資本へのアクセス、保護された市場、占有技術など、従来の競争優位性が失われ企業はますます内部資源に目を向けるようになっています。人的資源管理（HRM）は小規模商店から巨大企業にまで広く導入可能ですが、グローバルソーシング、地域協定、労働基準、リモートワーク、戦略的提携関係、競争がもたらす革新など今日は数多くの複雑な問題に取り組まねばなりません。HRMがいかに組織と従業員の協調的関係を築き得るのか説明し、さまざまな人的資源の施策、人事プロセス、基幹業務管理活動について検討します。
  

• Considers the ways human resource management functions in our global world, and how it copes with issues such as competition, regulation, cultural differences, and remote working
• Uses cases and examples to analyse the development of human resource management
• Shows how the changes in political, legal, social, and macroeconomic spheres have shaped how human resources are managed
• Describes how the key players and watershed moments in labour history led to the state of human resource management today

     
The way in which organizations manage their people has always been pivotal to their performance, long before formal human resource management coalesced into a definable and somewhat fashionable discipline in the mid-1980s. Earlier campaigns for worker welfare in the 18th and 19th century were driven by a mix of humanitarian, religious, philanthropic, and business motives, and sought workplace amenities such as medical care, housing, and libraries. At the same time functionaries and departments specialising in HR processes such as hiring, payroll, and record keeping emerged.
      
This Very Short Introduction describes how the key players and watershed moments in labour history shaped the state of human resource management today. In our era of globalization human resource management has to contend with a number of new and increasingly complex factors, such as global sourcing, regional trade agreements and labour standards, remote working, strategic alliances, and innovation driven by competition. As traditional sources of competitive advantage such as access to capital, protected markets, or proprietary technologies evaporate, firms increasingly look to human resource management to offer a competitive edge. In the 'laboratory' of university departments or in the gritty and sweaty reality of the shop floor, there is no single model of human resource management. Instead human resource management today is as able to impact everything from small owner-managed shops in Brick Lane to the high tech behemoths of Silicon Valley. Adrian Wilkinson shows how human resource management covers the relations between employees and their employers, and explores the range of HR practices, processes, and line management activities.