About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherBloomsbury Publishing USA

ISBN-10027595739X

ISBN-139780275957391

eBay Product ID (ePID)2309759350

Product Key Features

Number of Pages360 Pages

Publication NameNo Best Way : an Evolutionary Perspective on Human Resource Management

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2003

SubjectHuman Resources & Personnel Management, General, Industrial & Organizational Psychology

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaBusiness & Economics, Psychology

AuthorStephen M. Colarelli

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height0.8 in

Item Weight24.1 Oz

Item Length9.2 in

Item Width6.1 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceCollege Audience

LCCN2002-033383

Dewey Edition21

Number of Volumes1 vol.

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal658.3

Table Of ContentIntroduction Clocks, Caves, and Utopias Storms, Pilots, and Byzantium Splinters in the Mind: Methods of Hiring People Alternatives to Jigsaw Puzzle and Spray Paint Utopias: Evolutionary Approaches to Hiring People Look! We're Modern: Training People Conclusion Acknowledgments About the Author Index

SynopsisIn this provocative volume, a pioneering organizational psychologist explains that the failure of many human resource programs in business, education, and government is largely due to their mechanistic assumptions. By contrasting the classical human resource paradigm--and its emphasis on consistency and a clock-like structure to organizations-- with the evolutionary paradigm and its focus on variation, conflicting interests and complexity, the author shows how shifting to an evolutionary perspective can make organizations more adaptive, hence human resource programs more attuned to human nature and to organizational realities. Colarelli gives a lively intellectual history of classical human resource management thinking, from Plato through the Renaissance to Marx and Taylor to the present, and shows that much of it is imbued with utopian ethos. This volume explodes the myths that there is one best way to organize, that organizations have goals and that human resource programs operate to further organizational goals or the good of the organization. The author explains the evolutionary logic that views organizations as collections of individuals pursuing their own interests and that human resource activities are inevitably enmeshed in personal and conflicting interests. Evolutionary-based interventions that are workable, innovative, and compassionate are presented for use in hiring and training. Colarelli also offers a novel approach to affirmative action to deal with the problems of fairness and performance.

LC Classification NumberHF5549