Books by Murray R Barrick

Human Resource Management (HRM) is a set of decisions systems that organizations can design and implementto increase the performance and productivity of their workforce. The major activities in HRM arerecruitment, selection, training, measuring performance, and compensating workers for their performance.The first two of these, recruitment and selection, focus on bringing high-ability individuals into the organizationand placing them in the appropriate jobs. Everyone agrees that having high-ability employees isessential to a successful organization. Recruitment activities inform appropriately skilled applicants externalto the organization about available positions within the organization. Successful recruitment presents informationabout the organization and the job to people in such a way that they become interested in possibleemployment. Recruitment should result in applications from people who have the appropriate abilities forthe available job. Selection is the set of activities that gathers systematic information from the applicantsand identifies those with the highest ability levels in order to offer employment. Training encompasses theactivities that both the new employees and existing employees complete in order to further develop the mostimportant abilities for the job. In the present global, competitive economy, excellent and frequent training isnecessary to make sure that employees can continue high performance. Measuring performance and compensating workers are the two fundamental principles for motivating employees. Measuring performanceclearly specifies to workers the main outcomes of their work. It also makes goal setting possible, whichresearch has found to be highly motivating in itself. Compensation should be designed so that employeesare rewarded at levels reflective of their performance. Think of this as the application of the psychologicalprinciple of reward/reinforcement.