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The Human Resource Management Journal (HRMJ) was launched in the Autumn of 1990.

Its founding editor, Professor Keith Sisson, took the journal through its ® rst ® ve years

and I have now seen it through to its 10-year anniversary. As from the next issue, in

January 2001, I will in turn will be handing the editorship on to Professor John Purcell at the

University of Bath.

It is timely, therefore, to take this opportunity to look back on developments in human

resource management over the ® rst decade and to look forward to the prospects for the

next. Hence, in this brief review I want to cover three areas: ® rst to revisit the agenda, the

issues and debates which Keith Sisson anticipated as likely to ® gure in the new journal;

secondly to overview the articles which have actually appeared in the journal in the past 10

years; and, thirdly, to try to identify some of the emerging themes for the future. A

retrospect over 10 years is a very useful time period in which to compare anticipation with

what has happened and it offers a useful benchmark against which to evaluate

developments in this ® eld.

In volume 1 number 1, Keith Sisson spelt out the scope and purpose of the journal. He

sketched a wide range of subjects related to the ©policies, procedures and processes involved

in the management of people in work organisations©. This was seen to embrace the design of

work and of organisations, human resource planning, recruitment and selection, appraisal,

training and development, management development, motivation and reward, discipline,

participation and involvement, health and safety, and management and trade union

relations. All of these policy and practice areas were recognised as set in a wide economic

and social context. It was made abundantly clear that the term human resource

management was being used in a generic sense and was not intended to imply one

particular style or approach.

Moreover, another point was also emphasised: namely that the journal was intended to

be a forum where analysis of practice would occur. Part of its mission was to counterbalance

the overly prescriptive tendencies in much personnel management literature of that time

which proffered recipes detached from context and free of evidence. Articles designed for

inclusion in this journal therefore were not to be unsubstantiated opinion pieces but rather

research-based description and analysis. This leads to a ® nal point concerning mission. The

data presentations and analyses were to be meaningful to both academics and practitioners.

Thus, policy and practical implications emerging from the analyses were to be very much

encouraged. Articles would need to appeal to managers, students and academics ± a

dif® cult balancing act rarely achieved or perhaps even attempted by most journals. This has

proved to be an enduring characteristic of the HRMJ.

The above, then, represents the scope and to some extent the character of the journal. In

addition, the founding editor sought to identify some of the main debates and topics that

would be likely to ® gure in the journal. This element was necessarily more tentative and

speculative than the outline of scope and character discussed above. Themes anticipated

HRMJ: the � rst decade

John Storey, The Open University

included ©flexibility© and ©flexible organisations©; overall trends or ©transformations© in

employment management approaches (and, as an adjunct, the implications for the role

and status of personnel specialists); individualism and collectivism; globalisation and the

international division of labour; and, widest of all, theoretical issues concerning the scope

for strategic choice by managers and the power of constraints on such choices - including

legal regulation. There is insuf® cient space here to do justice to the elaborated version of

Sisson©s overview but it may be suggested that, taken as a whole, his essay admirably

anticipated many if not all of the most important themes which did indeed unfold in the

years which ensued.

This brings us to our second task: what patterns are now evident as one looks back over

10 years of published articles? During that period some 220 articles have been published in

40 editions of the journal and approximately 160 books have been reviewed. Many and

arguably all of the themes expected by Sisson have indeed made an appearance. Most

notable in terms of the sheer number of articles have been discussions concerning the

changing role of the HR/personnel management function; international HRM and

comparative management; the nature of strategic human resource management; training

and development; motivation, commitment and the psychological contract; involvement

and participation; equal opportunities and diversity; and studies of HR in particular sectors

such as ® nancial services, the public sector, manufacturing, retailing and hotels. These have

proved to be the staple items.

In addition, there have been some useful evaluative studies of initiatives at national

policy level and organisational level. These have included, for example, detailed

evaluations of the workings of Investors in People (IiP), modern apprenticeships and of

many organisational-level initiatives in the areas of employee involvement, training,

selection, appraisal and reward management. The many rigorous and yet practical

treatments of this kind no doubt explain the popularity of the journal among a wide

senior practitioner and corporate audience. Perhaps covered less fully than was expected

at the outset have been the big theoretical themes such as globalisation, strategic choice

and the changing paradigms of competition. These issues have been illuminated in more

indirect ways. The primary character of the journal as it has emerged over its first

decade has been empirically-based, rigorous studies of virtually all practical aspects of

the management of human resources. But the bigger themes such as `markets versus

hierarchy’ have continued to figure and be explored, albeit in the frame of concrete

manifestations such as outsourcing and supply chains. Arguably, this mode of treatment

perfectly re¯ ects the intended policy of the journal from the outset as well as re¯ ecting

its ’emergent strategy’ .

Interesting themes which have been covered that were at the outset rather more dif® cult

to predict have included the analyses of lean production, of supply chains, the evaluations

of HR auditing methods, employment management in call centres, the management of

creativity, information systems in HR and outsourcing. Each of these re¯ ects the changing

economic and business agenda consequent on industry restructuring and the changing

nature of competition. The emphasis given in this journal and elsewhere to the link with

performance outcomes is itself re¯ ective of these wider contextual forces. At the same time,

the greater attention now being paid to ethics (covered indeed in some depth in this current

issue of the journal) is indicative of a critical questioning of some of the values and

assumptions inherent in the performance debate.

Human Resource Management Journal ten years on

6 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL ± VOL 10 NO 4

Finally, what about the future? It should be apparent enough by now that there is no

single `trend’ in the management of human resources towards one particular form. The

expectation held earlier by some that a best practice mode of human resource management

would `diffuse’ across the economy (and indeed across different economies) now seems

misplaced. Instead we are likely to continue to see the playing out of diverse tendencies.

There are low road as well as high road paths to competitiveness. Nonetheless, one of the

more intriguing developments is the apparent dramatic rise in the signi® cance and value of

`intangibles’ in the economy. Knowledge, brands, intellectual capital, routines, systems and

other non-tangible assets have been noted as accounting for a larger slice of value in many

major companies than traditional physical assets. Even if only some of the elements in the

so-called `new economy’ stand the test of time, then the implications for human resource

management would seem to be far reaching.

The interest in who is to in¯ uence HR policies and practices (specialists or otherwise)

seems also likely to continue. Further, it is sometimes argued that there are some enduring

issues such as recruitment, selection, training, payment and other staff management

concerns which must be taken care of in one form or another whatever other changes might

occur. In so far as employing organisations continue this is probably so, but the saliency of

such topics may be open to question if commercial contracts for service were to replace

employment contracts to any large extent. Distributed, fragmented, fluid, networked

relationships might shift the balance of attention to other issues. Legislation and regulation

at national and European level will also no doubt continue to require debate and analysis

and one might expect this to increase as a wider range of measures become active. The factor

which can be the most difficult to forecast and yet at the same time can have such far-

reaching consequences for the `practices in the management of people’ is the economic cycle.

Each of these issues will present demanding and exciting challenges for analysts and

practitioners in the future. In addition to much hard work, the new editor of the HRMJ is

guaranteed to enjoy some interesting times.

John Storey, The Open University

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