We tend to forget the poor, thinking that we cannot do anything about their poverty or we convince ourselves that they are not our problem. Have you surrendered this decision to the Lord? Are you showing favoritism by avoiding poor people or low-income neighborhoods? Are you clinging to comfort or justifying your inaction?
Often, the reason we do not care for the poor is because we do not know the poor. Are you putting yourself in a place where you can invest in relationships and truly love your neighbor as yourself? Further, the Scriptures we have used in this document support the theological framework of caring for the physically poor. Where are landfills placed? How is zoning done? Do the poor who live near you have opportunities for redemption or are they stuck in cycles of poverty?
What government policies are keeping the poor in poverty, rather than helping them out of it? Are certain ethnic or other types of groups seemingly stuck in the cycle of poverty? If efforts are being made towards serving the poor near you, are they helping to alleviate poverty empowering individuals or are they quick fixes to the problem of poverty band aids that enforce the cycle?
He instructs the church to give to the widows who are over sixty who have modeled good character most likely because they are unable to earn money for themselves. We know that some not all people that need help will not do their part in working. Proverbs warns us that laziness, the love of pleasure, and alcohol abuse will lead to poverty. It does not say that people who struggle in these areas are not to be cared for, but it is clear that these things will need to be changed in order to bring about true reform.
Application Questions Do you have relationships with those who come from a background of poverty? Bengel's Gnomon of the NT. Benson's Commentary. Biblical Illustrator. Bridgeway Bible Commentary. Bullinger's Companion Bible. Burkett's Expository Notes. Calvin's Commentary. Cambridge Greek Testament. Charles Box - Selected Books. Charles Hodge - Selected Books.
Church Pulpit Commentary. Coke's Commentary. Cornelius a Lapide. Coffman's Commentary. Dummelow's Commentary.
Ellicott's Commentary. Expositor's Commentary. Expositor's Dictionary. Expositor's Greek. Family Bible N T. Campbell Morgan. Gaebelein's Annotated. Geneva Study Bible. Golden Chain - Gospels. But, as a persuasive account or narrative of the logic underpinning choice in certain organizations and as an aspiration pathway for others, it is an idea worthy of examination.
HRM: A critical approach 15 We hope that the contributions in the current text go some way towards introducing students to some of the key debates in the field of HRM.
Further, the leading edge contributors advance debates in this key area of management practice. References Armstrong, M. Beardwell, I. An introduction to human resource management: strategy, style or outcome, in I. Beardwell and L.
Harlow: Prentice Hall. Beer, M. Managing Human Assets. New York: Free Press. Corporate wide transformations in human resource management, in R. Walton and P. Lawrence eds. Human Resource Management, trends and challenges. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Blyton, P. HRM: debates, dilemmas and contradictions, in P.
Blyton and P. London: Sage. Boxall, P. Strategy and Human Resource Management, 2nd edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Brewster, C. Managing the employment relationship in a market economy, in D. Dublin: Blackhall. Drucker, P. The Practice of Management. London: Mercury Books. Dibben, P. London: Palgrave. Flanders, A. Industrial Relations: What is Wrong with the System. London: Faber and Faber. Forbrun, C. Guest, D. Human resource management and industrial relations, Journal of Management Studies, — Human resource management and the American dream, Journal of Management Studies, — Gunnigle, P.
Human Resource Management in Ireland, 3rd edition. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan. Hammonds, K. Hart, T. Human resource management — time to exorcise the militant tendency, Employee Relations, 15 3 : 29— Hendry, C. Huselid, M. The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity, and corporate financial performance, Academy of Management Journal, — Collings and Geoffrey Wood Huselid, M.
Technical and strategic human resource management effectiveness as determinants of firm performance, Academy of Management Journal, — Hyman, R. London: Macmillan. Jacoby, S. New Jersey: Princetown University Press.
Kaufman, B. The theory and practice of strategic HRM and participative management: Antecedents in early industrial relations, Human Resource Management Review, — Kelly, J. Rethinking Industrial Relations. London, Routledge. Kersley, B. London: Routledge. Kochan, T. The Transformation of American Industrial Relations. New York: Basic Books. Lees, S. Legge, K. Human Resource Management: Rhetorics and Realities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Leidner, R.
Marsden, D. A theory of employment systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Millward, N. All Change at Work? Paauwe, J. Peters, T. New York: Harper and Row. Sisson, K. Storey Ed. London: Thompson Publishing. Storey, J. Developments in the Management of Human Resources. Oxford: Blackwell. Human resource management today: an assessment, in J.
Strauss, G. Tyson, S. Is this the very model of a modern personnel manager? Evaluating the Personnel Function, London: Hutchinson. Walton, R. Simultaneously, numerous researchers e. Langbert, ; Townley, ; Mueller and Carter, have noted that how these managerial practices are accomplished varies in response to an array of social and economic influences of which one key source is the broader organizational context in which they take place.
Here we are immediately confronted by the often rather optimistically presented forecast that work organizations are progressively changing through the evolution of what are described as post-bureaucratic, flexible, high performance forms of organization and management Hecksher, ; Osbourne and Plastric, ; Volberda, ; Applebaum et al.
The aim of this chapter is to explore the implications of these developments for the practice of HRM. I shall set the scene for this analysis by first reviewing the key characteristics of the bureaucratic form and the conditions perceived as neces- sary for bureaucracy to successfully operate. I shall then proceed to consider the pressures faced by contemporary work organizations which are often taken to be undermining the viability of the bureaucratic form and ostensibly encouraging the evolution of the post-bureaucratic.
The chapter will then outline the nature of the post-bureaucratic form of organization as presented by various commentators before moving onto the possible implications for HRM praxis. The chapter will conclude by considering alternative views of contemporary organizational change which cast some doubt upon the claims of this post-bureaucratic thesis.
The bureaucratic organizational form It has long been noted that bureaucratic forms of organization arose on a large scale in Western Europe and the USA during the late nineteenth and early twen- tieth centuries, and replaced earlier forms of work organization see Doray, For Weber, this entailed the subordination of members to the precise calculation of the means by which specific ends might be achieved.
Through the exercise of formal rationality, these rules, sometimes expressed as orders from above, are designed by hierarchical superiors who occupy their posts on merit because they have more knowledge, experience and expertise than their subordinates i.
It is this dependency upon hierar- chically imposed rules, grounded in rational-legal authority as an epistemologically legitimate means of command and control, that defines bureaucracy as an ideal type of organizational form.
The result is that: The fully developed bureaucratic apparatus compares with other organizations exactly as does the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production. Precision, speed, unambiguity, knowledge of the files, continuity, discretion, unity, strict subordination, reduction of friction and of material and personal costs — these are raised to the optimum point in the strictly bureaucratic organization.
The result, for writers such as Bauman , is that bureau- cracies can enable, rationalize, distance and render banal the engagement of people in horrific acts such as those associated with the holocaust. Hence, it is closely associated with the development of modern forms of work study and industrial engineering which use various techniques for: deriving standard times and methods for undertaking tasks; planning and standardizing work flows with detailed divisions of labour; creating precise job descriptions; the operation of piece-work payment systems Hales, Often, as in Fordism and McDonaldization, bureaucratization entails the application of technology e.
Despite having dominated workplace organization throughout much of the twentieth century, bureaucracy as a form of control over labour processes is considered to be no longer viable by many contemporary commentators e. Heckscher, ; Osbourne and Plastrik, ; Volberda, ; Applebaum et al. Only through having expropriated this knowledge can those hierarchical superiors then reconfigure and standardize the execution of tasks by operatives. If such task-discontinuity exists, the argument goes, it becomes necessary to develop alternative forms of control that leave task conceptualization and the identification of how best to undertake tasks to the discretion and intuition of the experienced operative by re uniting all aspects of task performance into a coherent whole.
This demand for such de-differentiation of tasks resonates often with the motivational language of the s job-redesign literature e. Argyris, , where it was argued that in order to promote organ- izations that were congruent with the needs of healthy adults, managers had to start treating employees as if they are adults capable of independently taking deci- sions rather than treating them as passive and dependent, yet potentially wilful, infants in need of constant surveillance and direct bureaucratic control.
In these circumstances task requirements and transformation processes are already known and therefore predictable: therefore it is possible to assert control through the use of hierarchically generated rules and procedures that standardize, pre-programme, monitor and enforce required employee task performance see Ouchi, Regardless of the specific form of bureaucracy adopted, HRM, or perhaps to be more accurate with regard to these circumstances we should use the term Personnel Management see Guest, , is geared to servicing bureau- cratic requirements.
According to Guest ibid. Hence the management of personnel within bureaucracies is focused upon: the creation of detailed job descriptions and specifications; the negotiation and implementation of payment systems to support the effort-reward nexus; minimal operative training for under- taking de-skilled tasks; the administration of management development with a focus upon succession planning through the dissemination of requisite technical knowledge and the maintenance of related promotion and career structures; and the procedural regulation of industrial relations in concert with elected employee representatives.
It is precisely the relatively recent emergence of these conditions that are thought to be threatening the viability of bureaucratic forms of work organization today and hence changing the form that the management of human resources should take.
Changing organizational environments: the demise of bureaucracy? During the last twenty years, an array of commentators have claimed that the social, economic, political and technological environment in which organizations operate has fundamentally changed. Heydebrand, ; Hastings, ; Heckscher, ; Castells, ; Perone, At the macro level Beck draws attention to the ecological implications of these developments and the unsettling consequences of globalization b.
At the micro level he is more concerned with the need for individuals to reconcile themselves to an enduring sense of biographical insecu- rity where individuals are required to create, live and take responsibility for their own lives Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, At the meso level he draws atten- tion to how institutions are developing in a society dominated by our collective awareness of the unintended consequences its institutions produce.
This, in turn, calls into question the legitimacy of those institutions. However, Beck is cautious here as he suggests that these processes have not seen an end to bureaucracy through its replacement by more responsive institutional configurations.
Rather he sees that the displacement and restoration of bureau- cratic features are outcomes of on-going political struggles in which institutions attempt to gain and maintain trust in authority and hierarchy.
The rise of post-bureaucracy? In contrast, much of management literature is less circumspect regarding the institutional outcomes of these processes analyzed by Beck. The reasoning here relates directly to the argument outlined earlier: that knowledge and information are no longer hierarchically ordered and distributed in contemporary organizations because destabilization has made the world less comprehensible than it once was.
Bureaucracies, because of their top-down mode of command and control, are therefore condemned as being sclerotic, especially when faced with contemporary demands for constant innovation and change caused by unstable and unpredictable organizational environments and other disturbances such as rapid technological change.
Such an organizational situation, the argument goes, requires employees who are capable of using their intuition, discretion and often superior local knowledge to creatively and flexibly deal with unpredictable variations in production and service demands, as and when they arise, rather than merely complying with pre-formulated rules and procedures, or waiting for the direct supervisory commands and permission of managers.
The result has been an emerging organizational literature couched largely in terms of post-bureaucracy which has direct implications for how the management of human resources should be undertaken. Indeed, the term post-bureaucracy is often used to signify a universalistic rupture with the organizational tenets of a bygone age. Barzelay with Aramajani, ; Hecksher, This condemnation even sometimes encompasses the moral dimension.
For instance the presumed defunct bureaucracies are often presented as also being oppressive and patriarchal, whereas post-bureaucracies are supposed to empower and involve everyone in decision-making and hence are presumed to be inherently morally superior as they are more likely to meet the needs of healthy adults through how they are organized e. Kanter, a,b; Savage, Implications of post-bureaucracy for HRM So the post-bureaucratic organizational form, it is often claimed, liberates employees from the increasingly dysfunctional hierarchical constraints engen- dered by bureaucracies and enhances their ability to deal with the requirements of an increasingly destabilized working environment e.
Adler, Thus the intention is to create a workforce capable of adaptation rather than dependent upon routinized repertoires Stark, and which is customer-driven yet empowered to make judgements on how to improve customer service and value Kernaghan, This is achieved by the creation of functionally flexible high performance work forces Applebaum et al.
This leads us to a central plank of the post-bureaucratic thesis. Thus a key characteristic of the post-bureaucracy is employee empowerment. Through a range of HRM practices that stimulate, support and sustain self-discipline, self-determina- tion and self-development, whilst instilling a sense of organizational commitment and enhancing motivation, it is claimed that an empowered work force will become a source of competitive advantage through improved employee task- performance Pfeffer, ; Applebaum et al.
This form of employee participation is not just about broader task-design but is also usually operationalized through the creation of autonomous teams that make decisions, implement them and are held accountable. The result is a workforce that is organized through temporary team-based and project-related hetrarchies Ozaralli, that appear and disappear according to shifting requirements Powell, ; Neff and Stark, with horizontal collaborations to improve communication and speed up decision making Kellogg et al.
Advocates present such teamworking as a means of facilitating and enhancing amongst employees: lateral communication; information sharing between and within organizational levels; cooperative problem ownership and resolution through critical evaluation of existing organization processes channeled by a commitment to continuous improvement see Brodbeck, ; Ozaralli, ; Seibert et al.
Quinn and Spreitzer, ; Mills and Ungson, cascading power down the organization might create centrifugal tendencies and thereby the need to reconcile a possible loss of management control, with the requirement for integration of a loosely coupled system through ensuring goal congruence.
Whilst cultural forms of control are often deployed alongside bureaucratic modalities to create chimerical forms of control, or to reduce reliance upon the bureaucratic see Hales, it is the high level of reliance upon culture management as a mode of control that is usually presented as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the post- bureaucratic ideal-type.
Once these cultural defences are broken down, informal peer group pressure upon the individual member is redirected and begins to marshal management approved norms see also Barker, Ironically, this alternative source of discipline and control over the employee through the management of culture could, in principle, reduce the need for some tiers of management, thereby contributing to the delayering of organizations.
Moreover it also has some other significant implications for HRM practice. Simultaneously redundancy may be used to eliminate alternative values by removing those employees who are seen to be unable to, or unwilling to, embrace the specified culture Dobson, For instance, induction, training, appraisal and reward systems may be formally realigned to disseminate and reinforce displays of culturally acceptable behaviour.
Instead, what is required are managers capable of leading through establishing horizontal communication and dialogue with subordinates in mutually therapeutic relation- ships Tucker, Dubrin, In essence, leaders are presented as strategic vision- aries who courageously anticipate and initiate changes through communicating and sharing their visions and enthusing their subordinates. Management, on the other hand, is recast and construed as being much more mundane, if not virtually banal.
So whilst leadership is the primary focus of senior managers, all individual managers are expected, to some degree, to undertake aspects of both leadership and management in performing their organizational roles.
Pattinson describes how the ascription of a special leadership status to managers often entails the deployment of quasi-religious metaphors whereby senior managers are somehow endowed with mystical capacity and of being akin to latter-day prophets — charismatic figures who have a mission to pursue unques- tionable goals and inspire other organizational members to change their ways. Although the articulation of these new modes of management and leadership may entail the search for new bases of legitimacy when rational-legal authority is threatened, the ostensible reason for this reconfiguration is to support and facilitate the hallmarks of the post-bureaucracy: the participation of self-directed employ- ees in decision-making and the dissemination of culturally approved values as a form of commitment-based control.
Other processes of communication and social inter- action might, as Dent observed, entail some spatial reorganization by physically locating managers close to those they wish to influence so as to enable them to informally nurture and sustain the desired cultural changes. As I have discussed above, employee empowerment, the evolution of new mana- gerial roles, etc. An alternative and often complemen- tary way of variably using labour is via the external labour market and relates to the ease with which the numbers of particular employees can be varied to meet fluctuations in demand through the use of temporary employment contracts Kalleberg, , Thus, increasing levels of internal and external uncer- tainty, by demanding various forms of flexibility in organizations, may result in a mixture of bureaucratic and post-bureaucratic modalities of control within one organization.
For instance, bureaucratic modalities may be still appropriate for numerically flexible peripheries doing relatively unskilled tasks, since the uncer- tainty of their tasks is around e. These phenomena are characterized by disaggregated operations spread between loosely coupled clusters of firms distrib- uted along the value chain, which are co-ordinated primarily through contractual arrangements for goods and services.
Relationships with, and control over, contrac- tors to whom specific tasks have been outsourced may vary according to the nature of the forms of contractual network governance in place Powell, Conclusions As I have attempted to demonstrate in this chapter, at the heart of the post- bureaucratic thesis are issues of control and changes in how management exercise direction, surveillance and discipline over subordinates in response to increasing level of uncertainty experienced in organizations caused by an array of destabi- lizing disturbances.
These processes have direct implications for the practice of HRM as control moves towards purposefully shaping the identities and attitudes of employees, albeit often in a reactive manner see e. Evans, This shift in control is illustrated and summarized by Table 2. In this chapter the possible shift from bureaucratic to post-bureaucratic modes of organization and HRM has been presented largely as a demand that has to be accommodated if we accept that increasing levels of turbulence and uncertainty Table 2.
So, in relation to its bureaucratic alternatives, post-bureaucracy is often presented as generally, rather than contingently, more effective and efficient because they can reduce bureaucratic impedimenta, flatten hierarchies, cut administrative costs, increase productivity and, crucially increase the agility and responsiveness of organizations to an increasingly destabilized business environment. Here there is a danger of overly rationalizing management decision making and the choices that are made with regard to different organizational forms: that senior managers, by deploying economically rational calculation, seek to consciously seek out and implement efficiency-optimizing solutions to secure unambiguous organizational goals in the discharge of their fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders, in the case of private sector or elected representatives in the case of the public sector.
Jackall, A result of this characterization is that description of changes in organiza- tional form and prescription about these processes get entangled. Another result is that it theoretically explains the evolution of post-bureaucracy as a necessary, progressive, response to demands arising from the need for efficiency and competitive advantage in changing organizational circumstances propelled by the destabilizing disturbances noted above.
With reference to North America, Barley and Kunda use historical information to document how, since the s, management discourse has oscillated five times between what they call normative and rational rhetoric of control.
Rational modes of theorizing surged from to with Scientific Management, and again with Systems Rationalization from to In contrast normative control is defined as the idea that managers could regulate employee behaviour by attending to their thoughts and emotions through some form of culture management.
Normative modes of theorizing surged from to with Industrial Betterment, again from to with Human Relations and again from to the then present day with Organization Culture and Quality. During each surge to prominence, the particular ideology being propagated is considered to be at the cutting edge of managerial thought, if not necessarily at the level of management practice.
However they demonstrate how economic cycles have determined when new surges in management theorizing happen. However, they also emphasize that they do not claim that rational and normative ideologies alternately become dominant according to economic cycles, rather the rational has always tended to be theoretically prevalent and more closely linked to actual managerial practice. Hence it is important to temper any consideration of the emergence of new organizational forms and their impact upon HRM with the possibility that we may be witnessing waves of shifting rhetoric, that confuse prescription and description, whose relationship to organizational praxis is ambiguous yet nevertheless legit- imize and possibly energize an evolving array of HRM practices that, when implemented, impact upon social relationships within the workplace.
References Adler, P. Market, hierarchy and trust: the knowledge economy and the future of capitalism, Organization Science, 12, March—April: — Alvesson, M. Identity regulation as organizational control: producing the appropriate individual, Journal of Management Studies, 39 5 : — Anthony, P.
Managing Culture. Buckingham: Open University Press. Applebaum, E. Manufacturing advantage; why high-performance work systems Pay off. Argyris, C. Personality and Organization. Barley, S. Design and devotion: surges of rational and normative ideologies of control in managerial discourse, Administrative Science Quarterly, — HRM in changing organizational contexts 33 Barker, J. Barzelay, M. Bauman, Z. Modernity and the Holocaust. London: Polity Press. Beck, U.
Risk Society. Sage: London. Risk Society Revisited. Theory Politics and Research, edited by B. Adam, U. Beck and J. What is Globalization? Cambridge: Polity Press. Beirne, M. Empowerment and Innovation. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Black, S. Management: Meeting New Challenges. Bos, R.
Towards post dualistic business ethics: interweaving reason and emotion in working life, Journal of Management Studies, 38 6 : — Brannan, M. London calling: selection as a pre-emptive strategy for cultural control, Employee Relations, 29 2 : — Brodbeck, P. Castells, M. Using the clear, accessible text of the NIV, this rendering of the Bible allows its stories, poems, and teachings to come together in a single, compelling read.
I am relentlessly convinced that too many Christians are missing the big picture of the overall drama of human fall and salvation, how the Bible spiritual story fits into an integral narrative. As kids we heard tales of Noah and his ark, Jonah and the whale, as youngsters sat through Sunday School, and in adulthood we listened to sermons about salvation history, and the time of fullfillment. Those who continue to carry their daily devotions, may start relating to the biblical message assembling the puzzle pieces.
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