Myths About People at Work: A Critique of Human-Resource Management (Classic Reprint)

For the last five years, 1975 -1980, I have taught human-resource management to graduate students, managers, and executives, but something felt wrong. During the period the topic of human-resource management exploded in popularity in large organizations around the world. Continuous requests for consulting came to me and I watched my peers in industry and in full-time consulting make large salaries, but still something felt wrong. A basic conflict grew between what I had learned about organizations from empirical research and what I taught my students from personnel textbooks. Professors of organizational behavior in business schools have created and perpetuated a series of myths about people at work. The purpose of this paper is to summarize briefly the mythology of human-resource management and to describe the contradictory empirical reality. At the conclusion, I will summarize the common elements of the mythology, propose a political explanation for the specific content of myths, and suggest an alternative system of human-resource management. Methodology This paper sets out a personal research agenda for the next year. Therefore, I state my best understanding of empirical reality as a contrast to each myth. Next year I will report how completely the world supports my interpretation. I welcome any evidence on these subjects, whether it be scholary research or anecdotes of organizational practice. Of course, please dont cite this paper as evidence against popular myths, however plausible my argument may sound. The report of my research will be more cautious, lengthier and better documented than this polemic.
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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