THE CHANGING TRENDS

The Changing Trends of HRM:Proceed with Caution (bY S. Chandrasekar )
Change is always permanent and so is the innovation. It enters almost periodically when certain concepts get obsolete or redundant to follow. Innovation is not new, it exists since the Ages of Stone, Bronze and Neolithic; of course, it is a natural phenomenon. So a change in practice leads to adaptability to change management. Mother Nature is a role model to this. Forest fire ravages the wild growth during summer and provides room to new fauna and flora. Innovation is born out of destruction.

When we, humans, look forward to new trends in our life style, why not HRM? On these lines, innovation is defined as `any deliberate and radical change in existing products or services, processes or the organization practices in order to gain a total competitive advantage over others'. This is the apt definition in the post-modern era where practices in the past yield to refinement in the present and project formulations for the future.

Universally, it has been seen that innovation happens in three domain functions, namely new product, new technological process and new organizational management practices. Quite a number of new systematic innovations have taken place in a decade. Whatever be the innovation, it has to be in line with the general practices governed by an organization. In some cases, say, for medium-sized companies with decent annual turn over, average employee retention and moderate pay structure, the applicability of new trends may not apply at all as the basic concept of Human Resource (HR) would just suffice in ample sense. Here the innovation itself becomes redundant.