Title: Profiles of the Human Resource Manager in Spanish Firms: Training Programs
Abstract: The New Social and Economic Framework: Globalization Globalisation of the economy and the consequent institutional decentralisation of processes and functions is, doubtless, the engine, the key element of today's increasing competition. Competition should not be interpreted as a simple physical or price challenge. Being competitive implies, basically, a human challenge. This challenge is faced by all people in the firm, particularly, management. Management should concentrate on the capacity to integrate the people in the institution, and to strategically place the institution in the new global environment. The increasing globalisation, the opening of the economy, and the rising of competition, are leading to a rupture with the traditional organizational and managerial designs (Del Val Nunez 1995). In only a few years barriers of all kinds have been brought down, so accelerating the processes of change - change viewed both from the political and technological standpoint and also from the economic and social one. What is currently taking place is a process of change in the way in which our civilisation seeks solutions to problems through the internationalisation of an open organisation of society. In the economy new organisational forms emerge, new ways of understanding co-operation arise and there are new responses to the needs of our society. We can affirm that this is one of the deepest changes of modern economic-entrepreneurial history; but today the requirements have not been perceived. These requirements affect the institutional designs, but overall, affect managers, and executives, responsible of the well leading of those institutions. It can be concluded that we are facing a break with the traditional division of labour, and the use and popularity of this latter among the different institutions, and the different markets. The functional design wedded with the analytic thinking of optimization has been removed by a global design, which gives an answer to the economic and social life; this latter takes into account two basic features: * Speed of change is completely modified; time factor becomes one of the most meaningful strategic elements (Albach 1993). * The need of leading the firm integrating the environments, and the relationships with other institutions; removing a management that only considers the internal functional requirements of the firm. Traditional functionalism of institutions, and the belief that spaces are closed, has ended their existence; and we are now entering a stronger institutional interrelation. Therefore, globalization and the opening of the economy generate a greater dynamic of the business processes than what has traditional being accounted for in close economies. Success or failure of a firm is going to depend upon those relationships, and on the timing of the adaptation processes - and naturally, on the coordination costs of those processes. But also, it can not be forgotten that in an open economy there is no optimum, but efficient or inefficient usage of resources within a specific rationality, which leads the strategic positioning of the firm in its environment. And this implies that the entrepreneur, and the manager, faces a totally different context in the conception of management processes and requirements. In a competitive economy, managing capacity is basic and the key to success. Consequently, the challenge is quite different from a mere administration of a functional division of labour. Besides, the greater competition generates constant risks, some of them unseen to date. Thus, the manager in a global and open economy has to learn to handle in his/her economic calculations the future, and not the past. He/she has to work more on the strategic analysis, and less on the analytic calculus. A new way of managing; a new way of uncovering and analyzing risks and opportunities; and a new form of economic analysis are required. …
Publication Year: 1999
Publication Date: 1999-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 2
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot