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29 Emp. Resp. & Rts. J. 1 (2017)

handle is hein.journals/emprrj29 and id is 1 raw text is: Employ Respons Rights J (2017) 29:1-14                                       CWssMark
DOI 10.1007/s10672-016-9282-0
Evolution of a Strange Pathology: HRM as a Strategic
Business Partner and Employee Advocate in the USA
Ernie Stark' - Paul Poppler2
Published online: 22 September 2016
© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016
Introduction
A number of ways of thinking about the management of workers and employees in the U.S.
preceded today's highly publicized concept of Strategic Human Resource Management.
Beginning in the early 1900s, these methods were known variously as Employee Relations,
Personnel Management, Labor Relations, and Industrial Relations (Kaufman and Aldao-
Zapiola 2014). A common feature across all of these approaches was a sense of humanism,
a serious rejection of the notion that employees are a commodity whose sole purpose is to
produce more output and wealth for the employer. Rather, employees were viewed as human
beings with rights to decent terms and conditions of employment, fair treatment, voice, and
participation (Kaufman 2008).
Reflecting the work of Elton Mayo (1933), Chris Argyris (1957) Douglas McGregor
(1960), Victor Vroom (1964), and others, these early approaches to managing employees gave
rise to internal functions that largely embraced employee-centered roles and focused on
creating and administering pay, training, and development systems that serviced the needs of
an organization's workforce (Brown et al. 2009). In the 1970s, these various approaches came
to coalesce under the overarching concept of Human Resource Management (HRM), an
internal organizational function that supported the product or service value chain by ensuring
that workers were provided channels of due process and employee voice necessary to enhance
the efficiency and equity ofthe employment relationship (Kaufman 2001; Godard 2014). From
those earlier approaches, HRM acceded to a long-standing expectation that the responsibility
of any attempt to manage human resources or administer personnel policy required serving as
an advocate for employee welfare (Van Buren et al. 2011).
2 Ernie Stark
eescad@rit.edu; estarkphd@me.com
Saunders College of Business, Rochester Institute of Technology, Global Village Building 400, Room
2075, 6000 Reynolds Drive #5006, Rochester, NY 14623-5603, USA
2  College of Business, Bellevue University, 1000 Galvin Road South, Bellevue, NE 68005, USA

4 Springer

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