ABSTRACT
Possibly no issue in the British workplace has received as much attention in the past decade as the implementation or otherwise of ‘human resource management’ (HRM). The term, which in academic discourse at least has largely supplanted ‘personnel management’, originated in the United States and began to make headway in the UK in the latter part of the 1980s (Legge, 1995). At the time this survey was last conducted in 1990, HRM symbolically announced its arrival with the advent of the Human Resource Management Journal. It was notable that none of the articles appearing in the first number made reference to the WIRS series. At first glance this might be considered rather puzzling, as past surveys had always examined management and the bulk of the data was, in fact, gathered from managers. However, the range of issues outlined by the editor perhaps makes it clear why the survey did not feature as a source. They covered: the flexible organisation; the integration of the management of employees into the overall management of the business; the role of line management in personnel; how to gain employee commitment; and the shift in focus away from management-trade union relations to management-employee relations. The latter of these was identified as the most important as ‘historically, most managements have put the emphasis on “collectivism”’ (Sisson, 1990:6). As with management, so too the survey; but if management had rediscovered the individual, then the focus of the survey also had to shift.
