Chapter 11: A Balanced Approach to Wellbeing at Work

Since modern Human Resource Management (HRM) emerged as a field of study and practice in the 1980s, multiple transitions have been observed in the theories related to the management of people at work. In the earlier years, a major focus was on the enhancement of organisational performance through HRM practices (Boselie et al., 2000; Guest,1997; Hoque, 1999; Wood, 1999); however, a gradual shift was observed in the HRM trends when a significant criticism surfaced on how HRM practices tend to oversimplify the concept of human motivation and treat employees as machines being driven solely by economic incentives. Critics were concerned that HRM is only a rhetoric to disguise labour intensification (Keenoy et al., 1992). As a result, transitions were made to balance both organisational and employees' needs (Peccei et al., 2013; Williams et al., 1993). However, we argue that such balance has not yet been fully achieved; and within liberal-democratic forms of capitalism, may never be achievable.