Managing human resources effectively has become vital to organizations of the twenty-first century. The heightened levels of global competitiveness has alerted all firms to the fact that all their resources must be utilized better than ever before. Human resource management has received much attention recently because of the recognition that much more could be gained from a better handling of the field. Consequently academics have begun to devote more attention to the topic.

Academics and human resource management professionals together have identified several human resource activities that are critical for organizational survival. Survival is enhanced because of the ability of effective human resource management to attract, retain, motivate and retrain employees. These goals have become particularly important in the 1990s because of the rapidly changing environmental forces such as global competition. For human resources to be effective, however, requires that not only do the several human resource activities need to be performed effectively, but also that the human resource departments in organizations need to play several roles and that those in these departments need to have a broader and deeper range of competencies than previously required.

Randall S. Schuler