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Human Resource Management: Convergence and Divergence Dabate in Europe

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Human Resource Management as a concept was formalised in the USA in the late 1970s and early 1980s, encapsulated in two famous textbooks (Beer et al. 1985; Fombrun et al. 1984). These approaches varied but both differentiated HRM from personnel management and argued that the former involved more integration of personnel policies across functions and with the corporate strategy (with HR being the downstream function); a greater role for line managers; a shift from collective to individual relationships; and an accent on enhancing company performance.
The notion of "European Human Resource Management" was developed largely as a counter to the hegemony of US conceptions of human resource management (HRM). This, in part, reflected developments …show more content…

Garten (1993) shares this view, though also noting the existence of government-induced market systems such as Japan. Hollingsworth & Boyer (1997) focus on a different dimension, that of the presence or absence of communitarian infrastructures that manifest themselves in the form of strong social bonds, trust, reciprocity and co-operation among economic actors. Again, they find the Anglo cultures distinct from the rest of Europe, although they also distinguish France as an environment that, while not having a market mentality, is nevertheless deficient in communitarian infrastructures. Others distinguish between, on one hand, countries such as the UK, Ireland and the Nordic countries, in which the state has a limited role in industrial relations, and the Roman-Germanic countries, such as France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Greece and the Netherlands, in which the state functions as an actor with a central role in industrial relations (Due et al. 1991: 90). Arguments have also been made for a "northern European" approach to HRM based around those countries where English is widely spoken and trade unions are stronger (Brewster/Larsen 2000).
One analysis of HRM practices found three clusters: a Latin cluster which includes Spain, Italy, France; a central European cluster and a Nordic cluster' (Filella 1991: 14).
The Latin style of HRM is characterized, inter alia, by efforts to modernize HRM, a greater reliance on an oral culture and the presence of subtle 'political'

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