Hrm Reality Putting Competence in Context

For more than 20 years we have been concerned with helping business students connect the descriptive and normative dimensions they study in their textbooks with their experiences. The success of our first effort in this direction,Organizational Reality: Reports From the Firing Line(now in its 4th edition) suggested other instructors had the same concern. That book's reception in the market went far beyond our original intention as it attracted attention from instructors of communication and creative writing. Our second attempt,Managerial Reality,had similar aims but was directed to students of management; it was also well received as a supplement to traditional, more normative approaches to the subject. Accordingly, when we were asked to prepare the first edition of this book, we welcomed the opportunity to provide a teaching tool that contained vivid illustrations of human resource management's past, present, and future. In that book as well as in this second edition, we emphasized the context within which the practice of HRM takes place. Indeed, it is the changing context that has required us to produce the current edition so that we can offer materials that reflect contemporary reality. These changes have been so great that there are no selections in this edition that were also in the first edition. However, the structure and, for the most part, the headings of the first edition remained useful. As before, we believe our approach provides students with materials that center on reality rather than primarily conceptual aspects of HRM, thereby providing students with an interesting and relevant perspective that conventional textbooks do not. We are indebted to the many authors whose reporting and insights shaped this book. As the reader will note, we have drawn from a broad spectrum of sources in our effort to portray the reality of human resource management. We also acknowledge with sincere thanks the administrative support of Melissa Steffens, David Shafer, and Michael Campbell of Prentice Hall. We are grateful to Cynthia Ree and Graham Brown of the Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration at UBC and Norma Walker at USF for their excellent secretarial services. We want to give special thanks to Cynthia Cohen and Charles Michaels for preparing original articles for this volume. Finally, we owe a very special debt to three scholars: Thomas Mahoney, Vance Mitchell, and Lawrence K. Williams to whom we dedicate this book. Professors Mahoney and Williams were instructors of one or more of us when we first began our graduate studies. Their scholarship and teaching skills were a major reason we continued to work in this area. Professor Mitchell is a long-time colleague whose intellect and enthusiasm for learning and teaching played a central role in shaping our work along the reality-centered course that is reflected in this and the related books we have published. Indeed we have been most fortunate to have had these people in our lives.Frost, Peter J. is the author of 'Hrm Reality Putting Competence in Context', published 2001 under ISBN 9780201433906 and ISBN 0201433907.