D EBATE SOBRE EL C ARÁCTER DEL T RABAJO POR C UENTA P ROPIA

Since HR management is often viewed as a support process within the BPM domain (Sidorova and Isik, 2010), further discussion from this viewpoint is appropriate. Total quality management (TQM), one of the early manifestations of BPM (Lusket al., 2005), promotes quality as the key facilitator of business success, which stresses that companies providing their customers with the best quality service will advance further than their competitors. TQM as an integrated form of ‘management philosophy’ (Ravichandran and Rai, 2000), coordinates people, business processes and systems of an organization to achieve complete customer satisfaction at every stage, internally and externally (Department of Trade and Industry, 2009). In order to establish the linkage between TQM and HRM, Simmonset al. (1995) contend that since the ultimate goal of these two management philosophies are the same and are to be aligned with the overall management strategy, they claim (p.75) “Both TQM and (S)HRM are underwritten by an

organization-wide approach”. Based on their study, Simmonset al.(1995) conclude that since TQM and HRM have many similarities and complementary contributions, they must go hand- in-hand within an organization to place great importance on adopting an organization-wide commitment to improvement. Echoing the same sentiment, McElwee and Warren (2000, p. 433) confirm,“It is the approach to HRM in the pursuit of quality that is critical to success”. Recognizing that HRM within TQM is an inevitable one, Guest (1992) stresses that committed workforce that create quality can be achieved by training the employees. Proposing that TQM is an organization-wide management approach that is focussed on customer orientation, process orientation and continuous improvement, Hill and Wilkinson, (1995, p.9 &12) also argue that TQM is relies heavily on quality HRM.

While many TQM proponents agree that TQM heavily relies on quality HRM, they also admit that there are gaps between these two (Simmonset al., 1995; McElwee and Warren, 2000; Hill and Wilkinson, 1995).

Business process re-engineering (BPR), the next manifestation of modern BPM also has a close linkage to HRM. Unlike TQM, that focuses on overall quality on internal and external processes, BPR, a radical re-design or change of existing business processes (Hammer and Champy, 2001; Hegedus, 2008; Ko,et al.,2009), is aimed at achieving dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service, and speed. As was observed, in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, the rapidly changing global economy pressured many organizations to become extensively dynamic and customer-centric, as a result, organizations started to revamp their old management practices by completely reengineering or redesigning their business processes (Misraet al., 2008). However, Willmott (1994) points out that the human factor was largely ignored by the BPR adopters.

Questioning the marginalization of the human aspects within BPR, Willmott (1994, p.41) argues that, “Making the transition from function-centred to process-oriented organizing practices necessarily depends upon the “human resources” who enact, and are enacted by, BPR”. While agreeing with this argument, Zucchi and Edwards (1999), strongly deny that downsizing – the reduction in employees as a result of radical re-engineering of processes – is the by-product of BPR that caused so many layoffs in the late 1980s and 1990s. They argue that, during the 1990s most of the Western organizations were not implementing BPR but were focussing on downsizing to stay afloat in business; therefore, blaming BPR for downsizing and massive layoffs is irrational. In order to mitigate this perception, the literature does address the human aspects within BPR, in their paper, Zucchi and Edwards (1999) study four HRM related

aspects in association with BPR, namely, (1) organisational structure and culture, (2) the role of managers, (3) team working, and (4) the reward system. Their findings add a positive value to the BPR concept; the results, in fact, show that by maintaining a matrix approach (i.e.

maintaining a business model that marries functional structure and process-based structure), with little hiccups, BPR does care and support HRM.

While the two major BPM manifestations, namely TQM and BPR are to some extent associated with HRM, the overall concept of HRM is closely linked to the latest version of BPM. This is because, as discussed in detail in the previous chapter, the contemporary BPM as an umbrella of overall business processes and of continual process improvement, the process improvement concepts such as TQM, BPR, BPI and BPM lifecycle are all in certain ways attributed to modern HRM. Adopting a latent semantic analysis (LSA) approach to conduct a comprehensive literature review on business processes, Sidorova and Isik (2010) found that between the period of 1989 and 2009 there were about 75 seminal works that focused on HR in relation to business processes. Their findings conclude that, since HRM involves a variety of activities across functional units, HRM mainly falls under the ‘associated business process’ research category; that means, overall HRM is considered as a support process within BPM domain (Sidorova and Isik, 2010).

In addition to the above argument, by paying close attention to the three BPM interpretations proposed by Doebeliet al.(2011), one can see the fit that these interpretations make with the perception of modern HRM. Doebeliet al.(2011, p.185) interpret:

1. BPM as a solution for a business using software systems or technology to automate and manage processes;

2. BPM as a broader approach to managing and improving processes that focus on the process lifecycle; and

3. BPM as an approach to managing an organisation by taking a process-view.

The first interpretation acknowledges the adoption of a BPM system (or BPMS) as a solution to automate and manage processes. Going hand in hand with this interpretation, in HRM, a human resources information system (HRIS) is usually adopted to automate and manage the human resource processes. This point will be further discussed later in this chapter.

Within the HRM domain, the second interpretation, BPM as a broader approach that maintains the process lifecycle to manage and improve processes, can be linked to the concepts of HR practices and HRM outcomes. Maintaining the fact that a true process must go through an end-

to-end lifecycle (Betz, 2011), HRM as a (support) process goes through its own lifecycle by implementing the HRM practices, namely transactional, traditional and transformational. These HR practices are considered as ‘processes’ by Sidorova and Isik (2010). For example, a HR practice such as ‘recruit employee’ – a traditional HR practice – starts with preparing a job description and goes on through the steps on publishing the job posting, interviewing the candidates, selecting the candidate, finalizing the job offer, conducting the job orientation, positioning the employee at the job, and then ends with evaluating employee performance in accordance with the HRM outcomes (A further discussion on HR practices and HRM outcomes are conducted in the next two sections).

Finally, the third interpretation, BPM as an approach to managing an organisation by taking a process-view can be connected to ‘HRM is a support process within the BPM domain’, an insight that is maintained by many academics in this area of study (Sidorova and Isik, 2010). In order to fine tune the concept that HRM is nothing but a BPM concept, a further analysis is required on HRM practices and HRM outcomes.