A SNAPSHOT VIEW OF HRM IN TURKEY: EVIDENCES FROM COMPANIES LOCATED IN MARMARA REGION

Abstract

HRM discipline, occurring in 1920’s in the USA, has been predominant in the USA and the European countries and there has been evolving phases throughout the 20th century (Storey, 1989). Personnel management began to gain a more managerial role in the 1960s. As a result of this process, there has been a shift from activities such as arrangement of data storage and personnel files to the administration of employee procedures (Fombrun et al., 1984). However, in practice the replacement of HRM for personnel management has only meant the change of department names and titles for some companies and “there has been no considerable change in terms of the function’s quality and activities (Armstrong, 2000). Research shows that the number of department names and titles containing the term “human resources” appears to be significantly higher than the ones containing the term “personnel” (Caldwell, 2002, Bayraktaroglu, 2006). Turkey is not an exception to this trend and contributed greatly by changing the department names overnight in most companies. Examining the current issues that have recently taken place in the HRM field, it would be suitable to point out that the strategic nature and role of the HR function have been emphasized since the 1980s (Bayraktaroglu, 2002). The HR function’s gaining of a strategic role is said to show the increase of its importance (Bowen et al., 2002). This paper critically explores the current status of HRM in large Turkish and will be based on questionnaires conducted within large companies who have HR departments in Marmara Region of Turkey.