HRM: modernist project or postmodern discourse?

Abstract

In concluding this critical analysis of human resource management, it seems appropriate to locate it in a much broader socio-cultural context than that considered in Chapter 3. As a socio-cultural artefact itself, what does HRM reflect or represent? Undeniably, HRM, as represented in the body of literature analysed here, is a product of the 1980s and early 1990s. There are no problems with its periodisation. But how do we typify that period? As one of mature capitalism or ‘radical modernity’ (Giddens, 1990), or of ‘disorganised capitalism’ (Offe, 1985; Lash and Urry, 1987) or of that equally fashionable movement of the 1980s, ‘postmodernism’? And what are the epistemological implications of the typifications we choose? How will they affect what we judge to be the ‘reality’ and significance of HRM? Before we can begin to consider such questions we need to gain some understanding of the concepts involved. What do we mean by ‘modernity’ or ‘modernism’¹ and by that trendy buzz word of the chattering classes: ‘postmodernism’? Because postmodernism is so frequently defined in opposition to it, let us start by considering what is meant by modernism.