1. Task, Job, and Strategy

2. [A] Attraction

3. [S] Selection

4. [M] Management

5. [R] Retention

6. Compensation and Benefits

7. New Trends and Legal Contexts

8. Conclusion: Human Resource "Perspective"

Learning something new is challenging work to do. However, it is sometimes more difficult to learn something you already know of it partially. Most of the "human" sciences face the situations like the latter. For example, you may think "Human Resource Management, do we have any objective solutions for this matter? Everyone has their own ideas about how we can work or manage employees. I will memo what the Professor says during the class (for the exams) but I don't think they will give me any practical answers to the questions from real workplaces." In sum, the motivation to learn decreases as students already have unique experiences and histories as their answers.

However, the answers you have might betray you under certain circumstances. This is because our perspectives are based on our past experiences. Your ecologically rational answers can be ecologically irrational because our context changes. In my class, I will call the context which makes specific human resources policies right or wrong "Strategy". I will also call the combination of a self-reflection of recognizing what strategy you are currently taking to be adaptive to the change in business contexts and a capacity to select appropriate management practices as "Strategic Human Resource Management".  

The class first starts with a perspective that views an organization as a function with input and output. The default is simple; human resources are input and product or service is output. However, what makes our approach a perspective is the unique view that treats organizations as a bundle of jobs (that are also composed of a bundle of tasks). We will see that the design of the job structure aligned with the business strategy is a key recipe we need to keep in our mind (Week 1). 

What follows in the next 4 weeks is the management processes and practices about how we can fill the job slot with human resources which I call the ASMR of business management. The story begins with how we can attract the right candidates for the company. The content includes the process of who will be right or not and the following steps of how to appeal to the talent you want (Week 2). After sharing job postings, you will see many applying for the vacancy. Then, within the given set of candidates, how can you select the best occupant for the slot? This goal requires a practice of how you will operationalize, measure, and test the knowledge, skills, abilities, and personalities that fit with the job. And there are several methods with different trade-offs to do this (Week 3). After the selection process, now, you have new employees coming in! This means that we have new tasks to perform: managing their performances. We first concern with a similar issue we covered in the previous week. How can we track their performances? There is also a second concern about how you can encourage them to keep up their good work and how to share feedback to improve their engagement (Week 4). While managing performance is important, another crucial issue is making employees satisfied. Making them work hard does not mean that they will stay in the organization forever; They will leave the firm when the job makes them unhappy. Considering human resources can be a source of competitive advantage that flourishes the business, we will discuss ways to capture the needs of employees and build a sound relationship with them (Week 5). 

The class then will cover compensation and benefits as the first special topic. What employees and employers build is a relationship. However, as you know, this is basically a transactional contract. We will cover the topic at the level of organization, and how monetary and nonmonetary compensations can promote worker productivity. At the same time, there is an issue of competition at the level of the labor market (Week 6). 

The second special topic is about new trends in strategic human resource management. For example, so far we have assumed that jobs are the basic dimension for us to design how we can manage human resources. However, what happens if the job itself becomes highly flexible? Then, for the de-jobbed work context, who are the employees with the types of abilities or attributes we need to seek? We will also cover the legal context of human resources this week because it is always helpful for us to know the constraints before making decisions (Week 7).

Students! If you have endured my class so far until the end of the semester, great job! I think you deserve a less intensive week if you are at this point. What I mean by less intensive is that I will add no additional information. On the other hand, the task we will do this week is to organize the information that is already in your head. We learned the specific practices, methods, and approaches but I wish to emphasize that what we learned is the Human Resource "Perspective" which can be summarized below.

1. Organization is a bundle of jobs.

2. We manage organization by filling jobs with humans.

3. Managerial choice accompanies trade-offs which make human resource management, "strategic" (Week 8).

References

[Books]

Gerhart, B. (2023). Compensation, 14th Edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B. A., & Wright, P. M. (2021). Fundamentals of human resource management, 9th Edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Noe, R., Hollenbeck, J., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. (2023). Human Resources Management: Gaining a Competitive Advantage, 13th Edition. New York, MA: McGraw-Hill Education.

[Papers]

Harvey, R. J. (1991). Job analysis. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (pp. 71–163). Consulting Psychologists Press.

Keller, J. R. (2018). Posting and slotting: How hiring processes shape the quality of hire and compensation in internal labor markets. Administrative Science Quarterly, 63(4), 848-878.

Sackett, P. R., Walmsley, P. T., & Laczo, R. M. (2013). Job and work analysis. In N. W. Schmitt, S. Highhouse, & I. B. Weiner (Eds.), Handbook of Psychology: Industrial and Organizational Psychology (pp. 61–81). John Wiley & Sons, Inc..

Sanchez, J. I., & Levine, E. L. (2012). The rise and fall of job analysis and the future of work analysis. Annual Review of Psychology, 63, 397-425.

Campion, M. A., & Campion, E. D. (2023). Machine learning applications to personnel selection: Current illustrations, lessons learned, and future research. Personnel Psychology, 76(4), 993-1009.