A Review of the Critical Perspective on Human Resource Management

Carol Gill, Melbourne Business School

Abstract

The Critical Perspective on Human Resource Management argues that HRM has inherent contradictions derived from its foundation in two different US models that lead to a gap between rhetoric and reality. The gap is interpreted in two ways. Firstly, the Critical Perspective proposes that HRM has only been implemented in rhetoric making it ineffectual. Secondly it proposes that HRM is manipulative and uses soft rhetoric to disguise and gain employee commitment to a hard reality characterized by work intensification and job insecurity. Critiques of the Critical Perspective propose that HRM cannot be both ineffective and manipulative and that the Critical Perspective’s view of Human Resource Management is derived from simplistic concepts of HRM and scant and possibly biased evidence. This critique proposes that the Critical Perspective is an academic debate that has had little impact on, or value for, Human Resource Management practitioners.