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Enhancing Productivity and Quality
A related but somewhat narrower concern for most organizations in the world today involves the issues, hurdles, and opportunities posed by productivity and quality. Productivity is an economic measure of efficiency that summarizes and reflects the value of the outputs created by an individual, organization, industry, or economic system relative to the value of the inputs used to create them. Quality is the total set of features and characteristics of a product or service that bears on its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs In earlier times, many managers saw productivity and quality as being inversely related; the best way to be more productive was to lower quality and therefore costs. But today, most managers have come to realize that productivity and quality usually go hand in hand. That is, improving quality almost always increases productivity.
Organizations around the world have come to recognize the importance of productivity and quality for their ability not only to compete but also to survive. But actually improving productivity and quality takes a major and comprehensive approach that relies heavily on human resource management. Among other things, an organization that is serious about productivity and quality may need to alter its selection system to hire different kinds of workers. It will definitely need to invest more in training and development to give workers the necessary skills and abilities to create high-quality products and services, and it will need to use new and different types of rewards to help maintain motivation and effort among its employees. Thus, human resource management also has the goal in most organizations of helping to enhance productivity and quality through different activities and tasks.
Complying with Legal and Social obligations
A third fundamental goal of the human resource management function today is to ensure that the organization is complying with and meeting its legal and social obligations. We noted earlier the impact of the 1967 Civil Rights Act other regulations on hiring and other related human resource management practices and ac More recently, the Americans with Disabilities Act has also had a major impact on human resource management, it clearly important that organizations stay within the relevant legal boundaries whenever they deal with their employees. An organization that does not comply with government regulations and various legal constraints risks huge financial penalties well as considerable negative publicity and damage to its own internal corporate culture. This point is amply illustrated in the HR Legal Brief. Beyond the strict legal parameters of compliance, however, more and more organizations today are also assuming at least some degree of social obligation to the society within which they operate. This obligation extends beyond the minimum