Preface to second edition

Since Managing Human Resources was first published in 1981 it has been adopted on a range of management and business studies programmes, as well as finding its way on to the bookshelves of practising managers. The first edition was written primarily for line managers and students preparing for line management positions, rather than for personnel specialists. There existed then, and still exists, a sufficiency of specialist personnel texts, but too few texts addressed to the needs of managers outside as well as inside the personnel function with a major responsibility for people. The second edition has this same objective and is addressed to all who have to manage human resources within work organisations.

Since 1981 significant changes have taken place. In 1981 western economies were struggling with economic recession and rising unemployment, while the business ethos was still largely that of the 1970s, influenced by the concept that big is beautiful! In many ways 1981 marked a watershed in thinking about organisations and for the next five years private companies re-learned the message of the need to be closer to the customer and for leaner and fitter organisations. Emphasis began to be placed on enterprise cultures and in the public sector, privatisation and competitiveness. Many large centralised bureaucracies have now been slimmed down and overlarge head offices have dispersed.

As organisations have attempted to assess their competitive advantage, assessing their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats they have come to reappraise the significance of their most valuable resource, the people they employ, appreciating that their strategy now requires in most cases a higher calibre of human resource. There has also been the realisation that manpower costs could cripple revival and that the solution lay in lower wage costs together with higher productivity and a better motivated and trained work-force. As a result, in many firms wage costs per unit of output have fallen as productivity has risen and at the same time higher levels of remuneration, frequently linked to performance and value added, have been implemented.

These and other changes are reflected in this new second edition. In addition the content looks ahead to the challenges posed by the 1990s. European trends including the 1992 harmonisation proposals and the continuing economic threat from Japan and the Far East mean that human resources must be more cost effective. Demographic change, political pressures for equality of opportunity and new concepts of career and career planning that no longer assume life-time employment will also need to be taken on board by managers. In addition, research and practice are now producing new and better human resource techniques and practices. All these developments are reflected in this second edition which aims to take the effective management of human resources forward to meet the next century.

AGC
CJBM