Human Resources Book Review
Phillips, Jack J. (1999) Accountability in Human Resources Management. New York: Butterworth-Heinemann
In his text, Accountability in Human Resources Management, the human resources management analyst and guru Jack J. Phillips attempts to offer a new paradigm for human resource management to further both the future of American business organizations as well as the field of human resource management itself within organizations. Phillips states that human resource departments can no longer be regarded as the 'soft science' experts of corporate environments. Human resource personnel strategies must move beyond pure subjective psychology and embrace quantitative measurements of human performance, but without losing human resource's psychological and social science strengths. Thus, data based initiatives and management must be implemented for effective human resource enforcement of company objectives, without ignoring human resource's unique needs in relation to human psychological management. In short, the thesis of Phillips is that human resources must be accountable in both psychological as well as financial terms.
The integrating integrative thesis of Phillips' book is thus supremely relevant to modern human resource management because the author suggests that as helpful as models that stress diversity management and psychological models of employee development may be, ultimately HRM must be accountable to an organizational bottom line in a quantitative basis lest HR lose a coveted place in new forms of business organizations in the coming millennium. While like The Management of a Multicultural Workforce by Monir H. Tayeb and The Team Trainer, Winning Tools and Tactics for Successful Workouts by William Gorden, Carole Barbato, Erica Nagel and Scott Myers, Phillips attempts to offer a new approach for an increasingly diverse and changing workforce, Phillips stresses the value of scientific objectivity to provide cohesion and mesh possible differences between clashing personalities and within diverse departments, rather than simply stressing diversity or team-based strategies alone.
Phillips offers a nine-step results-based approach to human resource management over the course of his text. Human resources as a department must show itself accountable, just as other departments do, in a data-based fashion, lest it become undervalued within the overall organizational context that ultimately is interested in making a profit, rather than satisfying ideological goals in regards to diversity, amongst other political matters. This strategy is the only way to elevate management's commitment to human resources, stresses Phillips. Phillips states that he formulates his own data analysis stratagems around over ten years of work in his field in a variety of organizations. However, his approach tends to be less anecdotal in nature, and more prescriptive -- rather than using stories, he offers clear and cool steps to follow when engaging in such critical efforts, as for example, benchmarking individual employee performance against other employees within the organization and measuring returns on human investments in training, for example, as key to continuing executive commitments in the field.
Rather than beginning with different examples of present employee personality types, step one for Phillips is to conduct a future needs analysis of any organization -- what type of personality and skills profile is necessary for an organization to meet its needs in the future? (64) The notion of 'needs' of the organization and of human resource departments is crucial throughout Phillips text, perhaps because it highlights the nature of the objective and subjective accountable relationships inherent to human resource management. While needs are objective, seemingly, the value of certain needs over others must inevitably still be subjectively determined and measured in many respect. For example, when asking the question, is it necessary to have a more diverse organization for the global face of the future, or to bring in employees with specific skills that can increase financial returns, the weighing of these different objectives plays into certain personal biases.
Regardless of the organization's personal needs, still, Phillips stresses it is always necessary for human resources...
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