Business issues and the context of HR
THE ORGANISATION
The organisation is the background within which the HR function works. Understanding the deep nature of the organisation has to be the main goal for HRM as the nature of the organisation has a huge impact on how people are managed in the business.
The organisation is defined as the planned coordination of the activities of a number of people for the achievement of some common, explicit purpose or goal, through division of labour and function, and through a hierarchy of authority and responsibility (Schein, 1980).
Historically, there have been many definitions of organisations, depending on whether they focus on:
• Their size: SMEs, Large and Public Sector. (Curran and Stanworth, 1988);
• Their prime beneficiaries: members, shareholders, users, the public. (Blau and Scott ,1962 – Maltby, 2003);
• The degree to which they are mechanistic (highly structured organisation with centralised policies, rigid hierarchical ranks, a strong emphasis on administration and clear boundaries between departments) or organic (a flattened structure, colleague, rather than command and control relationships as the predominant mode, short lived and flexible administrative systems and mobile departmental boundaries (Burns and Stalker ,1966);
• Their structure meant as the relationships between employees at vertical and horizontal level (tall or flat/lean, hierarchical, matrix, flexible, virtual) (Leatherbarrow et al., 2010).
Thinking about a mixed economy such as UK, organisations can be classified in:
• Public organizations, generally providing essential services such as health, education, social services, policing. They are responsible to central government and those who run them are accountable to the public (Taylor and Wilkinson, 2012). The nature of their funding (taxpayers) requires them to prove their responsibility with the public money. Their HR department tend to be large and able to provide HR specialist support in different areas. Because of
The organisation is the background within which the HR function works. Understanding the deep nature of the organisation has to be the main goal for HRM as the nature of the organisation has a huge impact on how people are managed in the business.
The organisation is defined as the planned coordination of the activities of a number of people for the achievement of some common, explicit purpose or goal, through division of labour and function, and through a hierarchy of authority and responsibility (Schein, 1980).
Historically, there have been many definitions of organisations, depending on whether they focus on:
• Their size: SMEs, Large and Public Sector. (Curran and Stanworth, 1988);
• Their prime beneficiaries: members, shareholders, users, the public. (Blau and Scott ,1962 – Maltby, 2003);
• The degree to which they are mechanistic (highly structured organisation with centralised policies, rigid hierarchical ranks, a strong emphasis on administration and clear boundaries between departments) or organic (a flattened structure, colleague, rather than command and control relationships as the predominant mode, short lived and flexible administrative systems and mobile departmental boundaries (Burns and Stalker ,1966);
• Their structure meant as the relationships between employees at vertical and horizontal level (tall or flat/lean, hierarchical, matrix, flexible, virtual) (Leatherbarrow et al., 2010).
Thinking about a mixed economy such as UK, organisations can be classified in:
• Public organizations, generally providing essential services such as health, education, social services, policing. They are responsible to central government and those who run them are accountable to the public (Taylor and Wilkinson, 2012). The nature of their funding (taxpayers) requires them to prove their responsibility with the public money. Their HR department tend to be large and able to provide HR specialist support in different areas. Because of