I extend a warm welcome to students taking PG – QB5018 Human Resource Management and
look forward to working with you on your studies for the course. You will find details of the
course in the Course Guide that is posted on the MyAberdeen site for the course, and I would
encourage you to familiarise yourself with its contents. In the Guide you will find details of the
aims and objectives of the course, its learning outcomes, the teaching content, and the
assessment requirements.
The course schedule follows the Business School’s established block teaching format,
comprising a preparatory week, a teaching week, and an assessment period. On the
MyAberdeen site for the course you will find the Preparatory Week activities while in the
Course Guide you will find the timetable for the Teaching Week and details of the assessment
requirements for the course.
At this stage, I would suggest that you prepare for the course by thinking of how your
organisation and how it approaches people management. In their strategic context,
organisations need to decide what is to be done and then aim to achieve this through the
effective and efficient organisation and management of resources. Here, Henderson (2017: p1)
reminds us of the importance of people as the critical resource and the need to manage them
well:
“Good managers are not only effective in their use of economic and technical resources, but
when they manage people they remember that these particular resources are special and are
ultimately the most important assets of the organisation. Indeed, they are the only real source
of continuing competitive advantage and the best managers never forget that these assets are
human beings”.
In QB5501, we review various ‘people management’ activities such as hiring, developing,
rewarding, and so on, and consider how best these activities might be undertaken. At the same
time, we emphasise that these effective people management activities must take place within
the strategic context of the organisation and are, or should be, seen as an integrated set of
activities that are undertaken over the long term and in accordance with the strategic vision
the organisation. We centre our focus on engaging employees.
To what extent can you see the above features of HRM playing out in your own organisation?