Human resources and organisational excellence

Abstract

In recent years, many concepts for change but also for organisational excellence have put greater emphasis on employees (again). This referred on the one hand to the need for an increased participation in the process for change and, on the other, to a more intensive discussion on which method of work organisation might be the most productive. Focusing on single aspects, such as process design and evaluating these concepts solely by short-term cost factors, resulted in many cases in only limited successes. Therefore, more holistic concepts are needed to realise a sustainable success. Among others, demands for the development of organisational culture are crucial. After a short explanation of the problems mentioned above, some research results about the relationship between human resource management and organisational excellence are described and discussed in a broader context. Then, the demands for a broader approach of change management and especially employee involvement are shown. Afterwards, the role of human resources in Excellence Assessment Models will be outlined to discuss the further development of such models for a better integration of human resources aspects in general.

Keywords:

• organisational excellence
• human resources
• change management
• participation and task design
• people involvement

Acknowledgements

This paper is dedicated to Professor Gopal K. Kanji on behalf of his 70th birthday. Gopal is an old friend of mine, with whom I sometimes had night-long discussions in connection with academic board meetings around Europe. I learned a lot from him and have a high appreciation of his outstanding personality.

Some material for this paper has been collected and analysed by Theresa Maxeiner and Jeanette Hoffmann. Many thanks for their help. Sabine Owens checked the English; Fabian Lehnert worked on the formatting. Thank you to them as well.