The Diminishing Significance of Knowledge, Talent and Skills in Business Organisations:-
Despite the wishful thinking of many traditional Human Resource (HR) pundits for it being the other way round, the fundamentals on which HR function survived in business organisations have been shaken up, of late. Blame it on information technology, communication technology etc., the significance of knowledge, talent and skills in employees is fast diminishing. Many people, especially from the learning and development, performance management and recruitment areas of the HR function, may like to vehemently deny this predicament. Yet the reality is writ large on the wall - the traditional way organisations managed their people no longer holds good.
The world was used to a particular way of recruiting, developing and retaining employees in business organisations. This "way" had evolved over hundreds of years of social progression. All the while no one could have visualised the way technological development could outsmart social development, especially in the way it happened in the past few years. The trend is bound to become even harsher in the times ahead.
How the socio-technological development arena ended up in imbalance is perceivable. Socially, individuals had to have knowledge, talent and skills to be "successful" in life. So, in functional families (the smallest units of society), the elders, like the heads of the family, played the role of the provider of knowledge, talent and skill to the younger ones. So, mostly, a blacksmith's son became a blacksmith, an undertaker's son became an undertaker and a housewife's daughter became a housewife, all through the process of in-house generation of knowledge, talent and skills, both through nature and nurture. The post-Industrial Revolution world modified this trend into the workers', supervisors' and managers' development using the larger social platforms. The apprenticeship training, most of the on-the-job training etc. followed this development pattern. The personnel manager-turned HR manager, presumably being driven by the principles of management, behavioural sciences etc., too moved on, trying to manage the stability of the organisation within its structure, ensuring that the required knowledge, talent and skills were available among its people to carry on with organisational activities. In business organisations, while on one hand it was the business activities shaped up by defined or undefined objectives, on the other hand was the organisational system which facilitated such business activities. This way, the fact always remained that business organisations had two components - the business and the organisation, which mostly related to people. It is a different story that in the classical "owner driven" ones, business (and the profit it generated) usually took the upper hand. So, the goal of most business organisations had been profit, gained through business activities, conducted "using" organisations, over a relatively longer period of time. On the other hand, what the organisation had were knowledge, talent and skills of its people that facilitated business activities.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6004594
The world was used to a particular way of recruiting, developing and retaining employees in business organisations. This "way" had evolved over hundreds of years of social progression. All the while no one could have visualised the way technological development could outsmart social development, especially in the way it happened in the past few years. The trend is bound to become even harsher in the times ahead.
How the socio-technological development arena ended up in imbalance is perceivable. Socially, individuals had to have knowledge, talent and skills to be "successful" in life. So, in functional families (the smallest units of society), the elders, like the heads of the family, played the role of the provider of knowledge, talent and skill to the younger ones. So, mostly, a blacksmith's son became a blacksmith, an undertaker's son became an undertaker and a housewife's daughter became a housewife, all through the process of in-house generation of knowledge, talent and skills, both through nature and nurture. The post-Industrial Revolution world modified this trend into the workers', supervisors' and managers' development using the larger social platforms. The apprenticeship training, most of the on-the-job training etc. followed this development pattern. The personnel manager-turned HR manager, presumably being driven by the principles of management, behavioural sciences etc., too moved on, trying to manage the stability of the organisation within its structure, ensuring that the required knowledge, talent and skills were available among its people to carry on with organisational activities. In business organisations, while on one hand it was the business activities shaped up by defined or undefined objectives, on the other hand was the organisational system which facilitated such business activities. This way, the fact always remained that business organisations had two components - the business and the organisation, which mostly related to people. It is a different story that in the classical "owner driven" ones, business (and the profit it generated) usually took the upper hand. So, the goal of most business organisations had been profit, gained through business activities, conducted "using" organisations, over a relatively longer period of time. On the other hand, what the organisation had were knowledge, talent and skills of its people that facilitated business activities.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6004594
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