Dynamics of Value Creation and Competitiveness through People

2223 Words5 Pages

HR Challenge Dynamics of Value Creation and Competitiveness Through People, edited by Sudatta Ranasinghe and Ajantha Dharmasiri, June 2013. 345 pages. Hard cover. Institute of Personnel Management (IPM), Sri Lanka. Reviewed by: Apu Akbar, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada Human resource (HR) is the most valuable, but vulnerable asset that organizations, public or private, maneuver for achieving goals. There are numerous areas and perspectives of HRM (human resources management) as it deals with human being. The Book titled, “HR Challenge: Dynamics of Value Creation and Competitiveness Through People” is all about the problems and prospects of HRM (human resource management) focusing on Sri Lankan as well as South Asian perspectives. HR professionals, if ever, search for a mind-provoking, prudent, and practice oriented resource for gaining insights on the riddles of various types in HR practices, the book tiltled, “HR Challenge: Dynamics of Value Creation and Competitiveness Through People” should be the right choice to quench HR professionals. This book is a compilation of 12 articles edited by Sudatta Ranasinghe and Ajantha Dharmasiri. Each article of this edited book is unique not only with its quality, but also in the sense that each article covers different area of HR functions required for building organizational competitiveness. A brief over view of each article is discussed below. The book starts with chapter one having article titled, “HR Challenges in a Developing Economy: Towards Multiple roles of HR Professionals in a Competitive Business Environment,” by Sudatta Ranashinghe. The author describes HR problems focusing on hiring and retaining employees in different industries in Sri Lank covering a ve... ... middle of paper ... ...hat HR practices are always context based depending on socio-cultural, political and economic background. No new theory is proposed in this book. It is a collection of easily understandable literatures which without any confusion will be a supportive resource for HR professionals. However, over narration of the background and literature review in most cases may blur readers’ focus. Though this is not a serious drawback, but it could be overcome easily. In addition, by avoiding over narration, the size of the articles as well as the book could be reduced that would definitely help keep the price of the book lower and make it more available to people. Since ambiguity, paradox, and multifaceted problems are the regular challenges of HR practice, a less serious drawback of this nature, hopefully, will not stand against the acceptability of this book.

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