How to Prepare for the UGC NET Examination

Human Resource Management

A formal definition of personnel management is that it is a function performed in organizations that facilitates the most effective use of employees to achieve organizational and individual goals.

According to O. Tead and H.C. Metcaffe personnel management is “the direction and co-operation of human relations of any organization with a view to getting the maximum necessary production with a minimum of effort and friction and with a proper regard for the genuine well being of workers.”

b) Aims of Personnel Management: The aim of personnel management is to develop capabilities of individual persons towards understanding appreciation and solution of problem. Each staff member should get a feeling that his works form a vital part of the working of the organization. In simple, the aims of personnel management are:

i) Optimum output;

ii) Development of workers capabilities by enabling the workers to derive maximum satisfaction from their work;

iii) Development of team spirit;

iv) Continuous vigilance.

c) Importance of Personnel Management: The rationale behind recognizing the role of human resources management is that:

i) Human resources who are employed in the organization are human being with some aspiration and ambition in life.

ii) Though humans are utilized as means to an end in the production process they are ultimate sharer of profit.

iii) The personnel being a part of the community are also the consumers as well.

iv) The manpower of any organization is responsible to perform the duties and all operational work and is the one who ran an organization.

v) Human resources are the best resources of any organization in comparison to all other physical resources. It is they who convert material into suitable commodities.

vi) If the energies of the personnel can be channelised in right direction, they can overcome the constrains and limitations of other physical resources.

Payroll & HRMS Software

) Function of Personnel Management: Personnel management is a staff function. It is advisory in nature. It recommends, cooperates and counsels. The main functions of personnel management may be grouped under the following broad heading-

i) Manpower planning.

ii) Job analysis

iii) Job description

iv) Staffing

v) Recruitment, selection and test

vi) Induction, orientation and placement

vii) Training and development (continuous education)

viii) Motivation of personnel

ix) Leadership

x) Wage and salary administration

xi) Employer – Employee relationship (supervise, control)

xii) Performance evaluation.

Henry Mintzberg in his “the nature of managerial work” (1973) described the following roles to be played by the top man in management.

i) Figurehead

ii) Leader

iii) Liaison

iv) Monitor

v) Disseminator

vi) Spokesman

vii) Entrepreneurs

viii) Disturbance handler

ix) Resource allocator

x) Negotiator

e) Problems in Personnel Management: The problems associated with personnel management are-

i) Increasing government regulation regarding employment practices: The reservation for schedule caste and tribes, backward classes, government regulation on recruitment, resignation, dismissal, retirement, etc. creates problem in personnel management.

ii) Pressure and bargaining with union: The pressure from union or bargaining with union for working condition and benefit creates another problem.

iii) Insufficient budget: Decreasing or stable budget can disturb staffing pattern. It might lead to vacancies being allowed to remain vacant.

Hypotheses

The concept of hypothesis has been defined by various scientists in their own ways. Hypo means “less than” and thesis means “a generally held view”. Etymologically speaking thus the word hypothesis connotes “a less than generally held view”. It is an assumption or supposition whose validity is to be tested.

            According to Rumel and Belline “a hypothesis is a statement capable of being tested and thereby verified or rejected”.

            According to Goode and Hatt “hypothesis is a shrewd guess that is formulated and provisionally adopted to explain observed facts, or conditions and to guide in further investigation”. They further add that “it is a proposition which can be put to test to determine its validity. It may prove to be correct or incorrect”.

In the words of George Lundberg, “a hypothesis is a tentative generalization, the validity of which remains to be tested. In its most elementary stage the hypothesis may be any hunch, guess, imaginative idea, which becomes the basis for action or investigation”.

Barr and Scates define hypothesis as “a hypothesis is a statement temporarily accepted as true… when the hypothesis is fully established, it may take the form of facts, principles or theories”.

According to Webster, “a hypothesis is a proposition, condition or principle which is assumed, perhaps without belief in order to draw out its logical consequences and by this method to test its accord with facts which are known or may be determined”.

Kerlinger states “a hypothesis is a conjectural statement of relation between two or more variables. Hypothesis are always in declarative sentence form and they relate whether generally or specifically variables to variables”.

James E. Creighlon defines hypothesis as “a tentative supposition or provisional guess which seems to explain the situation under observation”.

In the opinion of J. S. Mill “a hypothesis is only an unproved supposition, a weak form of proposition”.

Hypothesis simply means a mere assumption or some supposition to be proved or disproved. It is a preposition or a set of proposition set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide some investigation or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts. Quite often a research hypothesis is a predictive statement capable of being tested by scientific methods that relates an independent variable to some dependent variable. It is a statement in a research, which the study might prove or disprove.

* Crude Hypothesis: A crude hypothesis is at the low level of abstraction. It indicates the kind of data to be collected and it does not lead to higher theoretical research.

 Refined Hypothesis: Refined hypothesis are of three types- simple level, complex ideal and very complex. Simple Level indicates merely the uniformity in social behavior. It does not involve much verification.Complex Ideal Hypothesis is at higher level of abstraction. This hypothesis examines the logically derived relations between the empirical uniformities. This type of hypothesis is useful in developing tools of analysis. It provides constructs for further hypothesizing. The Very Complex Hypothesis is concerned with the interrelations of multiple variables.

ii) P. V. Young Classification: Young refers to mainly two types of hypothesis-Working Hypothesis and Explanatory Hypothesis. Working Hypothesis is a provisional central idea which becomes the basis for fruitful investigation. The Explanatory Hypothesis refers to the scope of going into the depth and width with various possibilities so far invisible.
iii) Statistical Analysis: In the context of statistical analysis, a hypothesis may be any one of the following types-

* Null Hypothesis: Null means Zero. The null hypothesis is a statistical proposition which states, essentially that, there is no relation between the variable (of the problem). When a hypothesis is stated negatively, then it is called as a null hypothesis. A null hypothesis is used to collect additional support for the known hypothesis. The null hypothesis says, “You are wrong, there is no relation, disprove me if you can”. The objective of the null hypothesis is to avoid personal bias of the investigator in the matter of data collection.

* Alternative Hypothesis: That which is concluded rejecting the null hypothesis is known as alternative hypothesis. Alternative hypothesis is formulated embracing a whole range of values rather than a single point.

For example:

HA = the males visited cinema more than the female.

H0= the males and females do not different in respect of the frequency of seeing cinema.

5. 
   Conclusion: A hypothesis looks forward. It is a proposition which can be put to an empirical test to determine its validity. Every worthwhile theory permits the formulation of additional hypothesis. These, when tested, are either proved or disproved and thus in their own constitute further tests of the original theory.