CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

In the last ten years, organizations especially in Africa have been hit with the undisputable fact that the creation of competitive advantage lies in people. Organizations have increasingly recognized the potential for their people to be a source of competitive advantage. Not too long ago, so called HR function was the preserve of ‘personal managers’ whose duties were to recruit and select, appraise, promote and demote. These superficial duties could be performed by any manager, it therefore never seemed necessary to employ an expert in the form of a human resource manager let alone create a whole department dedicated to HRM. Little attention was paid to human resource management principles and its effects on performance. The emphasis on traditions and social-cultural issues injected an element of subjectivity in ‘personal manager’ function such as recruitment and selection, performance appraisal, promotion, demotion and compensation. (Kaplan & Norton, 2004)

In today’s competitive and rapidly changing business world, organizations especially the service industry need to ensure maximum utilization of their resources to their own advantage; a necessity for organizational survival. Studies have shown that organization can create and sustain competitive position through management of non-substitutable, rare, valuable, and inimitable internal resource (Barney 1991). Human resource management has transcended from policies that gather dust to practices that produce results. Human resource management practices have the ability to create organizations that are more intelligent, flexible and competent than their rivals through the application of policies and practices that concentrate on recruiting, selecting, training skilled employees and directing their best efforts to cooperate within the resource bundle of the organization. This can potentially consolidate growth and create competitive advantage as a result of the historical sensitivity of human resources and the social complex of policies and practices that rivals may not be able to imitate or replicate their diversity and depth.

Human resource management (HRM) as a strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization’s most valued assets; that is, the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of it objectives Armstrong (2009).  Moreover, Human resource management principles examine the main function of human resource management including planning, recruitment, selection, training, development, compensation and evaluation. The adoption of certain bundles of human resource management principles has the ability to positively influence performance by creating powerful connection or to detract from performance when certain combinations of principles are inadvertently placed in the mix (Wagar & Rondeau, 2006). So if we think human resource management as just the service any manager may provide recruiting and selecting, appraising, training and compensating employees, then we rather would have to take the backseat for those who understand the influence HRM has on corporate performance to take the centre stage. Research has recorded a positive relationship between human resource management principles and growth. Thus in order to stimulate corporate performance, management is required to develop skilled and talented employees who are capable of performing their jobs successfully (Klein, 2004).

Generally, the economic profit and its rising are regarded as principal companies’ objectives in the long term horizon. Doing successful business is influenced by a broad range of different factors; however, most of all the success of every business depends on human factor. Only the employees, no matter whether ordinary ones or top managers hold a responsibility for adopted decisions and performed outcomes affecting both the present and the future prosperity of a whole company. Today’s challenges related to globalization, new technologies, containing costs, emerging workplace issues and knowledge management, push ideas and disciplines to evolve. Managerial terms have changed radically over the last decades, particularly in the People Management’s field. One of the most popular transitions in terminology could be from the Personnel Management (PM) era to the new Human Resource Management (HRM) revolutionary concept (Tapomoy, 2006, p. 6).

The history of personnel management begins around the end of the 19th century, when welfare officers (sometimes called „welfare secretaries‟) came into being. They were women and concerned only with the protection of women and girls. Their creation was a reaction to the harshness of industrial conditions, coupled with pressures arising from the extension of the franchise, the influence of trade unions and the labour movement, and the campaigning of enlightened employers, often Quakers, for what was called „industrial betterment‟. As the role grew there was some tension between the aim of moral protection of women and children and the needs for higher output (CIPD, 2014).

The First World War speeded up change in the development of personnel management, with women being recruited in large numbers to fill the gaps left by men going to fight, which in turn meant reaching agreement with trade unions (often after bitter disputes) about ‘dilution’ accepting untrained women into craftsmen’s jobs and changing manning levels.

Personnel Management is the administrative discipline that focuses on working directly with the collective of workers, i.e. the staff. The complex modern conditions of industrial enterprises are in need of an effective system of personnel management which focuses its attention on developing employees so that they become more valuable for the organization. Effective human resource management is designed to provide the company with qualified personnel and to facilitate the fullest possible realization of the labor potential of employees to achieve their goals.

Personnel management is being considered as one of the valuable asserts that organizations possess to accomplish the organizational goals. In the words of Batti (2014) People are an important aspect in all social organizations and from the perspective of the organization, people are resources and organizations cannot exist without them. The importance of people is immense as they support development of the organization’s objectives and achievements.

In current economy, the employee is one of the significant factors of organizations for gaining competitive advantage in the business world (Khan  & Wisner, 2019; Sutduean, & Jermsittiparsert, 2019). The personnel management of the organizations is the key to get better performance of the employees (Kerdpitak & Jermsittiparsert, 2019, 2020). Previously, organizations are not following the policies of personnel management and are not aware about the entry and exit of employees (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2017). But now due to globalization it is necessary for the organizations to scale up their performance to meet competitive advantage and profitability.

Across the globe many studies have been conducted to recognize the contribution of personnel management towards organizational performance and sustainability of organizations. Studies done in Sweden by Schaltegger and Wagner (2006) raises a vital question on managing sustainability as its activities may result in establishing a parallel organization within the company dealing with non-economic issues and Measuring non-economic aspects of performance. Epstein, (2008) also indicates that the management is increasingly asking how companies can improve sustainability performance, and, more specifically, how they can identify, manage and measure the drivers of improved sustainability and the systems and structures that can be created to improve performance measurements.

Hence there forth, the effective management and utilization of personnels will probably lead to the performance and sustainability of the Organization as Sokkie (2013) comments that “The importance of personnel management in an organization as a means of ensuring sustainable growth for an organization cannot be overemphasized, as it is the fundamental strength upon which people; strategies, processes and operations are based. Therefore this study will assess the contribution of personnel management in the performance and sustainability of an organization, most specifically in UNICS BAMENDA.

• Statement of the Problem

A growing number of organisations have produced mission statements. Inerrably, such statements include a section which asserts that ‘people are our most important asset’. Yet these same organisations rarely behave as if they mean it. In other words, a central dimension of the ‘problem’ is the continuing undervaluation of human resources, reflected in all the evidence cited earlier but perhaps most blatantly in attitudes towards training. If organisational success is defined in terms of financial performance and determined by financial, product and market strategies, then personnel/ HRM is appropriately downstream.  Personnel issues are not the key to success, and in the 1980s British industry has done well by recognising this. The role of personnel departments is therefore to provide a service to line managers, who must implement personnel in practice. Personnel managers can and perhaps increasingly do act as effective problem-solvers and fire- fighters. They administer existing personnel systems reasonably efficiently and help to implement new systems when encouraged by other senior managers to do so.

People are inevitable for a success of any organization. That is the reason why they should be treated with a proper care. Managing employees as any other economic resource in quantitative and calculating way with only focus on high performance is not sufficient anymore. Doing successful business is influenced by broad range of different factors, however most of all it depends on human factor. Only the employees no matter whether ordinary ones or top managers hold a responsibility for adopted decisions and performed outcomes affecting both the present and the future prosperity of a whole company (Tapomoy, 2006, p. 6).

Most financial institutions today have attained a broad spectrum of employees making it a labour intensive industry, more especially, in developing economies (Mlinga and Wells, 2002). People’s attitudes have changed significantly when comparing generations. Nowadays, people are spending more and more time at work and usually majorities of their social lives are patterned around work activities.

Moreover, there is an upward trend in employees’ fluctuations among companies searching for the best work conditions. Demanding features are further intensified by globalization, fierce competition, increasingly diverse and aging working population, skill shortage and technology innovation. Recently, one additional challenge has appeared. Concretely, it is the economic downturn affecting organisations throughout the world. Companies are experiencing budget cuts and the biggest question in terms of personnel management is how to sensitively handle employees’ expectations. Arguably, effective human resource management is more important now than ever before (Mlinga and Wells, 2002).

In these consequences, personnel management is raising its importance as it helps to shape the nature of work and aims to directly influence employee overall satisfaction. The organization that develops its reputation as a “good employer” is able to attract and retain quality employees and do not to let them leave and join a competitor. From this perspective, people-oriented approach and competitive advantage gained through employee’s commitment, advanced organizational culture and high-trust organization are essential for survival. It is with this light that the study seeks to determine the effects of Personnel management on Business sustainability, the Case of UNICS Bamenda.

• Main Research Question

The main research question of the study goes thus:  What are the effects of personnel management on the sustainability of UNICS Bamenda?

• Specific Research Question

The study seeks to answer the following specific research questions:

1. How does Training and development program affect the sustainability of UNICS Bamenda?
2. To what extent do managers’ attitudes affect the sustainability of a UNICS Bamenda?

• How do financial rewards affect the sustainability of a UNICS Bamenda?
  • Research Objectives
    • Main objective

The study seeks to determine mainly, the effects of personnel management on UNICS Bamenda’s sustainability.

• Specific questions

Specifically, the study aims at Determining;

1. How Training and development program affect the sustainability of UNICS Bamenda.
2. The extent to which managers’ attitudes affect the sustainability of UNICS Bamenda.

• How financial rewards affect the sustainability of UNICS Bamenda.