Human Recources Management

H T Graham and Roger Bennett wrote a good introductory book on the subject of human resources management. The book covers the diverse range of subjects relevant to human resource management namely work psychology, personnel management, industrial relations, business organizations, training and development and law. The book managed to present all these subjects in a concise and easy to understand manner.

Part one of the book gives a good background to human resources. The authors cover subjects one often encounters in general management namely leadership, groups and teams, motivation and communication among others. The second part of the book covers influences on the behaviour of employees focusing on individual differences as well as physical and psychological influences on work. Part three is a large section dealing with various topics on practical aspects of human resources. The areas that interested me the most are human resource planning, job analysis and specifications, employee appraisals and training and development.

The last part compares human resource practices in various countries in Europe. This is unique in that very often we learn about human resources focusing in only one country (usually the UK or the USA) and should one go to another country, one is ill-equipped for the challenges one is going to confront. In this era of globalisation, the authors need to be commended for their foresight on the need to widen the scope of knowledge of human resource practices in other countries.

The book is very suitable for people who are looking for basic human resource knowledge and expertise at undergraduate level or those managers and practitioners who have very little knowledge and background of human resources. For those studying for postgraduate qualifications (eg a Masters in Human Resources), they need to seek for other books as this is too basic. In fact, the fact that it covers a wide range of areas means that the areas are superficially covered in most cases.