Managing People at Work

This book arises from the need of students who have little or no threshold knowledge of human resource management (HRM) but who need to link it to their studies in other subjects. Managing People at Work encourages readers to examine the underlying concepts that reach out beyond discrete disciplinary boundaries and require connection with theories from different disciplines and their common practice wherever it applies to people within a company. The book also addresses the need to understand and contribute to the strategic discussions which are expected in senior management forums.

The book describes the links between company strategy, human resource (HR) planning and implementation using cost--benefit analysis to illustrate the hard and soft approaches to HRM. It also looks at evaluating the results of HR in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness in the main management interventions that lie within the human resource development activities. Students are aided with their understanding by activities that lie at the end of each chapter. These exercises can be done individually or in tutor-led groups.

This book makes clear the links between HRM, organizational behaviour and strategy, and the theory of HRM is linked to its claimed HR outcomes sometimes referred to as:

• strategic integration
• commitment
• quality
• flexibility.

This book helps to provide MBA and Master’s postgraduate students and those on management trainee programmes or accelerate promotion career paths with a more detailed understanding of these theories and how they drive the organization’s strategy and decisions about its people at work.

Julian Randall is Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen Business School. He began his career as a graduate management trainee at GEC, eventually setting up his own management consultancy company. He completed his MSc (HRM) at the University of Stirling and his PhD in Perceptions of the Management of Change at the University of St Andrews. He currently teaches Managing Consultancy and Change and Managing People at Work

Allan J. Sim is a graduate of the University of Aberdeen with an MA in Sociology and Social Anthropology and a PhD in Social Anthropology. He has worked in the oil industry, managed a bookstore and run his own research and training company. He is currently Senior Teaching Fellow at the University of Aberdeen Business School where he teaches on both undergraduate and postgraduate courses, working closely with his co-author on developing graduate attributes on the courses on which they collaborate