Theoretical Reflection & Annotated Bibliography on Human Resource Management
Question
Task:
Part A: Please answer the two (2) questions.
QUESTION ONE
The value and contribution of working in a team has been amply recognized by academics and practitioners. However, some employees are still reluctant to work as a team due to the several dilemmas it might cause. Citing relevant business examples related to human resource management, evaluate these conflicting perspectives. Based on your own experience of teamwork, did you experience such a value? In what way?
QUESTION TWO
Every company has rules, guidelines, codes of conduct, and values statements aiming to guarantee its commitment to ethical management. Despite this, ethical scandals keep happening in every industry and sector. Besides, people may hold widely divergent normative approaches to make ethical decisions. Citing examples, explain what role (if any) can HRM practitioners play? Do you think ethics is a ‘managers’ matter or ALL adult human beings have a responsibility for it in organisations?
Part B: Please read two (2) and answer the following seven (7) questions for each article.
Article 1
Step 1: Bibliographic Details
Q1 How do you cite this article according to RMIT Harvard Business Referencing style?
Step 2: Brief Overview/Description
Q2 Indicate the aim of the study
Q3 Outline the main argument/s and key theory/ies
Step 3: Critical Analysis
Q4 What is the main contribution of the manuscript to both the literature and practitioners?
Q5 What is the main limitation of the study?
Step 4: Statement of Relevance
Q6 In what way does the article relate to the concepts outlined in the course?
Q7 What is your opinion regarding the argument/s expressed by the authors?
Answer
Introduction
The essay on human resource management analyzes the conflicting perspectives of the values that teamwork adds to the employees with business examples and personal experiences.
Discussion
Teamwork has formed the effective part of the business as it enables the members to achieve higher level of emotional security, self-confidence and become an effective planner. Moreover, working in a team helps in creating healthy work environment and much creativity among the employees. Workers achieve numerous values from working in a team such as better and innovative result, improved performance in workplace, increase scope of knowledge, judgement and opinion (Brock et al. 2013).
According to Brinkley et al. (2017), through teamwork in the company the employee gets the reason to grow and this adds value to the overall ability and career growth structure of the employee. However, some employees seem reluctant to participate in any kind of team activity because they face dilemma regarding their scope of growth in the organization. The employees have formed perception that team work reduce their chance of being recognized in the workplace and prove their abilities and skills that they can show while working individually.
Oikonomou (2018) has pointed out that working in a team forms the major means in improving the occupational performance of the employees. Teamwork is an essentially important skill that help in enhancing the abilities and the overall work qualities of the employees. Further, team work helps the employees to accomplish their duties in time and be more productive. Moreover, Team work plays a vital role in adding value to the professional skills of the employees such as conflict management, communication, collaboration and positive interaction abilities.For example, in healthcare business teamwork enable effective outcome towards patients’ safety and protection. A team based healthcare service has helped in increasing the service value of doctors. It has enable better communication with patients, professionals and care givers to take effective care decisions with limited medical errors. This shows that with team work and collaboration the medical workers are able to improve their service value. Further, HP (2020) has stated that teamwork helps in better employee satisfaction with better work environment that ensure safe and healthy working. It enablesmore creative ideas among the team members that contribute effectively in the achievement of collaborative goals of the business. For example, teamwork is an essential part of HP company that has helped achieving great values for their employees. It is through teamwork that the employees get the spirit of reinvention and develop game changing innovation. Moreover, by focusing on collective achievement, HP is able to develop better growth opportunities for its staffs.
Even though there is huge recognition about the value employees receive from teamwork, yet there are employees that considers that teamwork has negative impact on their development and thus are reluctant to be a part of teams at their work (Rosendaal2009). The dominant members of the team often reduce team morale with the intension of ranking high in the group that creates conflict. Moreover, it increases dependence of employees on team members and reduce their abilities to take individual decisions. Moreover, employees in teams hesitate in bringing and adding their own ideas with the fear of criticism and judgement. This reduces their innovative capability and their ability to show their full potential (Babiker et al. 2014). However, individually the employees feel more recognized and rewarded.For example, teams in Amazon produce worse results and poorer decisions because of generation gaps between the old employees and the ones that are currently joining the teams. Thus, employees at Amazon prefers individual performance for better recognition than working in team (Rustin 2020). This is because in a group the employees find less to no opportunity for progression.
I have been a part of a sales team in a retail store where I have experienced great value by working in a team. Sales is a tedious job when it comes to handling and managing different customers at a same time. Thus, developing strategies individually is difficult in such a complex work environment. Indulging in team work has helped me develop some fruitful strategies for managing customers and achieve sales target easily. Moreover, working collaboratively has allowed me achieve better recognition in the organization by meeting my targets and reduction in complaints from the customers. Thus, teamwork has helped me gain personal values such as career development, recognition, better sales person and creative.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be stated that even though employees are reluctant to be a part of a team, yet they are able to develop professionally through teamwork. This is because working with different minds make them abler and creative.
Answer Two
Introduction
The essay analyzes the role HRM practitioners can play in ethical management in a company and impacting ethical decisions among employees with relevant examples. Moreover, the essay views whether ethics is a managers’ matter or all employees in the organization are responsible.
Discussion
HRM practitioners are one of the most important performance management resources of the businesses that enables effective development. Developing and embedding ethical values in the organization is one of the most vital role of HRM practitioners. HR of the business can work in collaboration with ethical team to form improved ethical strategies and reduce ethical scandals. This is because HRM practitioners are responsible for planning and developing key systems and processes. These systems can help in conveying effective messages about ethics to the employees and inform them about the expectation of the business on ethical behavior and decisions (Harris 2020). Moreover, HRM practitioners are also responsible for recruitment in business and they play a vital role in recruiting sets of employees with strong moral and ethics in their behavior by collaborating with respective departments and their leaders. Moreover, HRM practitioners are also responsible to integrate ethics into various other processes such as induction, retention, appraisal, motivation, rewarding, training and others (Arulrajah 2015). Integrating ethics in different processes also helps in reducing ethical scandals in businesses by informing employees on ethical processes and behavior and enable ethical decisions.
For example, the HR team of McDonalds is highly committed to implement ethical recruitment in employment practices through policy development. Moreover, the HRM practitioners in McDonalds also develop HR policies towards discrimination, harassment and retaliation. This improve positive experience by yielding safe and respectful work environment and reduce ethical scandals in the work environment. For example, the HRM practitioners is also responsible for developing training and education in workplace in McDonaldsthat help in forming better workplace safety and ethical commitment among the employees. The policies and process is shared across 14000 restaurants of McDonalds system in US to foster respectful work environment (Mcdonalds 2020). Training and education enable the HR managers to change the perspectives of staffs in its multiple stores of McDonalds and manage ethical behaviors among them.
A manager plays a primary role in understanding as well as practicing ethical behavior in the organization and help meet the expectations of the company for ethical conduct. This is because employees in the organization often follows the behavior and footstep of the leaders. Moreover, managers play a major role in identifying the need of ethics in business and the areas that need moral concerns. However, ethics is business is not the matter of the managers alone and everyone is responsible for developing and managing business ethics (Safdar and Khan n.d.). For example, if a company plans to produce environmental friendly products and become ethical in their production behavior, then all its employees are important for planning and manufacturing such products. This is because with the support and creative mind of the employees it is not possible for the manager to make the ethical project a success. Likewise, forming and designing ethical policies by HR manager is not sufficient because such instinct should be seen in all employees to make it effective and successful. This means that, cognitive support from the staffs of the organization is important for making ethics decisions successful and helping the business to gain ethical status.
Thus, both efforts by managers and staff play a major role in forming formal discipline. Stark (2020) has further pointed out that as ethical issues are a matter of both individual and collective judgement, similarly, managing and developing ethical behavior in business is also a concern of all human of the organization and not only managers alone. This is because it is the behavior of the employees that matters and contribute to ethical behavior. Thus, mutual trust between the managers and the human resources of the organization help in finding strategies for developing moral practices in business.
Conclusion
Therefore, it can be stated that ethics in business is not only managers’ concern and all human resources of the business should have equal responsibility and role to play in it. This is because it is mutual role that make ethical practice successful in an organization. Moreover, it is seen that HRM practitioners play an important role in the formation of ethical conduct in business as well as reduce the chances of ethical scandal in the workplace environment.
References
Arulrajah, A.A., 2015. Contribution of human resource management in creating and sustaining ethical climate in the organisations. Sri Lankan Journal of Human Resource Management, 5(1).
Babiker, A., El Husseini, M., Al Nemri, A., Al Frayh, A., Al Juryyan, N., Faki, M.O., Assiri, A., Al Saadi, M., Shaikh, F. and Al Zamil, F., 2014. Health care professional development: Working as a team to improve patient care. Sudanese journal of paediatrics, 14(2), p.9.
Brinkley, A., McDermott, H. and Munir, F., 2017. What benefits does team sport hold for the workplace? A systematic review. Journal of Sports Sciences, 35(2), pp.136-148.
Brock, D., Abu-Rish, E., Chiu, C.R., Hammer, D., Wilson, S., Vorvick, L., Blondon, K., Schaad, D., Liner, D. and Zierler, B., 2013. Republished: Interprofessional education in team communication: working together to improve patient safety. Postgraduate medical journal, 89(1057), pp.642-651.
Harris, F., 2020. What Is HR's Role In Ethics?. [online] Hrmagazine.co.uk. Available at:
HP, 2020. HP People Talk About Team Work. [online] Explore HP. Available at:
Mcdonalds, 2020. Respecting Human Rights | Mcdonald's. [online] Corporate.mcdonalds.com. Available at:
Oikonomou, A., 2018. Assessing the impact of employee participation on team-work performance: A way to reinforce entrepreneurship. SPOUDAI-Journal of Economics and Business, 68(2-3), pp.48-61.
Rosendaal, B., 2009. Sharing knowledge, being different and working as a team. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 7(1), pp.4-14.
Rustin, S., 2020. The Office After Amazon: Is The Workplace Becoming A Jungle?. [online] the Guardian. Available at:
Safdar, G. and Khan, A.W., Ethical Implications in Human Resource Management: A Case Study of Media Channels of Pakistan.
Stark, A., 2020. What’s the Matter with Business Ethics? [online] hbr. Available at:
Part B: Annotated Bibliography
Article 1
Marescaux, E., De Winne, S. and Forrier, A., 2019. Developmental HRM, employee well?being and performance: The moderating role of developing leadership. European Management Review, 16(2), pp.317-331.
The aim of the article is to analyze the link that exist between the developmental human resource practices and task performance of the employees by keeping happiness and health as mediators. the article has made use of two types of HRM theories such as social exchange theory and cognitive dissonance theory to show the way the developing leadership behavior helps in forming positive relation between development HRM and well-being. Further, the author of the article argues that different kinds of HR practices leads to formation of employee well-being and performance in a different way (Collins et al. 2011). It has effectively showed that development HR practices will always help in stimulating employee wellbeing and improved performance.
The findings of the research have contributed effectively to the literature of HRM and allowed the HR practitioners of the business to know that development practices such as training and career development always help in boosting the performance of the employees. Likewise, the practitioners will be aware that practices like promotion, career counselling, appraisal and others have the power to reduce exhaustion. Further, the paper has effectively contributed to the literature of development HRM practices (Collins et al. 2011). The major limitation of the study is that it made use of only single items such as training and others and this makes it difficult to measure complexities in HR practices such as on-the job training versus off the job training and others. Moreover, the study was only limited to development HR practices and leadership behavior. It failed to consider the idea of other type of HR and leadership practices.
The article highly related to the concepts of employee satisfaction and role of HRM practices in the organization to develop satisfaction among the employees. The outdome of the article has successfully shown the way use of development HR practices has an impact on employee satisfaction concept.
I feel the author has placed and argued one of the most important part of HRM that is development practices because implementing development practices is not only important for the well-being of the employees, however, it is also important for the organization because development of the employees will directly have an impact on the productivity of the business. I think it is true that developmental HR practices is the best way to stimulate well-being in the organization.
Article 2
Collins, N., Nankervis, A., Sitalaksmi, S. and Warner, M., 2011. Labour–management relationships in transitional economies: convergence or divergence in Vietnam and Indonesia?. Asia Pacific Business Review, 17(3), pp.361-377.
The aim of the article in question is to explore the different ways taken by Vietnam and Indonesia in developing employee relations system and its positive and adverse impacts and outcomes. The theories that the author has used in the article to meet the research aim are unitarist, pluralist, systems theory and Marxist frameworks (Marescaux et al. 2019). The author argues that the labor management relationships whether formal or informal, rights, obligations and other frameworks has not developed effectively in Vietnam and Indonesia due to socio-cultural and political factors. Further, it argues that formal employee relation processes are missing in these two regions over time.
The findings of the article have shown the development of labor management relationship in Vietnamese and Indonesia including other employee relation issues related to unitarist labor policy and the changes taking place in the economy. Further, the article has thrown light into the protective legislation and employee activity that help develop employee relations. This has contributed to the overall outcome of employee relation practices that will help HR practitioners to solve labor management processes. Further, it has contributed to the literature of labor-management relations, trade union system and reform in both Indonesia and Vietnam. The article helps in contributing to the literature of labor legislation and organized labor system (Marescaux et al. 2019). The article has the limitation of only focusing on the labor management relations in only two transitional economies that is Vietnam and Indonesia. There is no light thrown into other economies and their labor management relationship policies and legislations.
The article relates to the concept of labor management concept that is outlined in the course along with employee relations theory. The course has taught the importance and role of employee relations in HRM processes and the article has successfully outlined this role. Moreover, it has used different theories such as unitarist, pluralist and others that help in managing labor at national and enterprise levels.
I think that the argument expressed by the author in this article is true because employee relation policies differs in different regions. Individual countries have their own concern about labor management processes and based on these the nations have progressed differently in their labor management transformation.
References
Collins, N., Nankervis, A., Sitalaksmi, S. and Warner, M., 2011. Labour–management relationships in transitional economies: convergence or divergence in Vietnam and Indonesia. Asia Pacific Business Review, 17(3), pp.361-377.
Marescaux, E., De Winne, S. and Forrier, A., 2019. Developmental HRM, employee well being and performance: The moderating role of developing leadership. European Management Review, 16(2), pp.317-331.
