The Economics of Organization

Abstract

My purpose is to reflect on some of the lessons of the past in the study of human resource management, particularly as it relates to the themes of change and innovation, before turning to present and future concerns in this field. At first, I considered making observations only about the last ten years but find that my own involvement over the period makes objectivity impossible. So I have gone back a little further and would like to offer a very personal historical overview of the various principal developments in the study of human resources that have brought us to our present point. I stress “personal”, since another academic would give a quite different, equally legitimate and, to his mind, far superior account.