Human Resource Management (14th Edition)

Book Preface

Human Resource Management, 14th edition, provides students in human resource management courses and practicing managers with a full and practical introduction to human resource management concepts and techniques, with a focus on how to use those techniques to improve performance, productivity, and profitability at work.
As this new edition goes to press, I feel even more strongly than I did when I wrote the first that all managers—not just HR managers—need a strong foundation in HR/ personnel management concepts and techniques to do their jobs effectively. You will therefore find an emphasis here on practical material you need to perform your day-to-day management responsibilities, even if you never spend a day as a human resource manager.

I focused this edition on performance, productivity, and profitability for two rea- sons. First, companies must be competitive, and at the end of the day, competitiveness requires improved performance, productivity, and profitability.

Second, as I write this preface, the remnants of 2008’s global recession continue to impede economic growth. For example, America’s gross domestic product rose only about 1% on average from 2008 to 2013, well below the roughly 3% average for similar earlier periods. To boost performance, productivity, and profitability in the face of such weak demand, employers turned in part to human resource management.
Many first instituted headcount cost controls. That helps explain why America’s 59% employment-to-population ratio is down to where it was in the early 1980s, the 7+% unemployment rate is at least 2% too high, and the ratio of wages to gross domestic product (about 44%) is well below average. But headcount cost controls did help employers keep both after-tax profit margins (9.3%) and profits as a share of gross domestic product (about 11%) higher than in the past 50 years.

And as we’ll see in this book, those headcount controls were just one of hundreds of HR techniques employers used to reduce costs and improve performance, productivity, and profitability, often while maintaining or improving employee relations, morale and engagement. A skill-based pay program at JLG Industries led to lower overall staffing levels, higher minimum hiring qualifications, increased productivity, and expanded plant capacity. One forest products company saved over $1 million over 5 years by investing about $50,000 in safety improvements and employee safety training. GE Medical used recruiting metrics such as “percentage interviews that lead to offers” to lower recruiting costs by 17%. In staffing its call centers, Xerox Corp. long hired applicants with call center experience. But after using special HR data analytics tools to analyze call center performance, it discovered that operator personality, not experience was the key. It now keeps hiring costs down and performance up by using special software to screen for its almost 40,000 call center jobs.

CHANGES AND NEW fEATURES

In addition to thoroughly updating all chapters, and streamlining the book, I used the fol- lowing features and changes to help implement this edition’s new focus on performance, productivity, and profitability.
First, improving Performance features demonstrate real-world human resource management tools and practices that managers actually use to improve performance. The discussion questions within each of the three boxed Improving Performance features are also in the accompanying MyManagementLab®

Fully integrated Strategy case and Strategy Maps provide the most comprehensive treatment of strategic human resource management in any HR survey text.
● Chapter 1 introduces and Chapter 3 presents the concepts and techniques of human resource strategy.
● Each chapter starting with Chapter 3 contains a continuing “Hotel Paris” case, written to help make strategic human resource management come alive for readers. The continuing case shows how this hotel company’s HR director uses that chapter’s human resource management concepts and techniques to create HR policies and practices that produce the employee skills and behaviors that the Hotel Paris needs to improve its service and thereby achieve its strategic goals.
● An overall strategy map for the Hotel Paris on the book’s inside back cover, as well as chapter-specific Hotel Paris strategy maps in the accompanying MyManagementLab, help readers understand and follow the strategic implications of the hotel’s HR decisions.
● “Eiffel Tower” callouts in each chapter draw students’ attention to the Hotel Paris case

Social Media and Hr features in each chapter demonstrate how employers use social media to improve their human resource processes.
Knowledge Base icons in each chapter highlight coverage of the HR Certification
Institute’s (HRCI) Knowledge Base topics for which the HRCI certification exams test mastery. This book explicitly addresses the HR Certification Institute’s Knowledge Base topics including topics other textbooks often neglect, such as ethics, employee rights, and employee relations. Chapter opening Learning Objectives align to the HRCI Knowledge Base as well. The HR Certification
Institute is an independent certifying organization for human resource professionals (see www.hrci.org/). The HRCI “PHR and SPHR Knowledge Base” is in Appendix A of this book (see pp. 580–588) and lists about 91 specific “Knowledge of” subject areas within its main topic area groups. a revised chapter 14, now titled ethics, employee relations, and Fair
Treatment at Work, includes—unique to this book—detailed coverage of employee relations, including what it means, why it is important, and how to measure and influence it. HRCI’s knowledge base includes the topic of employee relations.

Video cases selected by the author with accompanying discussion questions are now integrated into the end of each chapter and can be found online for students to watch at any time on MyManagementLab

Assisted-Graded Writing Questions found in the boxed feature at the end of each chapter are also available in the Writing Space in MyManagementLab. Also available in MyManagementLab are Auto-Graded Writing Questions. Writing Space includes plagiarism detection powered by TurnItIn.com and greatly simplifies the submission and grading process.
Don’t usually cover all 18 chapters? Available for enrollments of 25 or more, Pearson custom library allows you to easily create your own custom book.
Include only the chapters you want to cover, in the order you want to cover them, or just change chapter order to match how you cover the topics. Minimized cross-referencing between chapters facilitates customization. To begin building your custom text, visit www.pearsoncustomlibrary.com or contact your Pearson representative.

INSTRUCTOR SUPPLEMENTS

At www.pearsonhighered.com/irc, instructors can download a variety of digital resources available with this text.
● Instructor’s Manual
● Test Item File—Questions are tagged to reflect AACSB Learning Standards
● TestGen
● PowerPoint Presentation Registration is easy; contact your Pearson sales representative, who will provide your login and password information. If you need assistance, our dedicated technical support team is ready to help with the media supplements that accompany this text. Visit 247pearsoned.custhelp.com for answers to frequently asked questions and toll-free user support phone numbers.
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