Essay on Human Resource Management Essays - , Term Papers

Essay on Human Resource Management It can be said that the term human resources management became popular in the UK at the latter half of the eighties and at the beginning of the nineties. It has been applied to a diverse range of management strategies and has sometimes been used simply as a more modern term for personnel, employee or industrial relations. Its importance lies in its association with a strategic, integrated and highly distinctive managerial approach to the management of the people. The distinctiveness lies in labour being seen as an asset and resource and not as a cost. The strategy is to try to develop this resource to its maximum so that emphasis is on the individual employee and on his/her motivation, training and development. Human Resources Management is defined as proactive rather than reactive, system-wide rather than fragmentary, treats labour as social capital rather than as a variable cost, is goal-oriented rather than relationship oriented, and ultimately is based on commitment rather than compliance. The key themes upon which Human Resources Management is based include Human Relations psychology, Strategic Management theory, and the doctrines of quality and flexibility. The relative emphasis that is accorded to each of these themes can give rise to different variants of Human Resources Management. In particular, it is possible to identify two extreme positions. These are Instrumental and Humanistic. Instrumental approaches draw upon the rational-outcome model of strategic management to view Human Resources Management as something which is driven by and derived directly from corporate, divisional or business level strategy, and geared almost exclusively to enhancing competitive advantage. Humanistic approaches, on the other hand, utilise process theory to emphasise the reciprocal nature of the relationship between strategic management and Human Resources Management and the latters role in ensuring that competitive advantage is achieved through people but not necessarily at their e xpense. One positive consequence of several new approaches to human resourcing has been to force managers to address the basic concepts and values that they routinely use in the evaluation of personnel processes, thereby encouraging a clearer understanding of the overall human resource system. Such an understanding is closely linked to the success with which the performance of human resources can be evaluated. Such evaluation has tended to take two forms: a concern with systems of performance management, and the use of flexible working patterns and organisational structures. However Human Resources Management is not perfect when you ponder on the point of view of the business goals and interests. Its extremely hard for a company to achieve maximum profits and efficiency if it takes too much at heart the wellbeing and interests of its employees. This problem can be defined as an integration issue where we distinguish the external fit of Human Resources Management with the organisations broader business view and the internal consistency of the policy goals of Human Resources Management itself. This is particularly problematic in highly competitive or recessionary conditions where the needs of the business are likely to undermine any internal Human Resources Management issues. For example, if shedding of labour should occur this would challenge, if not destroy, an organisations Human Resources Management image of caring for the needs and security of its employees. The fundamental problem with Human Resources Management is that in most cases Human Resources issues are subordinate and secondary to business strategy. It is not simply that the search for profit overrides the policy goals of Human Resources Management, but arguably that Human Resources Management is pursued only in the belief that by raising employees commitment, flexibility and quality of their work the bottom line will be improved. The contradictions within Human Resources Management are most apparent at the level of actual practices, with simultaneous advocacy of workforce attributes such as individualism and teamwork, commitment to a job and flexibility and development of a strong culture and adaptability. In identifying the tension between individualism and teamwork, for example, what these cases demonstrate is the need for a redefinition of Human Resources Management, for despite any surface similarity with the textbook checklists of Human Resources Management policies these cases could certainly not be described as operating a form of development humanism. The internal contradictions, which plagued Human Resources Management, are well illustrated by

Diary - Definition and Examples

Diary s A diary is a personal record of events, experiences, thoughts, and observations. We converse with the absent by letters, and with ourselves by diaries, says Isaac DIsraeli in Curiosities of Literature (1793). These books of account, he says preserve what wear out in the memory, and . . . render to a man an account of himself to himself. In this sense, diary-writing may be regarded as a type of conversation or monologue as well as a form of autobiography. Although the reader of a diary is usually only the author herself, on occasion diaries are published (in most cases after an authors death). Well-known diarists include Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855), Virginia Woolf (1882-1941), Anne Frank (1929-1945), and Anaà ¯s Nin (1903-1977). In recent years, growing numbers of people have begun keeping online diaries, usually in the form of blogs or web journals. Diaries are sometimes used in conducting research, particularly in the social sciences and in medicine. Research diaries (also called field notes) serve as records of the research process itself. Respondent diaries may be kept by the individual subjects participating in a research project. Etymology:  From the Latin, daily allowance, daily journal Excerpts From Famous Diaries Excerpt From Virginia Woolfs DiaryEaster Sunday, April 20th, 1919. . . The habit of writing for my eye only is good practice. It loosens the ligaments. . . What sort of diary should I like mine to be? Something loose knit and yet not slovenly, so elastic that it will embrace anything, solemn, slight or beautiful that comes into my mind. I should like it to resemble some deep old desk, or capacious hold-all, in which one flings a mass of odds and ends without looking them through. I should like to come back, after a year or two, and find that the collection had sorted itself and refined itself and coalesced, as such deposits mysteriously do, into a mould, transparent enough to reflect the light of our life, and yet steady, tranquil compounds with the aloofness of a work of art.(Virginia Woolf, A Writers Diary. Harcourt, 1953)I get courage by reading [Virginia Woolfs Diary]. I feel very akin to her.(Sylvia Plath, quoted by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar in No Mans Land. Yale Univers ity Press, 1994) Excerpt From Sylvia Plaths DiaryJuly 1950. I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this Id call myself a fool to ask for more . . ..(Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, ed. Karen V. Kukil. Anchor Books, 2000)Excerpts From Anne Franks DiaryNow Im back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first place: I dont have a friend.â€Å"Who else but me is ever going to read these letters?†(Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl, ed. by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler. Doubleday, 1995) Thoughts and Observations on Diaries Safires Rules for Keeping a DiaryFor people intimidated by their own diaries, here are a handful of rules:Four rules are enough rules. Above all, write about what got to you that day . . ..(William Safire, On Keeping a Diary. The New York Times, September. 9, 1974)You own the diary, the diary doesnt own you. There are many days in all our lives about which the less written the better. If you are the sort of person who can only keep a diary on a regular schedule, filling up two pages just before you go to bed, become another sort of person.Write for yourself. The central idea of a diary is that you are not writing for critics or for posterity but are writing a private letter to your future self. If you are petty, or wrongheaded, or hopelessly emotional, relax–if there is anybody who will understand and forgive, it is your future self.Put down what cannot be reconstructed. . . . [R]emind yourself of the poignant personal moment, the remark you wish you had made, your predictions about the outcome of your own tribulations.Write legibly. . . . Vita Sackville-West on Capturing Moments[T]he fingers which have once grown accustomed to a pen soon itch to hold one again: it is necessary to write, if the days are not to slip emptily by. How else, indeed, to clap the net over the butterfly of the moment? For the moment passes, it is forgotten; the mood is gone; life itself is gone. That is where the writer scores over his fellows: he catches the changes of his mind on on the hop.(Vita Sackville-West, Twelve Days, 1928)David Sedariss DiariesAt the start of my second year [of college]. I signed up for a creative-writing class. The instructor, a woman named Lynn, demanded that we each keep a journal and that we surrender it twice during the course of the semester. This meant that Id be writing two diaries, one for myself and a second, heavily edited one, for her.The entries I ultimately handed in are the sorts I read onstage sometimes, the .01 percent that might possibly qualify as entertaining: a joke I heard, a T-shirt slogan, a b it of inside information passed on by a waitress or cabdriver.(David Sedaris, Lets Explore Diabetes With Owls. Hachette, 2013) Research DiariesA research diary should be a log or record of everything that you do in your research project, for example, recording ideas about possible research topics, database searches you undertake, your contacts with research study sites, access and and approval processes and difficulties you encounter and overcome, etc. The research diary is the place where you should also record your thoughts, personal reflections and insights into the research process.(Nicholas Walliman and Jane Appleton, Your Undergraduate Dissertation in Health and Social Care. Sage, 2009)Christopher Morley on DiaristsThey catalogue their minutes: Now, now, now,Is Actual, amid the fugitive;Take ink and pen (they say) for that is howWe snare this flying life, and make it live.So to their little pictures, and they sieveTheir happinesses: fields turned by the plough,The afterglow that summer sunsets give,The razor concave of a great ships bow.O gallant instinct, folly for mens mirth!Type cannot burn and spar kle on the page.No glittering ink can make this written wordShine clear enough to speak the noble rageAnd instancy of life. All sonnets blurredThe sudden mood of truth that gave them birth.(Christopher Morley, Diarists. Chimneysmoke, George H. Doran, 1921) â€Å"I never travel without my  diary. One should always have something sensational to read  in  the train.†(Oscar Wilde,  The Importance of Being Earnest, 1895)It seems to me that the problem with  diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order.(Ann Beattie,  Picturing Will, 1989)

Mending Wall of robert frost Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Mending Wall of robert frost - Essay Example We wonder from before we even begin to read the poem, what could be a mending wall? Does it talk of a wall that mends itself? Frost's "wall" is a metaphoric representation of something much more substantial than just a lifeless pile of stones. This wall can be associated with many things. It may represent a barrier, a boundary between two unlike existence. It may speak of segregation, of differentiation, of the negative connotation of being different from one another. It is something that keeps one thing from one labyrinth to reach another. This mystic feel embedded on the title arouses interest from the unknowing reader. Since there is so much a wall implies to be, the interest to know more about what this wall could possibly pertain to leads the reader to dig further and unfold each word that follows. Reading the first few lines of the poem, the reader finds out how "something" dislikes the erection of the wall. It is as if this "something" purposely deconstructs the wall to the po int that two individuals may pass through it side by side. On the 6th line of the poem "I have come after them and made repair", Frost uses "I", him speaking on the first person's point of view. His use of "I" implies not only of him as the writer telling a story but it symbolizes anyone as an individual. It is his way of giving the reader that sense of belongingness to the poem that creates the connection of the reader to the piece. This connection makes it much easier for the reader to relate to what the writer is trying to relay. Frost's imagist-like approach in the usage of simple and precise imagery is with great depth in meaning. The 12th line, "I let my neighbor know beyond the hill", tells the reader that the wall is dividing two neighbors. They meet occasionally to reconstruct the wall again; stone by stone they pile them back to its original form. This speaks of two different people or it may speak of a larger number of dissimilar groups of individuals constantly building walls against each other to keep one another from getting across. In this world, we people build barriers due to our fear of being engulfed by the other. Sometimes we rebuild the walls our forefathers have placed without even wondering what the wall is really for, just like the neighbor in the poem. As the poem progresses, the first person "I" started to question what the walls are for. On the 23rd to the 26th line, he stated: There where it is we do not need the wall: He is all pine and I am apple orchard. My apple trees will never get across. And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him. On the 27th line, the neighbor answered, 'Good fences make good neighbors'. It becomes all the more puzzling to "I". What is there to keep from each other? There are no cows to wall in or wall out. The poem concludes that even if there is this "something" that persistently destroys the wall, the neighbor continues to stand up for "his father's saying". The "wall" symbolizes the unwillingness of t he people to accept each other's differences as stated in the last lines of the poem. For the analysis of such a literary piece, the theme is certainly an important element. The theme plays an important role for the analysis of a poem with such a depth in meaning. Frost uses a similar style used by imagist. The use of free verse and precise imagery with the use of simple and direct words that can easily be associated to the scene or picture the writer tries to portray. The 40th and 41st lines of the poe