工商管理专业英语有关英语论文及翻译.doc

Benchmarking of human resource management in the
Public sector: Prospects, problems and challenges
DavidM Akinnusi
Organisational/Industrial Psychology and Human Resources Management
North West University
South Africa
Correspondence to: David M Akinnusi
e-mail: [e-mail]
ABSTRACT
This paper reviews the role of human resource management (HRM) which, today, plays a strategic partnership role in management. The focus of the paper is on HRM in the public sector, where much hope rests on HRM as a means of transforming the public service and achieving much needed service delivery. However, a critical evaluation of HRM practices in the public sector reveals that these services leave much to be desired. The paper suggests the adoption of benchmarking as a process to revamp HRM in the public sector so that it is able to deliver on its promises. It describes the nature and process of benchmarking and highlights the inherent difficulties in applying benchmarking in HRM. It concludes with some suggestions for a plan of action. The process of identifying “best” practices in HRM requires the best collaborative efforts of HRM practitioners and academicians. If used creatively, benchmarking has the potential to bring about radical and positive changes in HRM in the public sector. The adoption of the benchmarking process is, in itself, a litmus test of the extent to which HRM in the public sector has grown professionally.
Keywords: benchmarking, benchmarking process human resource management, public sector, public sector management
In any organised human activity, human beings naturally take precedence over other resources, as it is they and they alone who are capable of directing and utilising other resources. Effective human resource management (HRM) has, therefore, become crucial and critical to the achievement of individual, organisational, community, national and international goals and objectives. Ironically, even though human beings are widely considered as the most important assets of any organisation or nation, their development, motivation and utilisation have not always occupied the central place in management (Bendix, 1996, p. 4-10). In the history of management thought, the neglect of the human side of enterprise brought the scientific school of management to its knees and led to the rise of the human relations and the behavioural schools of thought which firmly succeeded in putting human beings as the core of management (Carrell, Elbert & Hartfield, 1995). In the practical world, the commodification or de-personalisation of human beings during the industrial revolution was also associated with the rise of trade union movements leading to government interventions and regulations and the emergence of labour relations and personnel administration as fields of study (Bendix, 1995, p. 7). In the 1990s, personnel management metamorphosed into human resource management in clear recognition of its strategic role in the overall performance of organisations (Authur, 1994; Cascio, 1995; Huselid, 1995; Gerber, Nel & van Dyk, 1998).
THE STATE OF HRM IN SOUTH AFRICA
The history of South Africa, rising from the ashes of the apartheid regime, is replete with cases of poor HRM, to the point of constricting its development more than a decade after its independence (Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, 2006). The Deputy President while launching the Joint Initiative for Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) remarked that:Nothing short of a skills revolution by a nation united will extricate us from the crises we face. We are addressing logjams, some of which are systemic and therefore in some cases entrenched even in post-apartheid South Africa. The systemic nature of some of our challenges undermine our excellent new policies, at least in the short term, hence the need for interventions such as JIPSAto enhance implementation of our policies (http://www.info.gov.za/speeches/2006/06032810451001.htm)
Historically, South Africa has performed very poorly in practically all the criteria on the liability side of human resources balance sheet as measured by the World Competitiveness Ratings (1998, 1999). Some of these include equal opportunity, skilled labour, Aids, worker motivation, brain drain, unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, values of the society, illiteracy, dependency ratio, human development index and competent managers. The field of labour relations (LR), like its human resources counterpart, reflects the country’s socio-political history which was characterised by deep divisions along racial and political lines, discrimination, unfair labour practices and gross distortions in the labour market systems, resulting in serious confrontations between the social partners and perennial industrial unrest (Bendix, 1996, p. 71-104).
These stark realities have prompted the democratic government to enact a series of laws designed to bring radical changes in the areas of HRM and labour relations. Some of these include:
● Occupational Health and Safety Act No 85 of 1993
● Labour Relations Act 66 of 1995 and Labour Relations Amendment Act No 127 of 1998
● South African Qualifications Act No 58 of 1995
● Basic Conditions of Employment Act No 104 of 1997
● Employment Equity Act No. 55 of 1998
● Skills Development Act No 97 of 1998
● Skills Development Levies Act No. 9 of 1999
● Promotion of Equality and the Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act 4 of 2000
● White Paper on Human Resource Management in the Public Service, 2000
The intention of these Acts was to create a healthy, humane, just and equitable workplace or society, free from discrimination and oppression and in which people and workers are educated and continuously trained to meet the challenges of nationaldevelopment and globalisation in a peaceful industrial climate. In 2006, the nation launched the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (JIPSA) to develop skills that are most urgently needed as part of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (AsgiSA), which was to propel South Africa at a development trajectory of 6% GDP by 2010. The implementation and the realisation of these Acts and initiatives require, among other things, managers and, especially, human resource professionals, whose responsibility it is to effectively manage the human resources of their organisations. For its own part, the South African Board of Personnel Practice has proposed a bill, the Human Resource Profession Bill (2005), which intends to professionalise the practice of HRM in South Africa.
The focus of this paper is on HRM in the public sector, where the challenges are most acutely felt. The Government White Paper on Human Resource Management in the Public Service (2000) notes that national departments and provincial administrations employ approximately 1,2 million people, who account for more than 50% of all public expenditure. It declares that “people are therefore the Public Service’s most valuable asset, and managing human resources effectively and strategically must be the cornerstone of the wider transformation of the Public Service”. Appropriately, Government has embraced the shift of focus from personnel administration to HRM. Therefore, Government’s vision of HRM in the Public Service is that it will “result in a diverse, competent and well-managed workforce, capable of, and committed to, delivering high quality services to the people of South Africa”. It further stressed that the practice of HRM would be underpinned by the following values which derive from the Constitution: fairness, accessibility, transparency, accountability, participation and professionalism.
However, the White Paper on Human Resource Management in the Public Service (2000) was quick to point out the inadequacies and out-dated practices of HRM in the public sector, describing various aspects of it in the following ways: (It is) over-centralised, excessively bureaucratic and rule-bound. It is focused on form rather than substance and results. Human resource planning is weak; post-filling and promotion criteria over-emphasize educational qualifications and seniority and little or no emphasis is placed on the requirements of the job to be done. Performance management is also underdeveloped.
All these inadequacies and the racial imbalance simply mean that Government’s avowed desire to transform public service delivery by putting people first (via the “Batho Pele principles”) would be greatly frustrated by an inefficient and ineffective management, in general, and lacklustre state of human resource management, in particular.
More than a decade after independence, the state of HRM in South Africa has not changed as drastically as expected at either the macro or micro level. This is due to a number of factors including the following (Gerber, Nel and van Dyk, 1998; Bowmaker-Falconer, Horwitz, Jain & Taggar, 1998; White Paper on HRM, 2000; Horwilt, Browning Jain & Steenkamp, 2002;
1.Reluctance by corporations to embrace transformation and major changes implied or required by the various legislations.
2.Reluctance on the part of trade unions to buy into the perceived capitalist agenda of the new government, leading to a shaky alliance between government and its alliance partners, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and South African Communist Party (SACP).
3.Fear of reverse discrimination by whites, sparking off emigration in large numbers and leading to only modest gains in the area of employment equity and diversity management.
In short, although South Africa is armed with formidable legislative armoury to create a humane society and organisational environments conducive to HRM, the fact remains that it will take many more years to undo the legacy of apartheid in “creating structural inequalities in the acquisition of education, work skills and access to managerial, professional and occupational positions” (Horwitz, Browning, Jain & Steenkamp, 2002). This situation, therefore, calls for innovative practices such as benchmarking, the focus of this study
AIMS AND STRUCTURE OF THE PAPER
The role of benchmarking will be discussed in the context of the above concerns. The aim of this paper is to advocate the adoption of benchmarking as a tool to revamp, in order for Government to be able to deliver on its promises. The objectives are to describe the nature and process of benchmarking, to highlight the inherent difficulties in applying benchmarking in HRM and to suggest a plan of action. Accordingly, the rest of this paper is structured, first, to highlight the nature and process of benchmarking and then to review the literature on benchmarking as applied to the HRM function. The problems and prospects of benchmarking in HRM are highlighted and discussed. In conclusion, approaches and suggestions for using benchmarking to improve HRM practices in the public sector are made.
BENCHMARKING OF HRM
Best practice in the case of HRM refers to high performance work practices such as recruitment, selection, performance management and training that may in turn have an impact on the institution’s performance and, ultimately, on the competitive advantage of an organisation (Huselid, 1995; Schuler & MacMillan, 1984). The search for the best practice in HRM is driven by two major considerations. The first is the fact that labour costs are generally high everywhere and South Africa is not an exception. The second is that evidence highlighting the value of HRM to an organisation may help the human resource function to gain strategic status (Torrington & Hall, 1996).
A range of HRM practices often incorporated into these analyses includes the following: incentive plans, training and development, recruitment and selection, compensation, industrial relations and performance appraisals. These have been identified as high-performance work practices that can lead to lower employee turnover, greater productivity and better corporate financial performance (Huselid, 1995; Huselid & Becker, 1996). Other potential best practices are occupational health and safety (Nelson, 1994) and enterprise bargaining, reflecting management quality and Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) and Affirmative Action (AA) policies as indicators of human resource utilisation. The ultimate benefit of strategic HRM to an organisation is its ability to facilitate HRM’s contribution to the organisation in the acquisition and maintenance of a sustainable competitive advantage (Teo, 1998). One way to achieve improvements in competitiveness, which is the focus of this paper, is through benchmarking HRM best practices.
The Rodwell, Lam and Fastenau (2000) paper is a significant contribution to benchmarking for two major reasons. Firstly, it is an attempt by academics to seek the “best” set of HRM practices which distinguishes poor from better performing organisations. In this respect, their example is worth emulation, as the set of best practices is contingent on the nature of the industry and the environment investigated. Rodwell et al’s (2000) study surveyed the finance industry in Australia where, they found, counter-intuitively, that a lack of written policies on health and safety was one of the major “best” practices. It is immediately apparent that the findings of this study are not only limited to the industry and the country studied, but also cannot be generalised to the finance industry of another country, say South Africa, where the issue of safety has taken on dramatic importance in that industry in the era of bombings of ATM cash points and cash-in-transit heists that are a daily occurrence in South Africa, with Crime Statistics reporting a 74% rise in cash-in-transit heists in June 2008 ( accessed in July 13, 2008).
SUGGESTIONS FOR BENCHMARKING HRM IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR
Benchmarking presents managers of public sector institutions in South Africa with the challenge of venturing to compare their functions, not only internally among themselves, but also against other best-run government departments or best-run companies in South Africa. Admittedly, there are differences in the ethos and cultures of public and private sector organisations; nevertheless, the call for the public service to be more results oriented can only be met by understanding and learning from practices of their private sector counterparts and initiating creative and appropriate changes. Benchmarking is no longer the monopoly of the private sector. Public sector institutions in most of Western countries are using benchmarking to meet the enduring challenge to provide maximum value for money – i.e. highest quality at least cost (see, also Sedgwick, 1995; and Dorsch & Yasin, 1998).
As for HRM managers in public sector institutions in South Africa, benchmarking presents them with the challen