Management Studies: human resource

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Human Relation Approach in Management

The study of human relations in management or administration is the study of worker’s relation with their job, leader and organization. George Elton Mayo (December 26, 1880 – September 7, 1949) was an Australian who spend most of his working life at Harvard University, eventually becoming prof. of industrial research in the Graduate School of Business Administration. In this post, he was responsible for the initiation and direction of many research projects, the most famous being the five year investigation of the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company in Chicago.

According to the investigation;

First, Employees is the starting point until the employee is brought into the work environment, nothing happens.
Second, the work environment is the central focus. The work environment is made up of the job, a worker has the leader who supervises the worker and other factors in the organization.

(Job) some important factors of the job include the amount of independence, responsibility, initiative, challenge, boredom and interest it provides.

(Leader) The influence of the leader in the work environment is determined primarily by the way he or she behaves in the area of supervision, communication, decision making, conflict resolution and other managerial responsibilities.

(Organization) Some organizational factors that affect the work environment are co-workers, reward and punishment system, policies and procedures, rules and regulations, responsibility structures, planning and production standard.

(Goal) Organizational goal attainment achieved by employees within the work environment. In case of private enterprise, the main goal would be “to earn a profit” in the public sector, government, education, health and delivery of goods and services.

The Hawthorne experiment which took place over five year period and covered three phases:

The relay assembly test room
Interviewing program
Bank wiring observation

1. Relay Assembly Test Room

In the Relay assembly test room, two groups of female operators consisting of six were selected and located in two separate rooms, each group performing the same task. They prove 5 hypothesis:

Proper illumination increases productivity. This hypothesis was rejected because the illumination reduced to moon light, the output increased.
The rest periods and shorter working days has provided relief and fatigues. Since output still increase after all of these privileges were withdrawn.
The third hypothesis relating to relief from monotony to increase production was not conclusive because monotony had nothing to the state of mind.
Instead of group incentive plan, an individual piece rate plan was introduced. The fourth hypothesis was also rejected since it was not wage but something else that lead to greater output.
The change in supervisory techniques had improved both the attitude and output.

The girls were allowed to talk freely with everyone and supervisors also took personal interest. A better social situation develops. Supervisor was not regarded as a boss but senior colleague.

The second important factor was the modified managerial practices. Now the workers were consulted and advised about the change to bring. Their views were considered sympathetically. This process allowed the worker to feel free. They were in a position to established new interpersonal contacts with their fellow workers and supervisors.

2. Interviewing Program

In the second phase, Harvard group started a special study of human attitudes and sentiments. To understand human attitudes and sentiments Harvard group after interviewing about 21,126 workers who were asked to express freely and frankly their likes and dislikes on the programs and policies of the management, working conditions, and how they are treated by their boss etc. This study succeeded in identifying following three aspects.

Workers appreciated the method of collecting information of the problems of the company from them. They thought they had valuable comments and they felt that they had an equal status with the management. They also developed a feeling that the work environment were changed to the better, although no such a change took a place.
There was a change in the attitudes of supervisors because they realized that the methods of supervision was wrong and was closely observed by the research team and the subordinates were allowed to comment freely about their supervisors.
The research learn also realized that they had acquired new skills in understanding and dealing with their fellow beings. It was felt in the sense of proper appreciation of the feeling and sentiments of the workers. It was difficult to understand their real problems.

3. Banking Wiring Observation

The third phase of Hawthorne study involves observation of 14 male operators in the bank wiring observation room for a period of six months and recorded the effects of the group behavior, group norms and group economic incentives upon output. The conclusion of the bank wiring observation was that the attitudes of the members of the group towards the company’s financial incentive scheme was one of indifference. The group was highly integrated (loyal) with its own social structure and code of behavior which clashed with that of management. The following code of conduct was maintained for their group solidarity (to build strong).

Don’t be a rate buster – by producing too much
Don’t be a chiller – by doing too little work.
Don’t be squealer – by telling on your associates to supervise.
Don’t be unfriendly, aloof or officious in relation with other in the group.

Comparison between Human Relation Approach and Traditional Approach on various aspects of organization.

Human Relation Approach

Traditional or Classical Approach

1. The business organization is a social system as well as the technical economic system. This social system defines individual roles and establishes norm, which can be different with those of the formal organization.
2. The individual is not only motivated by economic incentives, but is motivated by diverse social and psychological factors.
3. The formal work group becomes dominant unit of consideration. The group had an important role in determining the attitude and performance of the individual workers.
4. The human relativist emphasis democratic rather than authoritarian pattern.
5. Workers satisfaction would lead productivity.
6. Human relationist believe in three-way communication system, which allows the exchange of ideas, views and information. Hence, participation becomes an important approach of the human relation movement.
7. Management requires effective social skills as well as technical skills.

1. They concentrate on economy and efficiency only.
2. They neglected the human factor.
3. It views organization as techno-economic system.
4. Employees are motivated only by economic incentives and not by diverse social and psychological factor.
5. It does not consider the existence of informal group within organization.
6. They exercise close and detail supervision and do not allow subordinates to initiates their own pace of work. They believe in authoritarian leadership pattern.
7. They do not pay considerable attention towards workers satisfaction.
8. They pay considerable attention towards chain of command up and down communication, span of control and close supervision.
9. They believe possible relationship among production, satisfaction and economic incentives.
10. They do not pay attention on social skill. They consider on only technical skill.

Criticism of Human Relation Approach

Loren Baritz and other criticized Mayosts a anti-union and pro-management. He was criticized for not understanding the role of union in a free society. It was argued that mayo never tried to integrate (loyal) unions into his thinking.
Critics like Carey pointed out that this type of research was worthless, since a sample of 5 or 6 could not be taken as a reliable sample to make a generalization.
Peter F. Druker criticized human relationist for their lack of awareness of economic dimensions. He felt that the Harvard group neglected the nature of work and instead focused on interpersonal relations.
Daniel Sell and others have pointed out that a conflict free state and worker convenient (satisfaction) would lead to success of the company was not tenable (which can exist), because some tensions and conflicts were inevitable (unavoidable) in every human situations therefore the critics stated that the team displayed a lack of total awareness of larger social and technological systems.

Conclusion of Human Relation Approach

The contribution of Mayo to the administrative organization has been a great innovation of the modern times. For the first time, he made an attempt to understand the problems of the workers from an angle different other than traditional approach. The contribution of Mayo is immensely useful not only in the industrial sector but also in the administrative system of state, particularly in the case of bureaucracy. Taken as a hole the significance of Hawthorne investigation was in discovering “informal organization” which is now realize exist in all organization.” The importance of group affection the behavior of workers at large was brilliantly analyzed through these experiments.

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Techniques of determining human resource requirements for an organization

The need for human resource planning in organization is realized for the following reasons:

Despite growing unemployment, there has been shortage of human resource with required skills, qualification and capabilities to carry on works. Hence, the need for human resource planning.
Large numbers of employees who retire, die, leave organizations, or become incapabilities because of physical or mental ailments, need to be replaced by the new employees. HRP ensures smooth supply of workers without interruption.
Human resources planning is also essential in the face of marked rise in workforce turnover which is unavoidable and even beneficial. Voluntary quits, discharges, marriages, promotions and seasonal fluctuations in business are the examples of factors leading to workforce turnover in organizations. These cause a constant ebb and flow in the workforces in many organizations.
Technological changes and globalization user in change in the method of products and distribution of production and services and in management techniques. These changes may also require a change in the skills of employees, as well as change in the number of employees required. It is human resource planning that enables organizations to cope with such changes.
Human resource planning is also needed in order to meet the needs of expansion and diversification programmes of an organization.
The need for human resources planning is also felt in order to identify areas of surplus personnel or areas in which there is shortage of personnel. Then, in case of surplus personnel, it can be redeployed in other areas of organization. Conversely, in case of shortage of personnel, it can be made good by downsizing the workforce.

Human resource planning is important to organization because it benefits the organization in several ways. The important ones are mentioned below:

Human resource planning meets the organization need for right type of people in right number at right times.
By maintaining a balance between demand for and supply of human resources, human resource planning make optimum use of human resources, on the one hand and reduces labour cost substantially, on the other.
Careful consideration of likely future events, through human resource planning might lead to the discovery of better means for managing human resources. Thus, forceable pitfalls might be avoided.
Manpower shortfalls and surpluses may be avoided, to a large extent.
Human resource planning helps the organization create and develop training and succession planning for employees and managers. Thus, it provides enough lead time for internal succession of employees of higher positions through higher positions through promotions.
It also provides multiple gains to the employees by way of promotions, increase in emoluments and other perquisites and fringe benefits.
Some of the problems of managing change may be foreseen and their consequences mitigated. Consultations with affected groups and individuals can take place at an early stage in the change process. This may avoid resistance for change.
Human resources planning compels management to assess critically the strength and weaknesses of its employees and personnel policies on continuous basis and, in town, take corrective measures to improve the situations.
Through human resources planning, duplication of efforts and conflict among efforts can be avoided, on the one hand, and coordination of worker’s efforts can be improved on the other.
Last but no means the least, with increase in skill, knowledge, potentialities, productivity and job satisfaction, organization becomes the main beneficiary. Organization is benefited in terms of increase in prosperity/ production, growth, development, profit and thus, an edge over its competitors in the markets.

Human resource planning systematically forecasts an organization’s future supply of, and demand for employees

Human resource planning systematically forecasts an organization’s future supply of, and demand for employees. As a human resource manager of an organization, the following methods and techniques would be followed in determining human resources requirements.

In simple words, HRP is a process of sticking balance between human resources required and acquired in an organization. In other words, HRP is a process by which an organization determines how it should acquire its desired manpower to achieve the organizational goal. Thus, HRP helps an organization have the right number and kind of people at the right place and right number times to successfully achieve its overall objectives. The quality of an organization is, to a large degree, considered merely the summation of the quality of people it hires and keeps. Therefore, before actually selecting the right people for right jobs, it becomes a pre-requisite to decide on the quantity and quality of people required in the organization. This is done through human resource planning.

Requirements for Effective HRP

Human resource planning is the process of predetermining human resource needs and choosing human resource actions to satisfy those needs. In order to make HRP more effective, the following elements should be taken into consideration or the following elements are required.

1. Formulation of business plan and their integration with HRP

First of all in order to meet the organizational goal, business plan should be formulated. After formulating business plan, planning about human resource should be done. Then after there should be integration between business plan and HRP.

2. Manpower Forecasting

On the basis of received information from job analysis, what is the real requirement of the job should be identified and on its basis manpower be forecasted using different techniques.

3. Top Management Support

HRM affects all types of organizational activities. Top management should extend total support to human resource planning. HRP should form an integral part of their personal and managerial philosophy.

4. Developing Manpower

Human resource planning is a professional job. People responsible for planning in human resource department should posses planning skilled. Continuous training and development should upgrade their skills.

5. Information System

An effective human resource information system (HRIS) should be established to provide up-to-date information about employees and jobs. It should contain the following data.

Personal data: Employee’s personal factors
Skills data: Employee’s education, training, capabilities etc.
Position data: Occupational history of the employee.
Compensation data: Data about remuneration of employee.
Job data: Employee’s job description and job specification etc.

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Human resource planning is deciding in advance the future requirements of human resource in organization

A line manager has to decide or recommend how many people and what skills they need now and at least in the short-term future. This is the process of human resource planning. If there is a personnel function it may provide the manager with data on such things as the availability of people from the labour market, the output of trainee schemes and employee turnover rates. It may even in some large organizations use computer models to make projections. But only the manger knows what he or she is doing now and will be doing the future and it is those activity levels that form the basis of human resource plans. Human resource planning aims to match human resources to meet the business need expressed in activity levels. Plans are often long-term (i.e. one year head or more) but may look at shorter-term needs as well, planning for people is concerned with

Getting and keeping the number and quality of staff one need
Identifying skill requirements and how to satisfy them
Dealing with surpluses and deficits of employees
Improving the utilization of employees.

Determining Human Resource Requirements

Human resource requirements are determined by relating the supply to the demand forecasts and identifying deficits or surpluses of human resource that will exist in the future. Table 1 shows how demand and supply forecasts can be scheduled over a period of five years. The reconciliation of demand and supply forecast give us the number of people to be recruited or made redundant as the case may be. This forms the basis for the action programme in HRP.

Human Resource Requirement

Demand forecasting: Decisions on the number of people the company need are based on demand and supply forecasts. Demand forecasting is the process of estimating the future number of people required and the skills and competencies they will need. The basis for the forecast will be present and projected activity levels in such terms as outputs or the number of items to be processed. Forecast activity levels are usually derived from the business plan and the related functional or departmental plan and budget. For example, in a manufacturing company the sales budget is translated into manufacturing plans, giving the number or types of product to be made in each period. For this information, the number of hours to be worked by each category of employee to meet the budget for each policy is computed.

1. Managerial judgment: This is the most typical method. It simply required you to sit down, think about future workloads, and decide how many people you need. Experienced managers can do this quite well but it often involves a lot of guesswork. It usually only works in the short-term and this may not present too much of a problem if increases in level of work can easily be dealt with by recruitment. Overtime, sub-contracting or outsourcing. Unforeseen decreases in activity levels may create more problems. It may not be so easy or desirable to make people redundant, lay them off or reduce their working hours. It may even be difficult to get out of a sub-contract quickly. That is why you have constantly to attempt to forecast requirements as for ahead as you can see by monitoring trends, finding out how business plans are progressing, checking on sales forecasts and results and so on. You cannot rely entirely on your own resources to plan ahead. You must get data from other people.

2. Ratio-trend analysis: Ratio trend analysis is carried out by studying past ratios. For example, the number of direct (production) workers and indirect (support) workers in a manufacturing unit. Forecast activity levels can then gives you a good idea of how many direct workers you will need (so many people to make so many bags) and the ratio of indirect to directs will tell you how many support workers you are likely to need.

3. Work study techniques: Work-study techniques can be used when it is possible to apply work measurement to calculate how long operations should take and the number of planned hours, and therefore people required. In a manufacturing company the starting point is the production budget set out as the volume of saleable products for the plant as or whole and the output volumes for each department. If standard hours for units of output have been determined by work measurement, the budgets of productive (planned hours for the year) are then compiled by multiplying standard hours per unit of output by the planned output in units. This is decided by the number of actual working hours for an individual worker, having allowed for absenteeism and forecast idle or down time to show the number of operators required. The following are a simplified example of this process.

Planned output for year    : 2000 units standard hours
Standard hours per unit                        : 5 hours
Planned hours for year                         : 100, 000 hours
Net productive hours per person year: 2000 hours
Number of direct workers required   : 50 hours
(Planned hours divided by productive hours per person)

Work-study techniques for direct workers can be combined with ratio trend analysis to calculate the number of indirect workers needed.

4. Forecasting skill requirements: Forecasting of skill requirements that from an analysis of the current range of skills required and the analyze the impact of forecast product-market developments, the acquisition of new or different types of business, projected changes in work methods and the effect of the new technology. The latter would include information technology, computerized production methods such as manufacturing requirements planning (MRP/ or some form of automation or robotics). Skill forecasts are largely a matter of judgment based on experience and a thorough analysis of likely trends in the type of work to be carried out and working methods.

5. Regression Models: Regression analysis is used to measure the relationship between one or more independent variables to explain a dependent variable. In HRP regression analysis can be used to correlate personnel requirements with output, revenue etc. as in trend-ratio and time-series analysis. The analysis is based more on historical patterns. The real value of regression analysis in HRP is in generating alternative scenarios in personnel needs. It is important to bear in mind that the relationships are not always liner and the purpose of the analysis is not present the management with precise quantitative forecasts.

6. Supply forecasting estimate: Supply forecasting estimates the number of people likely to be available from within and outside the organization (i.e. what are sometimes called the internal and external labour market). The supply analysis ever

Existing people available-how many have you got and what skills do they posses?
Potential losses to existing resource through employee wastage-what are the present and forecast employee turnover figures?
Effect of absenteeism-what is the present rate and what it will be in the future?
Sources of supply from within the organization – who have we got now with the right skills? Who are going to be available in the future, and when?
Sources of supply from outside the organization-what are the chances of being able to recruit the sort of people we need?
Defining sources of future supply and reaching satisfactory conclusions on availability may be difficult. It depends in a number of factors out of one’s control.
Demand and supply forecasts indicate the extent to which there are likely to be surpluses or deficits of people.

Reasons for Preparing Human Resource Plan in Organization

Organizations prepare human resource plan because of the following reasons:

Human resource planning meets the organization need for right type of people in right number at right times.
By maintaining a balance between demand for and supply of human resources, human resource planning makes optimum use of human resources, on the one hand, and reduces labour cost substantially, on the other.
Careful consideration of likely future events, through human resource planning might lead to the discovery of better means for managing human resources. Thus, forceable pitfalls might be avoided.
Manpower shortfalls and surpluses may be avoided, to a large extent.
Human resource planning helps the organization create and develop training and succession planning for employees and managers. Thus, it provides enough lead time for internal succession of employees to higher positions through higher positions through promotions.
It also provides multiple gains to the employees by way of promotions, increase in emoluments and other perquisites and fringe benefits.
Some of the problems of managing change may be foreseen and their consequences mitigated consultations with affected groups and individuals can take place at an early stage in the change process. This may avoid resistance for change.
Human resource planning compels management to assess critically the strength and weaknesses of its employees and personnel policies on continuous basis and, in town, take corrective measures to improve the situations.
Through human resources planning, duplication of efforts and conflict among efforts can be avoided, on the one hand, and coordination of worker’s efforts can be improved, on the other.
Last but no means the least, with increase in skill, knowledge, potentialities, productivity and job satisfaction, organization becomes the main beneficiary. Organization is benefited in terms of increase in prosperity/ production, growth, development, profit and thus, an edge over its competitors in the market.

Human Resource Planning

Approaches to Human Resources Planning
Human resource planning involves estimating the size and composition of the future force. It is predetermining future human resource needs and choosing action to satisfy those needs.

The approaches to human resources planning can be
1. Quantitative Approach (i.e. top down Approach): This approach is management driven. It views human resource planning as a numbers game designed to track the flow of people across departments. The foundations of this approach are

Human resource management information system (computerized, if possible)
Demand forecasting techniques, especially statistical and mathematical techniques consisting of tools such as;

Trend analysis
Mathematical models
Econometric models
Marker analysis, etc.

Work study Techniques to lay down work standards

The focus of this approach is to forecast human resource shortages and surpluses. The aim is to reconcile supply and demand of human resources.

2. Qualitative Approach (i.e. Bottom up Approach): This approach is employee driven and focuses on individual employee concerns such as promotion, performance evaluation, career development, etc. Specific highlight can be

Employee development and training
Compensation and incentive schemes
Employee motivational techniques to increase productivity.
Promotion of employee
Career planning and development of employees.
Protection of special focus groups as such women, disadvantages person etc. Managerial judgment and expert forecasts serve as important techniques for forecasting human resource demand.

3. Mixed Approach to HRP: This approach combines both the quantitative and qualitative approaches for the purposes of human resource planning. Efforts are made to strike a balance between both the approaches. They both complement each other.

Relationship of HRP to Strategic Planning

Business organizations prepares plan to reach its objectives. Plan is of short middle and long term. Short-term plan can be considered as tactical plan and long-term plan is strategic plan. Strategic plan includes corporate philosophy strength and policy to achieve organizational goal. Medium-term planning is operational planning. It is concerned with the policy of how efficiently is to operate the organization smoothly. Strategic planning is a systematic process to analyze the opportunities and threats in the environment, assess organization’s strengths and weakness, and identify opportunities of competitive advantage in a long-term perspective.

Every planning is implemented through human resources. Human resources planning are done to support the business planning. So, all the HRP should be linked with business plan. In other word, it can be said that HRP is nothing but the part of business planning. Here HRP are highlighted as all the plans are implemented through HR. Human resource plan cannot be developed as a separate or parallel activity from corporate plan. It should be based on the overall strategies and objectives of the organization. The emerging thinking is that human resource plan should be a partner in the formulation of the corporate strategic plan. Implication of human resources should be considered in the formulation stage of the corporate plan. Human resource should develop a strategic relationship in the development of the corporate strategic plan. HRM should also get everybody in the organization involved in implementing the strategic plan effectively.

Functions of HRM (Human Resource Management)

1. The staffing function: Although recruiting is frequently perceived as the initial step in the staffing function, there are a number of prerequisites. Specifically, when a company plans strategically, it determines its goals and objectives for a given period of time. These goals and objectives often result is structural changes being made in organization. Once an application has come in, it is time to begin the selection phase. Selection too has a dual focus. It attempts to think out the large set of applications that arrived during the recruiting phase and to select an applicant who will be successful on the job. To achieve this goal, many companies use a variety of steps to assess the applicants. The candidate who successfully completed all steps is typically offered the job, but that is only half of equation. HRM must also ensure that the good prospects accept the job offer, if made accordingly; HRM must communicate a variety of information to the applicant, such as the organization culture, what are expected of employees and any other information that pertinent to the candidates decision making process.

Once the selection process is completed, the staffing function has come to an end. The goals, then of the staffing function are to locate competent employees and get them into organization when this goal has been reached, it is time for HRM to begin focusing its attention on the employee’s training and development.

2. The training and development function: Whenever HRM embarks on the hiring process, it attempts to search and secure a candidate whom we labeled as the “best” possible candidate. And while HRM professionals pride themselves on being able to determine those who are qualified versus those who are not, the fact remains that few, if any, new employees can truly come into an organization and immediately becomes fully functioning, 100% performers. First employees need to adapt to their new surrounding, socialization is a means of bringing about. This adoption while it may begin informally in the late stages of the hiring process. During this time, the focus is to orient the new employee to the rules, regulations and goals of the organization, department, and work unit. Thus, as the employee becomes more comfortable with his or her surrounding, more intense training can occur.

Reflection over the past few decades tell us that, depending on the job, employees often take a number of months to adjust to their new organization and jobs. Does that imply that HRM has not hired properly or the staffing function goals were not met? On the contrary, it indicates and peculiarities involved in each organization’s positions result in jobs being tailored to adequately meet organizational needs.

Accordingly, HRM plays an important to note that employee and career development is more employees centered.

At the conclusion of the training and development function, HRM attempts to reach the goals of having competent, adapted employees who possess the up-to-date skill, knowledge, and abilities needed to perform their current jobs are more successfully.

3. The motivation function: The motivation function is one of the most important yet probably the least understood aspect of the HRM process. Why?
Simply because human behavior is complex trying to figure out what motivates various employees has been a concern of behavioral science. First of all, one must begin to think of motivation as a multifaceted process-one that has individual, managerial and organizational implications. Motivation is not just what the employee exhibits, but also a collection of environment issues surrounding the job. It has been proposed that one’s performance in an organization is a function of two factors ability and willingness to do the jobs. Thus, from a performance perspective, employees need to have the appropriate skills and abilities to adequately do the job.

Motivating employees also requires a level of respect between “management” and “workers”. This respect can be seen as involving employees in decisions that affect them listening to employees and implementing their suggestions where appropriate. The next step is to understand the implications of motivational theories. Some motivational theories are well known by most practicing managers. Performance standards for each employee must also be set managers must be sure that the performance evaluation system is designed to provide feedback to employees regarding their past performance while simultaneously addressing any performance weaknesses the employee may have. A link should be established between employee compensation and performance.

Throughout the activities required in the motivation function, the efforts all focus on one primary goal: to have those competent and adapted employees, with up-to-date skills, knowledge, and abilities, exerting high energy levels. Once that are achieved, it is time turn the HRM focus to the maintenance function.

4. The maintenance function: This is the last phase of the HRM process. The objectives of this phase are to put into place activities that will help retain productive employees. HRM must work to ensure that the working environment is safe and healthy: caring for employees’ well being has a major effect on their commitment. HRM must also realize that nay problem an employee focus in his or her personal life will ultimately be brought into workplace. Employee assistance programs, such as programs that help individuals deal with stressful life situations, are needed. Such programs provide many benefits to the organization while simultaneously helping the affected employee. In addition to protecting employees’ welfare, it is necessary for HRM to operate appropriate communication programs in the organization. Including in such programs is the ability for employees to know what is occurring around them and vent frustrations. Employee relations programs should be designed to ensure that employees are kept well informed through email, net, bulletin boards, town hall meeting, or teleconferencing and to foster an environment where employee voices are heard. If time and effort are expended in this phase, HRM may be able to achieve its ultimate goal of having competent employees, who have adapted to the organization’s culture, with up-to-date skills, knowledge and abilities, who exert high energy level, who are now willing to maintain their commitment and loyalty to the company. This process is difficult to implement and maintain, but the rewards should be such that the effort placed in such endeavours are warranted.

Significant of Learning in Organization

Learning is any relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of experience. We can say that the changes in the behavior indicate that learning has taken place and that learning is a change in behavior. The definition of learning highlights few characteristics of learning:

Learning involves change: This may be good or bad from an organizational point of view. People can learn unfavorable behaviors as well as favorable behaviors.
The change must be relatively permanent: Temporary changes may be only reflexive and fail to represent any learning.
Leaning takes place when there is change in actions: A change in an individual's thought processes or attitudes, if accompanies by no change in behaviors and would not be learning.
Some form of experience is necessary for learning: This may be required directly through observation or practice or if may result from indirect experience such as that acquired through reading.
Predict behavior of people at work: OB is concerned with understanding, managing and predicting behavior of people at work. The understanding of learning concept offers significant insight to managers for managing employee behavior. the managerial skills such as technical, human and conceptual are learnt, which helps to predict behavior at work.
Human resource development: Learning serves as a key factor for HRD as it enhances skills, competencies and potentials of employee of an organization. Employee learns to face challenges, work on pressure, manage productivity and enhance efficiency through their training and development programmes. Learning fosters desirable behavior and eliminates undesirable behaviors.
Technical adaptation: Technology refers to mechanical and intellectual process used to transfer input to desired outputs. The technology is rapidly changing the use of technology requires skills which employee can adopt through learning. The rapid change in technology has generated new forms of employment relationship such as flexible work hours, virtual offices, contingent work force etc. which can only be coped through the process of learning.
Total quality management (TQM): Learning is significant to enhance TQM philosophy. To implement the TQM, the leader involves employees and enhances their sense of ownership and commitment at work. It directs for the management of people so that quality is involved as the central part of the job. The process requires learning in the organization.
Facilitate organization change and development: The dynamic forces of external environment involves change in organization, it can be terms of globalization, technology, increasing work force diversity etc. A manager and other employee should learn to reconfigure organizations to adapt to such situations. The learning helps to minimize the resistance to change. On the contrary, OB seeks to make system wide intervention with the help of change agents to cope with the changing environment. The success of OB largely depends upon parallel learning structure.

All organization behavior is affected by learning. It plays a vital role on training is organizational setting. It is directly related to their death and survival. The significance of learning is, obviously, for people and organizations. For people, it changes the behavior orientations such as knowledge, skills, values, personality and competency and so on that are essential for achieving organizational goals. In organizational setting, learning is significant for the following reasons:

For effective Human Resource Development: Learning is the key to developing skills and potential of employees. Training in organizations aims at learning. Managers can foster desirable behavior and check undesirable behaviors through training. Learning also helps managers developed effective training programmes.
To Understand and predict behavior of the people at work: One of the objectives in the field of organizational behavior is to understand and predict behaviors of people at work, different rules and skills of managers are acquired through learning. If managers need to be effective, they should play roles and have skills. Without learning experience, it is difficult to manage and people in organization.
To facilitate organizational change and development: Leaning facilitates organizational change and development. There are different forces in the external environment for change in the organizations. Some of these forces are globalization, technology and demographics. Such changes force managers and workers to learn to reconfigure organizations to adapt to such situations.

Limitations of Project Management in Nepal

Project management concept suffers from a number of limitations in Nepal. They are:

Unsuitable: Nepal is a country of villages. Rural development projects are important for reducing poverty in rural areas of hills and terai. Most rural projects are small and simple. Project management concept is not suitable for such projects.
Problem of Authority Delegation: Project management concept provides total authority and responsibility to project manager from inception to completion. Nepalese administrative system is "Feudocratic". The institutional capacity for project management is poor. Senior managers are unwilling to delegate authority to project manager. This constrains effect project management.
Top Management Interference: In Nepal, project management generally lacks top management support. Too much interference by top management in appointment and transfer of project manager and project employees and award of contracts is common.

Politicians look at projects as convenient vehicles for employment of their political workers. This has led to over-staffing in projects.

Lack of Professional Human Resources: Project management requires a special breed of trained professional human resources. They are in short supply in Nepal.

Matrix project organization structures in Nepal suffer from lack of right people. Project managers lack independence to handpick the right people. Functional managers generally depute their "favored ones" or "available ones" to the project. Project team gets staffed in incompetent people.
Projects generally carry extra incentive to employees. A lot of "source and force" is used to get posted to projects.

Conflicts: Project management in Nepal tends to be infested with conflicts between project and functional departments. Interpersonal conflicts also abound among project team members. Discipline is poor in projects.
Cultural Constraint: Nepalese culture generally lacks sense of the value of time. Administrative personnel are champions for postponing important decisions for tomorrow. This also happens in projects. The time and cost overruns due to lack of appreciation for project schedules constrain effective project management.

Benefits of Project in Nepal

Project management in Nepal is a new approach for achieving the objectives of time bound complex projects efficiently and effectively. It has been widely used in Nepal since 1970s.

The benefits of project management approach to Nepal are:

Change Management: Project management approach has served as a vehicle for introducing and managing change in Nepal.
Environmental Adaptation: The flexibility in operations provided by project management approach has facilitated environmental adaption. Nepalese environment is full of risks requiring flexibility.
Resource Mobilization: Project management has been the prime vehicle for mobilizing foreign aid for Nepal's development. The share of foreign aid has been about 55 percent in the total planned outlay in Nepal over the last forty years.
Infrastructure Development: Project management has been instrumental in developing physical and social infrastructure in Nepal.
Better Resource Utilization: Project management has facilitated co-ordination and better utilization of resources across ministries in the government. Decision making has been faster.
Human Resource Development: Project management has facilitated human resource development in Nepal. A pool of professional project managers and experts is available in Nepal. Professional and technical development has been facilitated by foreign training and seminars made possible through project funding. The country's human resource capability has increased.
Organizational Re-engineering: Project management has facilitated pure project and the matrix organization structure to implement projects in Nepal. This has facilitated organizational re-engineering.

The "Development Committee" pure project structure was the outcome of the need to apply project management concept to manage development projects.

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