However, I now have a request and I hope it's appropriate.
The new magazine Fast Company has commissioned me to write an article on
the Future of Human Resources in a world of reengineering and learning
organizations. The premise we are working with suggests that HR will be an
increasing power base in many organizations -- it is the place where teams
are made and brought together. Particularly when employees are hired on
temporary or project-specific bases, this is vital.
However, HR (as the function is traditionally set up) is ill-prepared for
this role. So the role may fall instead to executive recruiting firms from
the outside...
I would be grateful to anyone from HR functions (or elsewhere) who has
seen any of this firsthand and is willing to email me privately about it
... and I'm equally interested in provoking a general discussion here,
and hashing out whether the Human Resources function is truly under
siege/on the crest of an opportunity.
I don't ever quote anything without checking first, and never quote
without making sure it's OK to do so; but I AM interested in pursuing
this. It seems to me to possibly embody one of the "dark sides" of
learning organization work: The power struggles which will occur when
traditional functions evolve into new infrastructural forms.
-- Art Kleiner, art@well.com