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HUMAN RESOURCES

MANAGEMENT

DANTE O. LUBIS, Ph. D.


Human resource management (HRM) is the strategic and
coherent approach to the management of an organization's most
valued assets - the people working there who individually and
collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the
business. The terms "human resource management" and "human
resources" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel
management" as a description of the processes involved in
managing people in organizations. In simple sense, HRM means
employing people, developing their capacities, utilizing,
maintaining and compensating their services in tune with the job
and organizational requirement.

Dante O. Lubis, Ph. D.


Synonyms such as personnel management are often used in a more
restricted sense to describe activities that are necessary in the recruiting of
a workforce, providing its members with payroll and benefits, and
administrating their work-life needs. So if we move to actual definitions,
Torrington and Hall (1987) define personnel management as being:
“a series of activities which: first enable working people and their
employing organisations to agree about the objectives and nature of their
working relationship and, secondly, ensures that the agreement is fulfilled"

While Miller (1987) suggests that HRM relates to:


".......those decisions and actions which concern the management of
employees at all levels in the business and which are related to the
implementation of strategies directed towards creating and sustaining
competitive advantage"

Dante O. Lubis, Ph. D.


According to wikipedia, competence is a standardized
requirement for an individual to properly perform a specific job. It
encompasses a combination of knowledge, skills and behavior utilized
to improve performance. More generally, competence is the state or
quality of being adequately or well qualified, having the ability to
perform a specific role.
For instance, management competency includes the traits of
systems thinking and emotional intelligence, and skills in influence and
negotiation. A person possesses a competence as long as the skills,
abilities, and knowledge that constitute that competence are a part of
them, enabling the person to perform effective action within a certain
workplace environment. Therefore, one might not lose knowledge, a
skill, or an ability, but still lose a competence if what is needed to do a
job well changes.

Dante O. Lubis, Ph. D.


Dreyfus and Dreyfus has introduced a language of the levels of
competence in competence development. The causative reasoning of
such a language of levels of competence may be seen in their paper on
Calculative Rationality titled, "From Socrates to Expert Systems: The
Limits and Dangers of Calculative Rationality." The five levels proposed
by Dreyfus and Dreyfus were:
a. Novice: Rule-based behaviour, strongly limited and inflexible
b. Experienced Beginner: Incorporates aspects of the situation
c. Practitioner: Acting consciously from long-term goals and plans
d. Knowledgeable practitioner: Sees the situation as a whole and acts
from personal conviction
e. Expert: Has an intuitive understanding of the situation and zooms in
on the central aspects

Dante O. Lubis, Ph. D.


Within a specific organization or professional community,
professional competence, is frequently valued. They are usually
the same competencies you have to show in an interview for a job.
But today there is another way of looking at it: that there are
certain general areas of occupational competence required if
you want to keep a job or get a promotion. For all organizations
and communities there is a set of primary tasks that competent
people have to contribute to all the time. For a university student,
for example, the primary tasks could be:
1. Handling theory
2. Handling methods
3. Handling the information of the assignment

Dante O. Lubis, Ph. D.


The four general areas of competence are:
1. Meaning Competence: You must be able to identify with the purpose
of the organization or community and act from the preferred future in
accordance with the values of the organization or community.
2. Relation Competence: You must be able to create and nurture
connections to the stakeholders of the primary tasks.
3. Learning Competence: You must be able to create and look for
situations that make it possible to experiment with the set of solutions
that make it possible to complete the primary tasks and reflect on the
experience.
4. Change Competence: You must be able to act in new ways when it
will promote the purpose of the organization or community and make
the preferred future come to life.

Dante O. Lubis, Ph. D.


Competencies are characteristics which drive outstanding performance in a
given job, role or function. A competency model refers to a group of
competencies required in a particular job and usually number 7 to 9 in total.
The number and type of competencies in a model will depend upon the nature
and complexity of work along with the culture and values of the organisation in
which the work takes place.
Since the early 70’s, leading organizations have been using
competencies to help recruit, select and manage their outstanding performers
after Dr David McClelland, Harvard Business School Professor of Psychology,
found that traditional tests such as academic aptitude and knowledge tests, did
not predict success in the job.
More recent research by individuals such as Daniel Goleman in
Emotional Intelligence and Richard Boyatzis, in The Competent Manager, have
reinforced and emphasised the importance of competencies as essential
predictors of outstanding performance.

Dante O. Lubis, Ph. D.

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