Personnel Management in India and Worldwide: The Past, Present, and Future

Personnel Management is a business function and business is a value-adding activity. A business, be it agriculture, manufacturing, mining, trading, or any other activity, is a process of conversion for the purpose of satisfying human needs and thereby adding value. Such conversion takes various forms. It may be in terms of quantity, quality, time, or space. All such conversions are done primarily through human effort. Therefore, the need for personnel management arose since the time business activities required organized application of human effort. The history of personnel management is thus very old. Incidentally, persons are generally averse to physical and repetitive work. It had, therefore, been a challenge for those managing other people to get the work done by them when it was not inspiring in terms of work content or remuneration. This book, in a historical perspective, explains how the personnel managers handled the challenge in different ages, and how the evolving socio-economic environment influenced their approaches and actions. A lot has changed in terms of personnel management over the years. With economic liberalization, personnel management is no longer a job of managing persons. This book also covers the larger activities of organizational management and beyond. In the days to come, personnel managers will have to be messengers of social harmony and growth, and an embodiment of trust. And then they will be able to serve the organizations and their employees the best.