CERTIFICATE IN HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION TO HR MANAGEMENT

Norman Sike Institute

Mt Hagen

                                                                  

A macro-management view showing the cultural and historical development of societies in the world from dictatorship to modern democracy. 

Study of HR Management is more than just looking at companies. Business schools make that mistake. Our school must not do that.

Bruce Copeland BA BEdSt

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Study Schedule over 17 weeks

Week 1                      General world affairs

Week 2                      General world affairs

Week 3                      Evolution of management in the world

Week 4                      HR Management in German dictatorship

Week 5                      HR Management in Russian dictatorship

Week 6                     Test

Week 7                      Management in Napoleonic dictatorship

Week 8                      Dictator errors in management

Week 9                      Mid term test

Week 10                   Democracy & dictatorship in HR Management

Week 11                   Left and Right wing dictatorship

Week 12                   Constituents of National Power

Week 13                   HR Management in  Papua New Guinea

Week 14                   Status of Women

Week 15                   Test

Week 16                   Revision

Week 17                   Final Exam

Chapter 1: The evolution of management in the world

This course has been designed to be of interest to staff and students. In the Diploma in Human Resources Management, there is a broad basis of subjects to take the students through a wide range of issues.

The basic strategy of Human Resources Management can be quite dry with focus on HR activities, industrial relations, employment, promotions, training, manpower planning, recruitment, selection tests, probationary period, induction, welfare, equality of opportunity, retirement, retrenchment, performance appraisal and pay.

But there is an amazing path to modern HR Management that takes us back to the beginning of the human race. So that is what will be the focus of this Certificate subject. HR Management follows the path of democracy and human rights.

In the modern western world, HR Management relates to human rights. People are no longer fodder to be used and disposed of by management in government and business. They are voters in the parliamentary process.

Workers can complain to police and take management to Court for wrong doing. They can be awarded compensation for injury. Women can take legal action for sexual harassment by management and fellow workers.

In industrial England and Germany, the factory owners were often the upper class gentry while the workers were of peasant stock. The owners were in a class higher than their workers and could give punishment to workers and families for any problems at the workplace. They would be on the street with no home having been evicted.

In the 1800s, women and children worked in the factories and mines. If they were sick, they were sacked and removed. If they died by sickness and injury, their bodies were removed and piled in a heap to be taken away. 

If they fell into a machine, the bloodied parts of the machine would be cleaned with a bucket of water and the factory would continue operations.

In World War1, the soldiers were of the working class while their officers were of the upper class. During the battles in the trenches of Europe, soldiers on both sides were bombarded by heavy artillery day and night for months.

Some soldiers became brain damaged and “shell shocked”. Many ran away. If arrested, they were not taken to hospital but shot for cowardice. This is the lowest level of Human Resource Management. Working class soldiers were just rubbish to be piled up before enemy guns.

In one night in the ANZAC attack on the Turks, 5000 Australians were killed. That meant that officers and men of whole battalions were just wiped out by useless advances and cruel enemy fire. In old time war, human resources were to be killed under orders of uncaring and foolish generals.

But the slaughter of soldiers goes back further than that. There was no medical support for soldiers injured and dying on the battlefield until the Crimean War in the 1850s. That was when Florence Nightingale brought nurses into the battle area and tended wounded soldiers in a special hospital. Care for wounded soldiers is only 160 years old.

In the days of Imperial Rome, soldiers who failed to win in battle could be sentenced to decimation. That was punishment for cowardice. The battalion would be lined up on the top of a cliff. The officer would walk behind and push every tenth man off the cliff to his death.

There was anger in the office of General Douglas Macarthur who had great criticism of the Australian soldiers on the Kokoda Track. They were retreating before the advancing Japanese. He considered that since there were only less than 200 killed, they were not fighting hard enough and were cowards.

The deaths of workers and soldiers of England was all part of the fact that England was not a democracy. People had no rights but only a future to die in mines, factories and battlefields. There was no support for families who starved.

If the mother stole bread for her child, she could be arrested, found guilty and sent as a convict to the convict settlement in New South Wales. That was after spending months in a rotting ship used as a gaol in the Thames River of London.

Chapter 2. HR Management in German Dictatorship

The world has suffered from cruelty to citizens during the last century. During the 1930s, Germany faced Adolf Hitler as their Fuhrer. He was the ultimate cruel genocidal dictator in modern times, apart from Joseph Stalin of Russia.

The German people had suffered greatly from the defeat in World War One. They faced unemployment, massive tuberculosis from the war, hyper-inflation as money was printed with no value. Poverty was part of German life and the people were angry.

Control of the German economy was in the hands of the Jews. Since the 1400s Europe was being divided into nation states. The main trading nations were in northern Germany.

For successful trading, there was needed skilled and experienced businessmen. So the Jews were welcomed into European countries. Poland allowed thousands of Jews to become the business elite. The Jews financed the German industrial expansion in heavy iron industries. They also financed German involvement in World War 1.

But they could not finance the war forever and were accused of cutting off funding to the German Government. They were blamed for the German defeat and the Depression that followed in 1930-31.

Hitler told the German people that the nation could only advance if the Jews were removed. This was a massive error in Human Resources Management.

The business class was destroyed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Treblinka and others. The Polish Jews were in greatest number and died in the hundreds of thousands in the gas chambers. We recall the horror of the Warsaw ghetto. 

Hitler had set up a dictatorship. People had no rights except the responsibility to die for the fatherland. Human resources management did not exist. Millions of Germans died in the armed forces. Many died of cold in the retreat from the Russian winter.

With the allied bombing of Germany in the war, the economic and political infrastructure was destroyed. It took the German people 30 years to build up after the war which they did with the economic support of the United States.

Now the business world of Germany is able to follow Human Resource Management with a democratic infrastructure and human rights for the German people.

Chapter 3. HR Management in Russian Dictatorship

The end of the 1800s saw massive poverty in Russia made worse during World War 1 with the invasion of the German army. The peasants were in poverty and blamed the Russian Tsar Nicholas 2 for not caring about them.

But there was a secret movement in the country put in place by Lenin who had been exiled from Russia but brought back by the Germans in a secret train. There is a famous painting of Lenin addressing people as he got off the train.

He started the Russian Revolution in 1917 with his group of socialists. The Tsar was arrested with his family and kept imprisoned in a forest. There they were shot and their bodies buried.

Lenin became the leader and found that the country was in an economic mess. So he allowed a brief period of private enterprise before he died in 1924. His place was taken by several senior leaders including Stalin, Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev. Stalin had them all killed and took over.

Stalin was to lead the country from 1924 to 1953 when it was believed he was poisoned. He faced the German invasion and worked to build up heavy industry. Tractors were produced to work on farms and pull guns in the war.

In 1931, Russia was slowly coming out of the Depression with all the other countries of the world. Stalin decided to increase food production by lowering the price of wheat for bread. But the prosperous middle class farmers Kulaks did not accept the drop in wheat and went on strike.

During the 1930s, Stalin announced a pogrom against the Jews, This meant that they were no longer under the protection of the law. For a set time, the Russian citizens could attack, kill and rape Jews. They could burn their houses and take their livestock. 

This was an example of ethnic cleansing that was carried out in Germany in the 1930s and Bosnia in the last 20 years against Moslems. This was human repression not human resource management.

Stalin had 1 ½ million Kulaks killed on their farms. Not good HR management. But before they died and could see the army moving through their valley, they burned all their wheat fields and destroyed all their livestock.

Stalin was a dictator who killed any possibility of HR Management. As a dictator he supported dictators in farms and factories. They treated the workers with cruelty. People were more interested in surviving than building the productivity of the factory or farm.

The factories and farms were taken over by the Government. All planning came from orders from the Government not strategic planning by factory managers. There was no HR management which may well still be a problem in Russia. Factories have poor planning and poor skills of workers.

Chapter 4 HR Management in Napoleonic Dictatorship

After the French Revolution, a whole class of French nobles was killed by guillotine. There was a new lifestyle that was to come based on Liberte, Egalite and Fraternite –liberty, equality and brotherhood.

The people were in poverty. The nobles had rich palaces with rich food and the best of chefs who were now unemployed. They set up new eating houses called restaurants which spread through Europe. The restaurant tradition came from the French Revolution 400 years ago.

Out of the Revolution came Napoleon Bonaparte who overturned the aims of the revolution and set up a cruel dictatorship. HR Management was still dead. He planned to take over Europe and put his brothers in charge of each conquered country as Governors. They became national dictators.

His big mistake as followed by Hitler was to invade Russia which was damaging to the nation in soldiers who died in the Russian winter. The Russians retreated east, east, east waiting for the onset of winter.

The French had advanced a thousand kilometres with summer uniforms. When the winter hit, the Russians advanced. When will they ever learn?

Chapter 5. Dictator Errors in HR Management

We now understand that organizations work well when there is a spirit of democracy. People are focussed on making the organization work well with shared ideas and not much cheating and jealousy.

They are chosen for their ability in specific skills. They seek to pass the skills on to other workers. They want to try out new ideas to improve the product or service. Communication is up, down and sideways.

But with dictators that never happens. They are interested only in their own plans even if the plans do not work. People are afraid to tell them this. They fear the dictator will regard them as enemy and have them and/or family killed.

So they tell the dictator lies. Of course it will work, my Fuhrer. Heil Hitler. They hope they are somewhere else when the plan fails.

At briefings Hitler would shout at his generals. He would not listen to any view that his orders could not be obeyed. You are traitors. Corporal arrest that general.

Stalin shared another problem with Uganda leader Idi Amin and several Caesars. That was that he would be poisoned or killed. Every senior officer was afraid to be near him. How do you know I am here? Who gave you the phone number?

Idi Amin would leave his headquarters with a convoy of several cars with tinted windows. He was in one car perhaps. All cars would head in different directions for the day. No one would know where he slept. If they did and Amin found out, they were on a death list.

As it was Stalin died in 1953. There is a strong suspicion that he was about to purge the upper leadership by having them killed. But someone poisoned him. He doied with his Intelligence chief Beria.

HR Management is impossible when there is no communication between the leader and senior officers. No one wants to tell the leader bad news.

A major problem for Napoleon, Stalin and Hitler was that they wanted to take control of too many countries. It just got too big. Every empire has the seeds of its destruction already within it from the beginning.

The dictator has to push each country down to stop it from making too many demands. Raw materials are to be taken as much as possible. Imported goods are to keep the country in poverty. Independence movements are to be stopped and members arrested.

But every invaded country has citizens that are building strength. They will soon demand independence and have the capacity to force their will. Papua New Guinea had a peaceful transition to independence through Somare and Whitlam.

The Indians had a bloody transition to independence with British soldiers opening fire on demonstrators several times. 

We saw in the movie Gandhi the shooting of hundreds of Sikhs at the Amritsar temple by a company of British led Indian soldiers.  The worst that the British ever did in Papua and Solomon Islands was to exile national trouble makers to outer islands.

Chapter 6. Democracy and Dictatorship in HR Management

HR Management can only succeed in nations that have democracy and rights for every man, woman and child. Every person has the right to earn a living by honest means and supported by the Government as much as possible.

Every race in a country has the right to exist and where possible to live on traditional land. They have the right to grow gardens and produce crops for sale in the markets and consumption by family.

They have the right to be protected by police and the armed forces from the actions of terrorists and criminals. Children have the right to go to school and study until they find a living for themselves and families to come.

There should be effort by Governments to provide employment to reduce poverty through unemployment and underemployment. This is pure Human Resource Management on a national scale.

Effort has to be made to help citizens with informal marketing throughout the country. This can only be achieved through maintenance and repair of roads, bridges, airstrips and wharves. Police action is necessary against the activities of criminals.

Dictatorships destroy Human Resource Management. The decisions of the dictator are paramount. People have all responsibilities and no rights. They can be gaoled and executed for criticizing the leader. The leader has full rights and the responsibility only to himself.

Hitler came to power protecting the family but he soon showed that the family were the work horses to building the nation with the duty to die in the effort. The Jewish race had no rights whatever and suffered extermination in gas chambers by the hundreds of thousands. Their only crime was to be Jewish.

In dictatorships, the police are given full power to arrest and kill. People can be arrested in their homes in the middle of the night and never be seen again. This is happening in South American nations at the hands of the drug lords.  Police and private thugs are not bound down by the judiciary and the Courts.

In Moslem countries, terrorists are proclaiming that girls should be in the home and not being given an education. In Africa, the Moslem terrorists have been attacking schools and kidnapping girls. Human Resource Management is only possible when there is gender equality. This is being practised in the western nations.

Chapter 7 Left and Right Wing Dictatorship

There are two extremes in dictatorships. There are the left wing and right wing systems of government. Karl Marx explained the difference in his statement that those forces that control the means of production also control the relations of production.

In other words, the groups of people who own the factories also control the government.

In the 1800s in Germany and England, the mines and factories were controlled by private owners who were millionaires, lived in luxurious houses and had many servants. 

They often found themselves in parliament and controlled all forces of industry – prices of goods, importation of raw materials and even control of the colonies. They controlled the Courts and police. They were the leaders of an extreme right wing Government.

In Germany, there was control by the major factories. The factory owners agreed to make guns, tank, aircraft and bullets for the Government. The factory owners expected that the Government used the armaments to invade other countries, supply iron, coal and oil for the factories.

The aggressive policy of the Government and factory owners produced an extreme right wing government.

In the early 20^th century, the Government and monarchy of Russia was taken over by communists who set up a dictatorship of the proletariat. That was the Government of the workers. All farms, mines and factories belonged to the people. There was to be no private ownership.

All countries in the world now see that private ownership is important. Communist China is now a nation of private enterprise still with a communist political structure. In the 1960s, Mao Tse tung punished any person following the capitalist road. Now private enterprise is seen as the key to China’s growth.

A major problem in China is that capitalism has brought corruption. Factories produce contaminated food, pollution of rivers and soil and deep air pollution. This is alarming the people and Chinese Government. The life expectancy of Chinese people has dropped in the last 60 years.

There are hundreds of Chinese people executed every year for corruption in industry and government.

HR Management is difficult in China with the huge population approaching 2 billion. There is the problem of employment and underemployment. Many Chinese are moving overseas to set up businesses in developed and developing counties.

A major problem is the corruption in business through nepotism. This is  practice of employing wantoks in selection. People who are not necessarily qualified may be given employment over applicants who are highly qualified.

Chapter 9  Status of Women

Over the millennia, the status of women has remained largely unchanged with the modern approach lifting women to the status of men, in theory at least.

Women have always been seen as the home makers whose role is to bear children, look after the house and have sexual relations with her husband.

We read in the Old Testament of the woman in the home, looking after the sheep, goats, chickens and children. They erect tents in the desert sand.

Through the centuries in Christian Europe, the role of women remained unchanged until the 20^th century. In England, a woman did not receive a share of the inheritance of the father upon his death.

The inheritance went to the sons. The woman’s job was to marry and be looked after by another man. Should there be no sons and the woman received the inheritance, the estate and money would become the property of her husband upon marriage.

The role of women changed in the late 19^th century with the movement of women demanding political rights. It was generally believed that women should not vote as their brains made them too emotional, making them vote for the wrong person.

I voted for that man as he wears nice clothes. Women were not a stupid as that. The status of women rose before the First and Second World Wars when they went to work in the factories while the men fought in the battlefields of Europe and Asia. They assembled guns, artillery shells and ammunition.

The role of women was never the same. They were not having babies and knitting for their families but working to support the war effort. After World War One, the women refused to go back to their domestic role.

The activists or suffragettes demonstrated in the streets demanding the right to vote. One well known leader was Emily Pankhurst who led women and ended up being dragged into police wagons kicking their long black dresses and boots.

Women were given the right to vote. The race had now started for women’s rights. The women went back into the factories at the start of World War 2. Many went to the battle front as nurses and entertainers.

Already the way had been paved by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War in the 1850s when they became nurses caring for wounded and dying soldiers.

We recall the women nurses who went to the Asian theatre of war and were captured by the Japanese and placed in a prison of war. One group led by Sister Vivian Bullwinkle was called White Coolies. Many died in captivity.

The big change in the role of women came with the Labor Government of Gough Whitlam who moved to bring many changes to women’s rights. Up to that time, women were paid a salary less than men. That changed as late as the 1970s. Women had to resign if pregnant and about to give birth.

In the 1960s, the anti-Vietnam war protest led to the Women’s Liberation movement who took the fight into schools, universities and parliament. The University of Queensland defined Women’s Rights as a political ideology.

The next generation took the women’s fight further with involvement in the HIV/AIDS pandemic across the World. Women set up rights organizations in support of gay and lesbian rights.

They sought legalization of gay and lesbian sex across the world with several collateral aims such as adoption of children, gay and lesbian leaders in the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts and a gay and lesbian curriculum in schools.

There has been a failed effort to decriminalize gay and lesbian sex in the PNG parliament.

There has been a fierce opposition to the western gay and lesbian rights from the Moslem nations. Several nations in sub-Sahara Africa have legislated to make homosexuality a crime punishment by imprisonment.

We saw the legal action taken against the former leader of the Malaysian opposition Mr Anwar charged with sodomy. The gay and lesbian movement across the world has polarized the Christian opposition and homosexual political pressure.

In Australia over the last decade, the gay and lesbian movement have had a balance of power in the Australian parliament as members of the Greens movement.

There have been accusations on both sides. Gays and lesbians talk of stigma and discrimination. The opponents talk of infiltration of business and Government employment.

Gays and lesbians talk of rights of women and violence of men. Opponents accuse them of gross exaggeration and refer to violence of women. 

Gays and lesbians talk of rights of children. Opponents talk of paedophiles preying on children and destruction of family as a unit and of family values. They talk of the homosexuality in Scripture.

Chapter 10 - Role of Women in Papua New Guinea

But there has been a change beginning in the role of women in Papua New Guinea over the last decade. Women have long had a role primarily in support of the family.

But we have to understand that before coming of the white man, people lived in village areas afraid to venture into enemy territory for fear of being killed and the women taken. Women stayed in the village areas for their own safety and security of children.

Much has changed since colonial times. People now venture away from their areas with building of roads, road transport, air strips and wharves for coastal shipping.

People work in the urban areas beside others whose ancestors used to be their enemy. Tribal war still continues in this country though not on the same scale as before. Spears and shields have been replaced by automatic weapons.

In the past there was bride price. Big men who could afford more than one wife would do so, at times to forge friendship with neighbouring clans. It was generally accepted that a big man would care equally for his wives and children.

Today we see men who marry more than one wife and are unable to support the first wife and children. Both wives and children starve.

More than before, we find incidence of domestic violence between husbands and wives. We read in the media of women being killed by their husbands. There are occasionally incidents of wives injuring or killing their husbands.

The women’s prison in Bomana is full of women who have killed or injured other women whom they accuse of relationships with their husbands.

But there have been organizations set up in this country to support the empowerment of women. Women are a huge human resource that has to be managed effectively.

There is a bank now set up to help women in business and to train women to be empowered to help themselves. There is now legislation against violence towards women  in the home. A police unit has been set up to act in support of women.

The Lukautim Pikinini act of parliament was made to protect children. Children are also a massive human resource that has to be managed effectively. They have to go to school and be educated.

There has been deep controversy over the Outcomes Based Education and the need to develop the ability of children to read and write.

But the problems are still massive with universal basic education and the pressure to put children through school and on to university. There are not enough spaces and not enough jobs.

There are great differences between women in western nations including Papua New Guinea and women in Moslem nations. Islam follows the Koran that is based largely on the same Arab culture as in the Old Testament.

Women are still to be very much in the home. They cannot work outside the home without permission of the father or brothers. They may not study subjects at school without approval of men in the family.

In some Moslem countries, there is the regular incidence of honour killing of women by family men because they have been seen to shame the family. 

A woman in one country became a widow and married another man without permission of the family of her dead husband. She and her new family were slaughtered 29 years later.

Chapter 11. Constituents of National Power

All countries exist on a scale of national power. All the early developed imperial nations are still ahead on the scale. These would be Germany, Britain, and America. They have strength in primary, secondary and tertiary production.

These nations have obtained their raw material from the empires for over 300 years. In particular, the nations became industrial powers through access to iron and oil.

The nations have thrived over the centuries with industries to employ citizens as workers. They developed consumer economies which enabled citizens to go to university, buy houses and cars and enjoy pensions on retirement.

The bubble has begun to burst for the developed nations as they are being overtaken by the former developing nations – China, South Korea and Japan. The United States led the world in the automobile industry that is now being overtaken. Japanese car makers have set up in the USA.

The city of Detroit was once the leader of the US car making and has now been declared bankrupt with the major factories unable to pay pensions. The cake is now being shared by the former developing nations.

The constituents of power include land, labour, capital, resources, industry, technology, ideology, defence and alliances.

Japan had the capacity to be a world leader but has a basic weakness. That is the lack of domestic resources in oil. It was for this lack of oil that Japan entered World War 2 when the US and Britain made a blockade of oil from the Middle East to Japan.

In recent decades, there was discussion in business and government circles of the difference between donor oriented and recipient oriented aid. Many developed countries gave aid to suit their own needs not the needs of the recipient nation.

Roads may have helped villagers go to market. But the same roads enable timber to be carried to the wharf by foreign loggers.

The world is suffering from the ghost of recession. China is dropping in all production. This will have an impact of LNG sales from PNG and iron sales from Australia.

Chapter 12. HR Management in Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea is a developing nation that is level 2 on the scale of 1 to 6 in world nations. It means that this nation is one from the bottom in industrial development. East Timor would be level 1.

Japan and China would be level 6 with full production and employment. But that is now in decline. This will affect exports from Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea relies on sale of primary production in the form of oil, nickel and LNG. These employ a workforce of technical workers which is good and helps employment.

But there are limited foreign investments in secondary production. Cars are not manufactured with hundreds of second hand vehicles imported from Japan.

There is high unemployment in Papua New Guinea with deep problems in education and training. In 2015, less than 10 % of grade 12 students found a place at university. There are limited employment opportunities in the country.

HR Management is made impossible in this country with corruption. Massive amounts of capital are stolen by corrupt workers. A distressing situation arises with the teachers unable to receive leave fares because the money is said to have been diverted by corrupt provincial officers.

Corruption exists in the Government and business but cannot be stopped. Bank officers are diverting money to their own accounts. This country will never advance until theft of public monies is stopped.

REVIEW

Describe the status of ordinary people a thousand years ago?

Describe the rights of Kings of Europe a thousand years ago.

Explain the rights of women and children at that time.

Describe the conditions for soldiers in battle up to 200 years ago.

How do you feel about General Macarthur and criticisms of Australian

soldiers on the Kokoda Track in 1942?

How were poor people treated in Courts of England of 1700s and 1800s.

How had the people of Germany suffered in World War 1?

Why were the Jews blamed for German defeat.?

What punishment was given to the German race?

Explain the cruelty of Josef Stalin.

Why did he kill the Kulak farmers?

Why did the French Revolution happen?

Explain the errors dictators make.

What is dictatorship?

What is democracy?

Why is the death of empire present from the very beginning?

What is right wing government?

What is left wing government?

Explain the status of women from early days.

How did the status of women change with the world wars.

Describe the women’s movement in the modern era.

Describe the traditional status of women in Papua New Guinea.

What changes are being made to the rights of PNG women?

Should women be in the home and not in employment?

Explain the status of many Moslem women.

Explain the Constituents of Power.

What are the economic problems of Papua New Guinea?

What are the economic weaknesses of Japan?

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