Sinopsis:
In a companion volume to Managing the Human Factor, also from Cornell, Bruce E. Kaufman shows how American firms transitioned from the traditional "hired hand" model of human resource management (HRM) to the modern "human resources" version popular today. Kaufman illuminates through fifteen detailed case studies the structure and operation of HRM programs and practices across a diverse range of American business firms spanning the fifty years from 1880 to 1930. Nine of the fifteen case studies in Hired Hands or Human Resources? examine HRM before World War I and document the highly informal, decentralized, externalized, and sometimes harsh nature of the people-management practices of that era. The remaining six span the Welfare Capitalism decade of the 1920s and reveal the marked transformation to a more progressive and professional model of personnel practice at some companies, along with continued reliance on the traditional model at others.
Kaufman gained access to the richly detailed audits of company HRM programs prepared during the 1920s by Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc., and draws upon this trove of information to present the most in-depth, up-close evidence available of how companies of this period managed their employees and how the practice of HRM evolved and developed. Hired Hands or Human Resources? features new insights into key subjects such as the strategic versus tactical nature of early HRM, alternative models of workforce governance used in these years, and the reasons some companies created autonomous HRM departments.
Reviews
"Hired Hands or Human Resources? richly reveals how HRM was practiced during the formative years of large-scale industry and uncovers not only the birth of the modern HRM model but also the origins of the central issues of the field. Today's debates over best practices, strategic HRM, and the determinants of HR practices have finally been given their historical foundations, and scholars and managers should follow Kaufman's lead by understanding the nature of early HR practices and by embracing the implications for today's research and practice."—John Budd, University of Minnesota.
"For anyone interested in the history of human resources in the United States, this book is a must-read. Bruce E. Kaufman goes back to the cases written at the time to describe the foundation and evolution of the HR function."—Patrick M. Wright, William J. Conaty GE Professor of Strategic HR, Cornell University
About the Author
Bruce E. Kaufman is Professor of Economics and Senior Associate of the W.T. Beebe Institute of Personnel and Employment Relations at Georgia State University and Research Fellow at the Center for Work, Organization and Wellbeing at Griffith University. His most recent book, also published with Cornell, is Managing the Human Factor: The Early Years of Human Resource Management in American Industry; other books include The Global Evolution of Industrial Relations; What Do Unions Do: A Twenty Year Perspective; and Theoretical Perspectives on Work and the Employment Relationship (a LERA Research volume.
___________________
Bruce Kaufman
Hired Hands or Human Resources?
Case Studies of HRM Programs and Practices in Early American Industry
Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2010.
xi + 254 pp.
$55 (Cloth),
ISBN: 978-0-8014-4830-0.
Published by eh.net (October 2010)
Reviewed for eh.net by Chad Pearson,
Department of History,
University of
Alabama – Huntsville.
___________________
For more than two decades, Bruce Kaufman has produced notable studies that
have deepened our understanding of the evolution of industrial relations
policies. In Hired Hands or Human Resources? Case Studies of HRM Program
and Practices in Early American Industry, Kaufman continues his service to
the historical profession by providing in-depth descriptions of the
industrial relations and early human resource practices adopted by fifteen
industries from the late nineteenth century to the first three decades of the
twentieth century. He makes several claims throughout, including his belief
that the era of World War I, rather than the New Deal years, represented the
watershed moment with respect to the development of modern human resource
management. More controversially, Kaufman downplays the role that the labor
movement and legal pressures played in convincing employers to improve their
labor relations polices.
Divided into two parts, Kaufman begins with numerous case studies of late
nineteenth and early twentieth century companies. Drawing mostly on
secondary sources, he describes the different ways in which employers
responded to strikes, high turnover rates, and what commentators generally
called the labor problem. Employers’ responses varied. Companies like
the Pullman Car Company and the Atlanta-based Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills
imposed what Kaufman calls an “autocratic model.” Here employers, in
Kaufman’s words, “set the labor policy and acted as the final court of
appeal in disputes” (p. 50). Managers at Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills
forced employees to sign contracts promising that they would refrain from
joining labor unions and that they would give at least a week’s notice if
they planned to quit; failing to notify management resulted in a deduction of
a week’s pay.
Other companies employed policies that were far more benevolent than the
techniques used by Pullman and the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills. Shoe
manufacturing giant Endicott-Johnson Company embraced what Kaufman calls
“the paternalistic model” while department store company William Filene
and Sons adopted “the participative model.” Led by the paternalistic
George Johnson, Endicott-Johnson promoted a workplace culture called the
“Square Deal.” In return for high pay and company-sponsored social
programs, including sports teams and outings, Johnson insisted that his
employees work efficiently and demonstrate loyalty. “The idea behind the
square deal,” Kaufman notes, “was quid pro-quo – what the company gave
it expected back in equal proportion” (p. 56). Johnson’s interests were
hardly unique. Indeed, all managers expected their workers to show
loyalty.
In part two, Kaufman illustrates the ways in which several companies created
professional human resource management (HRM) models after World War I. This is the most valuable part of the book principally because he used the records of the Industrial Relations Councilors (IRC), a consulting firm that began
assisting employers in the 1910s. The IRC offered consulting services,
provided research, and ran courses on industrial relations topics throughout
the nation. Kaufman, the first scholar to examine these records, believes
that “no other [industrial relations consulting firm] before World War II
had IRC’s reach and influence” (p. 108). Given the confidentiality
agreements that the various firms made with the IRC, Kaufman does not
disclose the identities of the particular workplaces. But he does provide
us with an inside look at the ways in which managers at the “Top-Grade Oil
Company,” “The Great Eastern Coal Company,” “The United Steel and
Coal Company,” “The Mega-Watt and Light Power Company,” “New Era
Radio,” and “High-Beam Steel,” professionalized industrial relations
polices.
In several cases, the contents of these internal reports are rather
unsurprising: details about company pay rates, the implementation of safety
programs, the creation of medical services, and the development of company
sponsored housing and social activities. That the “Great Eastern Coal
Company” sought to, according to one report, “promote and maintain a
spirit of cooperation between the operator and the employee” in the
aftermath of a strike is hardly news (p. 137). In this situation, these
sources simply reinforce what historians and industrial relations scholars
have long known.
Yet Kaufman discovered some real gems during the course of his research.
For instance, the context surrounding the coal company’s implantation of a
non-union employee representation plan is especially revealing. Here, the
IRC warned the company that it needed to take communist leader William
Foster’s critique of non-union representation programs seriously.
Presumably stung by Foster’s statement that such programs served “to
delude the workers into believing they have some semblance of industrial
democracy,” the IRC insisted that the company “recognize these charges
and examine diligently the means for preventing their foundation in fact”
(p. 153). The reports are also instructive in highlighting the considerable
sums of money that companies spent on various employee benefits. High Beam Steal, for instance, allocated $95, 000 for “community
affairs.”
In most cases, these firms, in consultation with the IRC, began to, in
Kaufman’s words, treat labor not as “a short-term commodity,” as was
common in previous decades, but rather as “a longer-term human capital
asset (the ‘human resource’ approach)” (p. 219). Why? Pressure from
unions and the law were factors, but “they were less than half the story in
the time period we are examining” (p. 228). In his view, employers’
desires to improve “management and productivity” better explain why
companies improved workplace conditions (p. 227). This argument is somewhat confusing and not entirely convincing in light of his evidence. Most of the firms he examined confronted pressure from labor unions in different
contexts, and employers in general opposed unions primarily because they
believed that organized labor impeded productivity. Most post-World War I
employers embraced the open-shop principle and routinely maintained that
unions were inefficient third parties that undermined the supposedly natural
relationship between managers and workers. Many supported both carrot and
stick methods in the face of labor unrest.
Nevertheless, for the most part, business and labor historians as well as
economists will find /Hired Hands or Human Resources/? informative and
thought-provoking. Readers may discover a minor error or two (President
Rutherford Hayes, not Grover Cleveland, called in federal troops during the
1877 railroad strike to restore order.) but most will certainly appreciate
this readable study for introducing us to the private world of pre-World War
II industrial relations consulting.
Chad Pearson is currently writing a book about the Progressive Era Open-Shop
Movement. |
