360˚ Appraisal
 Feedback regarding performance from all aspects of the job. 

Appraisal
A process that provides analysis of a person’s overall capabilities and potential, allowing informed decisions to be made for particular purposes. 

Assessment
An important part of the appraisal process whereby data on an individual’s past and current work behaviour and performance are collected and reviewed. 

Assessment centre
The combination of assessment techniques at a single event to make judgements about people for selection and promotion and/or to provide feedback to employees on areas for development. 

Attraction
Favourable interaction between potential applicants and the images, values and information about an organization. 

Autonomy
The extent to which a job allows employees freedom and discretion to schedule their work and decide the procedures used to complete it. 

Bargaining scope
The range of issues covered by the subject matter of collective agreements.

Behaviour-anchored rating scale (BARS)
A performance appraisal technique with performance levels anchored by job-related behaviours. 

Best Value
Provides a framework or benchmark for performance management in local government service provision in the UK. 

Briefing Groups 
Groups called together on a regular and consistent basis so that organization decisions and the reasons for them may be communicated. Group members may in turn meet with another briefing group so that information is systematically communicated down the management line. 

Bureaucracy
An organizational structure marked by rules and procedures, hierarchy of authority and division of labour. 

Business process re-engineering (BPR)
A radical change of business processes by applying IT to integrate tasks. 

Career management
Activities and processes to match individual needs and aspirations with organization needs, set within an integrative framework. 

‘Careless worker’ model
Assumption that most accidents at work are due to an employee’s failure to take safety seriously (or to protect him/herself). 

Coaching
A management activity to enhance the development of employees, with a particular emphasis on the transfer of learning from formal training courses into workplace activity. 

Collective agreement
The outcome of collective bargaining, it is an agreement between employers and trade unions respecting terms and conditions of employment. Unlike Canada and the USA, in the UK the agreement is not legally enforceable. 

Collective bargaining
An institutional system of negotiation in which the making, interpretation and administration of rules, and the application of the statutory controls affecting the employment relationship, are decided within union– management negotiating committees. 

Communication
The process by which information is exchanged between a sender and a receiver. 

Competences
The outcomes of work performance in an occupational area with specified performance criteria. 

Competencies
Underlying characteristics of a person which result in competent or effective performance taking into consideration the nature of the tasks and the organization context. 

Computerized personnel information system (CPIS)
The use of software to record manpower data and calculate measures such as turnover, absenteeism and staff profiles. 

Cooperatives 
The joint ownership and management of an organization between its customers and/or employees. 

Core workforce 
Workers with organization-specific skills and high discretionary elements in their work. 

Corporate manslaughter 
Employers will be prosecuted for this in the event of a death resulting from the failure to provide a safe working environment. 

Culture 
The set of values, understandings and ways of thinking that is shared by the majority of members of a work organization, and that is taught to new employees as correct. 

Delayering 
Restructuring an organization by reducing the number of grades and levels of work. 

Deskilling 
An initiative taken by management to redesign jobs that leads to a reduction in needed job skills due to job simplification and new technology. 

Development 
The process of improvement or enhancement – of an organization or individuals – through learning and maturation. 

Development centres 
The use of assessment techniques to provide feedback for development. 

Developmental approach 
(to appraisal) An attempt to harness the potential of employees through the discussion of the development needs of employees. 

Developmental humanistic 
A view of people which focuses on their potential for learning. 

Diagnostic approach 
(to manpower planning) The use of manpower data to understand manpower problems so that appropriate action can be taken. 

Distributive bargaining 
A system of activities instrumental to the attainment of one party’s goals when they are in basic conflict with those of the other party, for example pay bargaining. 

Downsizing 
The laying-off of employees to restructure the business. 

e-Assessment 
On-line testing used for selection and other HR purposes. 

e-Learning 
Learning through the medium of technology such as e-mail, the Internet and computer software packages. 

Emergent learning 
Learning derived by interaction with evolving situations such as dealing with customers, and used in the formation and formulation of strategy. 

Employability 
Ensuring that, through workplace learn­ing, employees’ skills are transferable, making them employable – and thus less dependent – from one organization to another. 

Employee involvement (EI) 
Processes providing employees with the opportunity to influence decision-making on matters which affect them. 

Employee participation 
Involves workers exerting a countervailing and upward pressure on management control. This does not, however, imply unity between managers and non-managers. 

Employment relationship 
This describes the dynamic, interlocking economic, legal, social and psychological relations that exist between individuals and their work organizations. 

Empowering 
Limited power sharing: the delegation of power or authority to subordinates. 

Epistemology 
The study of knowledge and the justification of belief. Questions such as ‘Which beliefs are justified and which are not?’, ‘What, if anything, can we know?’ and ‘Do researchers reflect reality or create it?’ are at the centre of epistemology. 

Ethics 
The code of moral principles and values that governs the behaviour of an individual or group with respect to what is right or wrong. 

Expectancy theory 
A process theory of motivation, stating that employees will direct their work effort towards behaviours that they believe will lead to desired outcomes. 

Experience-based interview 
The use of questions in selection interviews that examine past performance in real situations.

Experimental research 
This is used to provide evidence regarding cause-and-effect relationships within the workplace with as much control as possible. 

Face validity 
How selection and assessment techniques appear to those subjected to them. 

Fordism 
The application of Taylorist principles of job design to work performed on specialized machines, usually based on flow-line production assembly work. First applied by Henry Ford. 

Foucauldian analysis 
Refers to the application of Michel Foucault’s concepts of taxinomia, mathesis, examination and confession to HRM. The hypothesis is that HRM practices play a key role in constituting the self, in defining the nature of work, and in organizing and controlling employees. 

Globalization 
Describes the integration of the world’s economies and cultures that has occurred as a result of the global communications revolution, and through the increasing undertaking in an international market of the manufacturing of commodities and processing of information. 

Goal setting 
The process of setting targets and objectives to improve performance (individual, team, department, organization). 

Group technology 
The grouping of machines and workers to form a logical ‘whole task’ which can be performed with minimum interference. 

Groupthink 
The tendency of members of a highly cohesive group to adhere to shared views so strongly that they totally ignore external information inconsistent with these views. 

HRM auditing 
A process of evaluating the effectiveness of the HR function. 

HRM benchmarking 
A form of auditing which enables organizations to gauge their own practices against those in ‘excellent’ organizations, to learn from other organizations about effective HR strategies, and to identify what actions need to be taken in order to improve, relative to those organizations. 

Human capital theory 
The view that people are worth investing in as a form of capital: that people’s performance and the results achieved can be considered as a return on investment and assessed in terms of cost and benefits. 

Human relations movement 
A movement which grew out of the Hawthorne experiments conducted by Elton Mayo in the 1920s, which emphasizes the psychological and social aspects of job design. 

Human resource development (HRD) 
A term used to indicate training and development as an organization’s investment in the learning of its people as part of an HRM approach. 

Human resource management (HRM) 
That part of the management process that specializes in the management of people in work organizations. 

Human resource planning (HRP) 
An HRM approach to planning, set in the context of organizations’ views of people as the source of competitive advantage. 

Human resource strategy 
The patterns of decisions regarding human resource policies and practices used by management to design work and select, train and develop, appraise, motivate and control workers. 

Image projection 
A loose model of the values, personality and attitudes of potential employees directed at appropriate labour markets. 

Industrial relations 
The processes of regulation and control over the collective aspects of the employment relationship. 

Internal equity 
Refers to the pay relationships between jobs within a single organization. It is translated into practice using reward techniques, and focuses on comparing jobs and individuals in terms of their relative contributions to the organization’s objectives. 

Japanization 
A term used to encapsulate the adoption of Japanese-style management techniques such as team or cellular production, just-in-time and total quality control systems in Western organizations. 

Job analysis 
The systematic process of collecting and evaluating information about the tasks, responsibilities and context of a specific job. 

Job characteristic model 
A job design model developed by Hackman and Oldham (1980) suggesting that five core job characteristics – skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback – result in positive work experience. 

Job description 
Descriptions of tasks and responsibilities that make up a job, usually derived from job analysis. 

Job design 
The process of combining tasks and responsibilities to form complete jobs, and the relationships of jobs in the organization. 

Job enlargement 
The horizontal expansion of tasks in a job. 

Job enrichment 
Processes that assign greater responsibility for scheduling, coordinating and planning work to the employees who actually produce the product. 

Job evaluation 
A systematic process designed to determine the relative worth of jobs within a single work organization. 

Job rotation 
The periodic shifting of a worker from one task to another to reduce monotony and/or increase skill variety. 

Joint consultation 
The involvement of employee representatives in discussion and consideration of matters which affect employees. 

Knowledge-based organization 
An organization that values the collection, dissemination and utilization of new knowledge, with a view to innovation and the development of what is known. 

Knowledge management 
Management of information and knowledge to enhance organization activities. 

Labour market segmentation 
A method of classifying the ways in which organizations seek to employ different kinds of worker. 

Labour process 
The process by which a product is created from raw materials through the application of human labour. 

Leadership 
A process whereby an individual exerts influence upon others in an organizational context. 

Learning 
The process of attaining new knowledge, expertise or skills resulting from the processing and ongoing reinforcement of information and experience. 

Learning climate 
Physical and psycho-social variables in an organization which affect the efficiency of employees in realizing learning potential. 

Learning cycle 
A view of adult learning that emphasizes learning as a continuous process. It is usually associated with the work of Kolb (1984). 

Learning movement 
Encompasses the recommendations, ideas and exhortations relating to HRD and learning at work, plus the structures to support these. 

Learning organization 
A concept representing an ideal of whole organization learning by all employees, and the use of learning to transform the organization. 

Learning style 
The way in which individuals prefer different aspects and ways of learning to others. 

Learning transfer 
Learning from HRD activities transferred to workplace behaviour and performance. 

Line manager responsibility 
The acceptance by line managers of responsibility for the development of subordinates. 

Low-cost leadership 
A business strategy that attempts to increase market share by emphasizing low cost compared to competitors. 

Low-quality product – low-skill equilibrium 
Finegold and Soskice’s (1988) explanation of the UK’s failure to educate and train its workforce to the same levels as its competitors. 

Managerial prerogative 
A belief that management should have unilateral control within an organization.

Managerialist perspective 
An ideology concerned primarily with the maximization of employee commitment and motivation through the adoption of appropriate HRM practices.

Manpower planning 
Processes, techniques and activities to ensure the necessary supply of people is forthcoming to allow organization targets to be met.

Manpower planning techniques and modelling 
Application of statistical techniques to models of manpower stocks and flow, allowing calculation of manpower decisions.

McDonaldization (also known as ‘McWork’) 
Symbolizes the new realities of corporate-driven globalization which engulf young people in the 21st century, including simple work patterns, electronic controls, low pay, part-time and temporary employment.

Mentor 
A more senior or experienced member of staff who provides one-to-one, career-related guidance and encouragement to a less experienced colleague, with a focus on longer term learning and development.

Multisource feedback (MSF) 
Feedback from a variety of sources for appraisal and development.

Networking 
The process of establishing professional relations with individuals and groups both within and outside the workplace.

New unionism 
Is internally focused and places a renewed emphasis on the recruitment and organization of new union members. It also refers to a trade union organizing strategy.

Normative model 
A theoretical model that describes how managers should make choices and decisions and provides guidelines for reaching an ideal outcome for the organization.

Organizational communication 
The systematic provision of information to employees concerning all aspects of their employment and the wider issues relating to the organization in which they work.

Organizational learning 
An explanation of learning at an organizational level. Emphasis is placed on the ‘potential’ that individuals and work groups have to learn, and the means – through job redesign, empowerment and changing leadership style – they have to achieve these goals.

Organizational politics 
Those activities that are not required as part of a manager’s formal role, but that influence the distribution of resources for the purpose of promoting personal objectives.

Panopticon 
The panopticon is a 12-sided polygon with a central observatory tower through which prison guards can observe the behaviour of inmates. For Michel Foucault, the panopticon provides the architectural image of society’s disciplinary power. Over time, constant observation induces in the inmate a state of consciousness and reduces the need for discipline so that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even when it is discontinued.

Paradigm 
A framework of thinking based on fundamental assumptions providing explicit and implicit views about the nature of reality.

Pay equity 
Pay relationships among jobs both within an organization (internal equity) and between comparative or competing organizations (external competitiveness).

Pay model 
A heuristic (learning device) designed to facilitate our understanding of the complex links between an organization’s business strategy, reward objectives, the different reward options and techniques and the effect of markets on reward management.

Pendulum arbitration 
Form of arbitration that prohibits the arbitrator from recommending a compromise solution. The arbitrator must find in favour of either the employer or the income.

Performance and development plan 
The linking of a business aim with an individual’s key areas of responsibility, the competencies that are expected to be demonstrated in performing a role and measurable objectives.

Performance appraisal 
Analysis of an employee’s capabilities and potential drawn from assessment data of past and current work, behaviour and performance, allowing decisions to be made in relation to purpose – for example HRD needs.

Performance contracts 
Details of what a jobholder agrees to accomplish over time.

Performance control approach (to appraisal) 
Means by which employee performance can be measured, monitored and controlled.

Performance rating 
Judgements of performance in terms of personality attributes, results and work outcomes or behaviour within performance.

Peripheral workforce 
Workers outside the core workforce (for example temporary or casual workers).

Personnel management 
A function of management which coordinates the human resource needs of an organization, including the designation of work, employee selection, training and development, rewards, performance assessment and union–management relations.

Personnel specification 
Profile of the requirements of a person to fill a job used as a framework to assess applicants. Requirements may be expressed as ‘essential’ and ‘desirable’.

Pluralist perspective 
A view of workplace relations which assumes that management and employees have different goals but seek a reconciliation of such differences.

Point method 
A quantitative method of job evaluation, and the most common technique used for this purpose. The point method develops separate scales for each compensable factor in order to develop a hierarchy of jobs, using points to determine each job’s relative value, and hence its location in the pay scale.

Post-Fordism 
Describes the development from mass production assembly lines to more flexible manufacturing processes.

Post-industrial society/organization 
The thesis that posits that the modern Western industrial society is moving into a ‘post-industrial’ era, where traditional manual work will disappear and large bureaucratic work organizations will be replaced by smaller organizations, ‘adhocracies’, charactized by high levels of flexibility and participation in decision-making. 

Post-modernism 
This refers to the flexible, anti-hierarchical organizational structures which have come to replace the ‘modern’ rigid, hierarchical organizational structures of the past.

Power 
A term denoting the ability to influence others’ behaviour.

Profit-sharing 
A scheme through which employees are given a share of company profits.

Psychological contract 
A metaphor that captures a variety of largely unwritten expectations and understandings of the two parties – employees and their organization – about their mutual obligations.

Psychometric tests 
Techniques to measure a sample of a person’s behaviour.

Qualitative research 
Refers to the gathering and sorting of information through a variety of techniques, including interviews, focus groups, observations and the use of archival data in organizational files, records or reports.

Quality circle 
A small group of employees who hold regular meetings to ensure that quality within the workplace is maintained and improved.

Realistic job previews 
An opportunity for applicants to obtain a realistic picture of a job through job sampling, video, shadowing and case studies.

Recruitment 
Processes to attract applicants within appropriate labour markets for vacant positions within an organization.

Re-engineering 
A cross-functional initiative by senior management involving fundamental redesign of business processes to bring about changes in organizational structure, culture, information technology, job design and the management of people.

Reliability 
A statistical measure of the extent to which a selection or assessment technique achieves consistency in what it is measuring over repeated use.

Research design 
A plan which is created by the HR researcher or professional in order to make choices about how to handle the most important HR variables and how to study them. HRM research designs usually take the form of survey research, case studies, experimental research or meta-analysis.

Return on investment (ROI) 
The calculation of the cost of a HR intervention, such as training or an employee participation arrangement, and its determined benefit in monetary terms.

Reward 
All forms of financial returns and tangible services and benefits employees receive as part of the employment relationship.

Safety policy 
A set of guidelines and procedures which maintain health and safety in the workplace.

Scientific management 
A process of determining the division of work into its smallest possible skill elements, and how the process of completing each task can be standardized to achieve maximum efficiency. Also referred to as Taylorism.

Selection 
Processes to establish the most suitable applicants for vacant positions within an organization from a number of applicants.

Selection interviews 
The oldest and most widely used method of employee selection.

Self-appraisal 
A review of one’s own performance.

Self-managed team (SMT) 
A group of employees with different skills who rotate jobs and assume managerial responsibilities as they produce an entire product or service.

Shared responsibility model 
A view that the best way to reduce levels of occupational accidents and disease and improve health and safety at work lies with cooperation between employers and employees.

Social Charter 
European legislation created in 1989 to protect and improve workers’ health and safety, communications, employee involvement and employment equity across Europe.

Sophisticated modernism 
A style of industrial relations management that encourages union membership, membership participation in trade unions, workplace union organization, and joint union–management involvement in areas of common interest in order to gain acceptance for change, to maximize cooperation, and to minimize conflict.

Sophisticated paternalism 
A style of industrial relations management that does not take for granted that employees accept the organization’s goal (unitary perspective) and therefore management devote considerable resources in ensuring that their employees have the ‘right’ attitude and approach.

Standard modernism 
A style of industrial relations management that is pragmatic or opportunist. Trade unions and workplace union organization are recognized but union–management relations tend to be viewed primarily as a ‘reactive’ activity; it is assumed to be non-problematic until events prove otherwise.

Strategic HRD 
The process of responding to and influencing organization strategy through learning and development.

Strategic HRM 
The process of linking the human resource function with the strategic objectives of the organization in order to improve performance.

Strategic management 
Denotes a specific pattern of decisions and actions undertaken by the upper echelon of an organization in order to accomplish specific outcomes and/or performance goals.

Synergy 
The concept that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The condition that exists when a group interacts and learns and produces a group outcome that is greater than the sum of the individuals acting alone.

Systematic training model 
An approach to training encouraged by industrial training boards in the 1960s, based on a four-stage process of identifying training needs and specifying objectives, designing a programme, implementing training and evaluation.

Tacit knowledge 
Knowledge that is gained through doing rather than learned through being taught.

Taylorism 
A management control strategy named after F. G. W. Taylor. A systematic theory of management, its defining characteristic has been the identification and measurement of work tasks so that the completion of tasks can be standardized to achieve maximum efficiency (see also scientific management).

Teleworking 
Working at a distance from an employer’s premises but maintaining contact via telecommunications.

Time and motion study 
The systematic observation, measurement and timing of movements in the completion of tasks to identify more efficient work behaviour.

Training champions 
Senior managers who contribute to an organization’s philosophy of support for training and development.

Transferable skills 
Skills that can be transferred from one position to another.

Transformation process 
Behaviour by which an employee converts attributes, skills, knowledge and attitudes into work outcomes and results.

Transformational leadership 
The ability of leaders to motivate followers to believe in the vision of organizational transformation or re-engineering.

Union density 
A measurement of current union membership expressed as a percentage of potential union membership.

Union recognition strategy 
A management strategy to accept the legitimacy of a trade union role and of collective bargaining as a process for regulating the employment relationship. This contrasts with union exclusion, a strategy to curtail the role of trade unions, and union opposition, a strategy to maintain a non-union company.

Unitarist perspective 
A view of workplace relations which assumes that management and employees share common goals.

Upward appraisal 
A form of appraisal that includes feedback to subordinates.

Validity 
A statistical measure of the extent to which a selection or assessment technique actually measures what it sets out to measure. Criterion validity measures the results of a technique against criteria such as present success of existing employees (concurrent validity) and future performance of recruits (predictive validity).

Welfare management 
The acceptance by employers of responsibility for the general welfare of their employees.

Whistle-blowing 
Employee disclosure of illegal, immoral, or illegitimate practices on the part of the organization.

Work 
Physical and mental activity that is carried out at a particular place and time, according to instructions, in return for money.

Work–life balance 
The need to balance work and leisure/family activities.

Working arrangements 
Activities associated with the work–effort exchange: allocation of work, work teams, functional flexibility.

Workplace learning 
A metaphor for capturing formal, self-directed, collective and informal learning activities in the organization.

Works council 
A council set up within the workplace in order to maintain peaceful and cooperative employment relations. It will normally consist of management, employees and union representatives, and establishes two-way communication between employees and management, and unions and management.