable options. Underlying the philosophy of this textbook is that a singular approach to human resource management in the school setting fails to exist and that knowledgeable choices must be made by all the stakeholders. If easy answers and fixed solutions existed for most human resource issues, then many of the current educational problems would have been resolved decades ago.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0139271120
• ISBN 13: 9780139271120
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400