Research Korner: HR Issues

Project 2 Human resource enviroment

What human resource issues should managers in the automobile industry be prepared for in the future?   Resistance of human resources due to their gradual displacement in automobile manufacturing businesses comprises the encompassing issue in the industry in the future. Human resource displacement results from two economic trends. One is increasing outsourcing 1998;  2003) of manufacturing activities to developing countries offering more competitive labor prices and plan establishment costs. The other is technological innovations in manufacturing processes (2001) such as the development of highly intelligent computer systems to operate plan equipment minimizing the number of needed human labor and shifting labor demand to highly skilled workers for highly technical work. These developments in the industry are likely to heighten resistance of employees and workers to displacement in the industry particularly due to the lifetime employment agreements with manufacturing companies.     How might the employee skills, management practices, and automobile manufacturing companies change in the future?               Employee skill requirements for the industry would likely shift to high level of knowledge and skills in information technology and allied applications specifically developed for the automobile industry. This means that demand for manual labor would decrease while demand for technically knowledgeable and skilled people would increase in the mother company in the US. Demand for manual labor will shift to competitive labor markets in developing countries. This change in labor demand means that management practices would also shift towards addressing the resistance from current human resources faced with the possibility of displacement. In the future, automobile manufacturing companies would be highly fragmented, geographically, in their operations but highly efficient by taking advantage of competitive labor markets and technological innovations.   How would you expect the managerial trends to affect human resources practices and policies in future automobile manufacturing?               Due to the necessary shift in human resource management towards resistance to displacement responsive practices, human resource practices and policies in the future in the automobile industry would likely result to two general changes. One is the shift from unionized collective bargaining to individual labor contracting. The lesser number of employees and workers and the shift from manual to technologically skilled labor justify the shift to individual labor contracting. For new employees, the employer-employee relations is governed by employment contracts. The other is negotiation of the lifetime employment agreement between the company and employees through the offering acceptable incentives to employees who might be displaced in the future.

Project 2 Human resource enviroment

What human resource issues should managers in the automobile industry be prepared for in the future? Resistance of human resources...