02 декабря 2017г.
HR-management is an area of knowledge which is aimed to provide organizations with quality staff and learn how to optimally use it. This definition we can find in Wikipedia, but in real life HR is all the processes which
are connected with staff – not only finding people and making a model of their activity in organization, but also there are things like creating organization culture, taking care of relationships between organization’s «head» and «hands». Modern HR-manager has to be in all spheres of activities which are done by company in which he is working.
Nowadays it is difficult to imagine a big organization without HR-department, but around one hundred years ago people didn’t have anything special for these aims. Active discussing about this sphere started in the early
20th century. That time organizations noticed person not only as a work unit but also like an important part from big mechanism, and the first trade unions appeared. Then in the middle of 20th century was made a simple accent to personality and there was beginning of creating corporative culture. This period was till the end of 70th and here we need to talk a little about time-background. Firstly, here is a heyday of people’s desire for freedom, especially in the youth – time of «generation X». Secondly, they also wanted to do self-realization and not to stay on one place. Also we can plus to this points LSD- and sex-revolutions, space exploring, rest after different wars and conflicts – and as a result we get reasons for great mind change in society. Of course, this changes were influent on HR sphere –through the way of riots people achieved ability to make structure more democratic and started to be interested in what they were doing. Moreover, it is necessary to notice that during next time production orientation was changed to meeting customer’s needs and some forms of organizations were also changed and finally, in the 21st century, we have humanistic concept, which includes some principles like orientation on stuff’s personality, big role of different motivation types, capability to combine human’s quality and organization’s goals and others. One of the most important distinctions is that 20th century was about IQ and intelligence but 21st is about emotions.
We want to compare two HR systems – the Russian and the American, but firstly it is necessary to talk about their theoretical backgrounds. In 1960 famous American social psychologist Douglas McGregor wrote an
essay «The human side of Enterprise» in which he described two types of management: «Theory X» and «Theory Y». He considered behavior of manager, his relationship with subordinates, motivation and working conditions from the different sides. «Theory X» based on the theses that people are lazy by nature, they don’t have any ambitions, don’t want to work and the main motivation for them is money or fear, for example, of losing a job. It also said that any creative activity in organization is the right way to destroy a production – everybody has to be under strict control, in the hierarchical structure. Manager in this system doesn’t trust anyone in his company, tries to make all relationships in collective formal and thinks very pessimistically about the stuff. This system is authoritarian.
On the other side is «Theory Y», which said that work is normal process for humans and that they are ready to do their job better. But it is important to take them creative freedom and pay attention to ergonomics. Also it said that money is not the only way to motivate people and manager should include system of intangible rewards. «Theory Y» company’s staff should be self-managing, responsible and enjoy their work. This system is democratic. This theories we can show on a simple picture:
«Theory Y» has been developed in «Theory Z» written by William Ouchi in 1981. It is about organization has another important component – corporative culture – a set of beliefs, attitudes, models of behavior, approaches to work, ways of communications which are accepted by all employees of organization.
Also we need to understand, that manager plays one of main roles in company and in HR-system in particular.
And now we can compare these theories with two systems – Russian and American and with two types of managers.
We have identified criteria for comparing managers and they are presented in a table:
This table shows general differences between Russian and American managers.
Also it is necessary to notice several external factors which influence on managers and their work such as mindset and educational system. The first one explains that Russian and an American persons are absolutely
different due to their mentality and this fact influences on their attitude to work and results of their activities. The second is important because it determines their opportunities – in many cases American person has more chances to get job he enjoys than Russian.
Thus we can describe Russian manager as person, who has orientation on feelings, who can be lazy sometimes but in in extreme situation he also can make a good creative decision; he doesn’t trust people around, but the same time his promotion in a lot of cases depends on private connections, not qualifications; he can fail to have good or necessary education but he needs work so he can study during work-time, he can manage with multitasking.
Also, Russian ergonomics and system of rewards are predetermined by the state and high level of paternalistic culture. From this we have low salary and lack of basic social benefits.
On the other side – American manager – is person, who wants to earn money, who cares about atmosphere in collective but the same time has formal relationships with colleagues. It meant that they have long period of habituation, high level of personal distance and superficial cordiality culture. Also he always lives in competition.
He is interested in work which he is doing but knows how this work must be paid. And he is a specialist in one sphere, he can do his job well but he can’t do a lot of different tasks.
How we can see, in many of criteria Russian system is compare to «Theory X» and American is compare to «Theory Y». It means that Russian HR-system in general works by quantity of staff – to provide people working spaces and American system works on stuff’s quality and tries to provide good conditions for work. But it is important to remember that all this theories are only base of direction and nowadays both of that systems are more modern and humanistic.
Resources
1. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Управление_персоналом
2. https://otherreferats.allbest.ru/management/00427827_0.html
3. https://infomarketing.su/lichnostnyj-rost/teoriya-x-i-y-makgregora/
4. https://studopedia.ru/6_33053_teorii-h-i-Y-duglasa-makgregora.html
