人力资源管理战略【外文翻译】

外文翻译原文：Human Resource Management StrategyAn organization’s human resources are, according to current management theory, the most important investment of a corporation. Enormous sums of money are spent to recruit, select and hire a qualified staff. Additional expense is incurred in training and development; and even more investment is made on an ongoing and continually increasing basis to maintain a quality workforce with competitive compensation and benefits programs. Still managers often let go of the people in which so much time and money has been invested when the employees make mistakes, or when there is a pattern of disagreement or difference. Such employees routinely leave promising careers with one company to start all over again someplace else.Of course managers expect, and should expect, their employees to be competent, responsible, cooperative and productive; and to perform their tasks with integrity and a high work ethic. In an ideal organization employees work in harmony with management and peers, follow management’s directives and put forth sincere effort to help the organization meet its objectives.Employees are only human however and humans make mistakes. And to expect perfect compliance with the needs and desires of others is not a very realistic expectation of adults in the workplace. More likely, in fact, in today’s organization employees may not work harmoniously with peers and may just as likely not follow management’s directives. Today’s workforce increasingly wants to think for themselves and to use their skills and abilities in ways that enhance their own chances for success, enable them to accomplish their own agendas, and achieve their own goals.The presence (and essence) of the human element in the increasingly fast-paced, smaller staffed, and competitive work environment practically guarantees that mistakes, problems, and disagreements will occur. They are a part of life, a part of being human. For example, look at what happened to a friend of mine; a medicaltechnologist, recently graduated from college and working less than one year in a large hospital:Shortly after she began her new job, my friend was responsible for running a batch of neo-natal tests。

After placing fifteen blood samples in a capillary tube centrifuge for analysis she pressed the start button to run the machine. Five seconds later she hears the sickening shattering of glass as all the samples are destroyed. Unfamiliar with the equipment, she was not aware that the guard that should have been secured to hold the glass tubes in place had been unintentionally left off of and out of the centrifuge by another technician.Mortified and sickened, she had no choice but to tell her supervisor about the accident. The supervisor in turn reported the problem to the maternity division head who was furious about the error. To say she only harshly reviled the technician and the department would be a gross understatement.What would the typical response one might expect of the supervisor toward the young and inexperienced technician? Immediate dismissal? Severe reprimand? Punishment? Perhaps punishment meted out over an extended period of time and consisting of the manager’s being overly watchful over the technician’s work would be appropriate. This would make it clear that she could not be trusted or is incompetent. Or, perhaps she might be relegated to performing menial clerical tasks for a time well beyond the expected training period, perhaps until she got bored and quit.The outcome of my friend’s situation will be expla ined later. For now, consider another case in which conflict between a manager and her employee occurs as a result of the employee’s overly ambitious efforts to be recognized as capable, creative, and competent.Carol is a marketing information coordinator for a large commercial design firm.Several months into her new job Carol performs one of the more mundane and seemingly meaningless tasks that is part of her responsibility, clipping and filing competitor ads from industry trade journals. She keeps the competitor ad information in a file in her work area. In all the months Carol has been clipping and filing ads, no one in the company has ever asked to see the files.Carol decides to compile the information she has collected over the months into a statistical report that would detail competitive advertising activity according to frequency of placement, product, and journal placement. She prepares several copies and sends them to management level employees in the marketing department. Upon seeing the repor t, Carol’s manager becomes upset with her because she feels that she should have been informed of the report prior to Carol’s sending it out.Though the information in the report was very well received by members of the marketing department, Carol’s manager is angry and upset about Carol’s apparent lack of respect and disregard for the chain of command. In the days and weeks that followed, their working relationship is strained.What is the issue in this case? What has happened between the manager and the employee? How can a situation such as this, which results in conflict of both a personal and procedural nature, be appropriately resolved? Conflict that is perceived negatively and as a threat to one’s power, authority, or self esteem is very likely to be destructive to the relationship of the parties involved, which can ultimately lead to dysfunction in the organization. And in this situation, it did, as was evidenced in the increasingly cool working relationship between the manager and employee, a lowered level of morale, and curtailed creativity.Contemporary conflict management techniques suggest that a new view of conflict is needed if good working relationships are to be maintained. Instead of perceiving conflict as a negative experience in which a manager and employee battle over a procedure or idea in an attempt to have their respective viewpoint prevail, contemporary conflict management authors Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project suggest that it is better if the conflict situation can be seen as an opportunity for defining differences, reaching a mutually agreeable resolution, and enriching the relationship.Typically however, people do not handle problem situations or conflict as effectively as the theories suggest they should. Human emotions and personal agendas get confused with the real issue and this process often leads to an attack on the otherparty in defense of one’s own interests.This can be a very serious problem for a manager and his or her employee. Good working relationships are essential to organizational effectiveness yet it is the quality of the interpersonal relationships that often suffers in the aftermath of some wrongdoing or conflict. Tense situations that are not managed well or remain unresolved may keep the parties involved in a state of mental anguish and constant battle for power or, in the worst case scenario, to seek revenge.When an employee makes a costly mistake, innocent though it may be, or disregards a manager’s authority, or behaves in any number of inappropriate ways that cannot be justified, excused, or condoned, causing a breach in the relationship, how can the quality of the relationship be restored to its original standing, or strengthened, or at the very least –salvaged? In either of the two case examples mentioned, would it be realistic to believe that there will be no hard feelings between the parties? That the manager will not feel some degree of anger and resentment toward the employee? And that this anger and resentment will not impact the relationship in negative ways, regardless of how subtle? One’s negative feelings can become so entangled with the problem that instead of keeping the situation in context, one overlooks the positive and known aspects of the other party and sees him or her solely as “the problem”.According to Dudley Weeks, it is not unusual for some people to view a single conflict as defining the entire relationship.What sort of constructive action can a manager take to restore a relationship that has, as a result of disagreement or conflict, become untenable? I would like to suggest that forgiveness offers a way for the manager to deal with the negative and potentially destructive feelings that may result after a conflict between manager and employee in a way that can empower both.Forgiveness as a way of life, but not in businessForgiveness? In the workplace? Wouldn’t forgiveness make one look soft?If a manager is in conflict with an employee over some wrongful action of the employee’s doing but decides to forgive the employee would it not appear to others in the organization that the manager is condoning the negative behavior? Or that it mightlook like he or she is taking the easy way out by choosing to look the other way, to excuse, the actions or behavior of the employee without holding the employee accountable? Other employees might perceive a manager’s forgiveness as condoning, excusing, or justifying wrongful behavior and think the manager a dupe, a weakling, ineffective!As a business person, I too would have thought forgiveness an inappropriate action if not undesirable in many conflict situations in which I have been involved or witnessed among others. Forgiveness of others is difficult and not exactly the action of choice for most people even in o ne’s personal life. This seems especially true in business where people are expected to take a firm stand on issues and to deal with problems in an impersonal, quick, and decisive manner.In a 1981 research study report on values and the American manager, forgiveness was ranked fifteenth out of eighteen in importance by the managers surveyed (Posner and Schmidt, 1982). The researchers used Rokeach’s list of instrumental values as their benchmark. An updated study conducted in 1991 indicates little to no change in the ranking of this value according to the authors of the study (Posner and Schmidt, 1992).Despite the apparent lack of enthusiasm for forgiveness on the part of business people, after studying the concept of virtue from a philosophical and theological perspective I have come to believe that forgiveness is a virtue that is important for today’s manager. Unfortunately, the attitudes and beliefs people have with respect to forgiveness are often misconceived. Forgiveness is generally and often perceived as letting someone off the hook, forgetting, giving up or giving in, or being soft. But authentic forgiveness is neither one of these.What is this often misconceived, misunderstood and complex phenomenon called forgiveness? How and where does it fit in the periphery of a discussion on business ethics, conflict management and human resource strategy? In order to even consider forgiveness as an option in conflict management and human resource management we must first understand it in the context of moral philosophy and then in business ethics.A philosophical understanding of forgivenessIn moral philosophy forgiveness has historically been viewed as a moral good. However, much discussion on philosophical and theological ethics has been, well, too philosophical for the average person to make sense of let alone to apply the idealistic insights gleaned by the professionals to real life and every day living. Only in the past twenty years or so have philosophers, theologians, and even psychologists attempted to define forgiveness in ways that enable one to apply it more aptly in daily life.One of the reasons that forgiveness has become so interesting to moral philosophers and theologians is because of the renewed interest in virtue ethics, which emphasizes not so much what a person does or should do, but what kind of person one is or should be. A virtue is an operative habit that disposes a person to do good, easily and promptly. A person of virtue possesses some combination of traits and attitudes that togethe r make up the person’s character, which is then revealed in highly ideal moral actions. Virtue ethicists address not only the particular “traits and attitudes that reflect good character (but also) pay careful attention to the role of the affections”.Philosophers agree that it is how one thinks and feels that determine how one behaves. Feelings play an important role in one’s moral life, one’s state of inner wellness, and in one’s social and public life and actions as well.We can easily recognize that this is so by reflecting on the feelings we have experienced in relation to a person or situation and recalling how those feelings, positive or negative, influenced our actions in relation to the other or to the situation. Some contemporary views on forgiveness suggest that it is a virtue, which like other virtues enables one to live well. As a virtue, forgiveness enables one to deal more effectively with the negative feelings associated with relational moral dilemmas such as disloyalty, betrayal in a relationship or of confidences, being lied to or cheated out of a fair exchange, or some other act of intentional or even unintentional wrongdoing.Forgiveness fits into discussion on moral philosophy because as a virtue, it is recognized as a “part of a set of co ncerns centering on the role of feelings in the moral life”. It fits into discussion on business ethics because virtue is an important aspect of character development or the sort of person one is. And the sort of person one is, asexemplified by positive and negative character traits, plays a significant role in decision making and ethical behavior.The benefits of forgivingForgiveness is a restorative virtue. If practiced often enough that forgiving becomes incorporated as part of a manager’s repertoire of management techniques, a habit, forgiveness can enable the manager locked into a malignant pattern of behavior or cycle of conflict fueled by past resentment and anger, to move beyond her negative feelings for the good of the working relationship and the organization. This is important because employees who work in an atmosphere veiled with the fear of retribution for ideas that do not work out or mistakes that may be the result of their efforts lose their enthusiasm to take risks and learn to censor their creative thinking, as was the case with Carol, the marketing information coordinator, whose situation was described earlier.But now, recall the situation my med-tech friend was in after making a mistake on the job and causing blood samples from fifteen newborn babies to be destroyed. She was mortified and sickened, and feared she would lose her job. As her supervisor, what would have been your response to her unfortunate situation, and your own, after having to explain the error to the division head, whose reaction was veiled with anger and threats? Here is what did happen:When the technician told her supervisor about the accident, the supervisor was actually quite understanding. Though she explained to the maternity division head that it was an unintentional and very unfortunate accident the division head vehemently insisted that the technician redraw the samples herself. The lab supervisor stated that it was not the med-tech’s job to do so, and since she was so upset as a result of the mishap would be in no shape to draw blood from fifteen infants in a safe manner.Fearing that she would be fired for her error, the med-tech found in her supervisor, a compassionate and understanding mentor. Instead of the severe reprimand she expected, she was told she was a valued employee, and was forgiven for the error. Though she was held accountable, her supervisor was ableto see past the mistake of the novice technician, consider her performance to date, and recognize the potential of the person. Instead of holding the incident against her, the supervisor suggested that she devise a solution to the problem so that such an occurrence would not happen again.It never did happen again, to my friend or to anyone else, because she wrotea procedure that would ensure that each user of the centrifuge would not onlydouble check that all component parts were replaced in the machine after use, but also would make sure the machine was cleaned and ready for the next person to use it. My friend has never forgotten the kindness, understanding and forgiving nature of her supervisor. She has remained with the same hospital for fifteen years, has been promoted in her department and has enjoyed a warm friendship with her supervisor throughout the years. She says that the respect she has for this person for the way she handled the situation is beyond what can be described in words.When a manager forgives, he or she communicates to employees that they are not being judged or defined solely by their negative behavior or wrongful action. In addition, forgiving an employee for a past indiscretion, wrongful deed, mistake or misbehavior can provide a foundation of trust and respect upon which more positive future interactions can be built. As my friend’s experience illustrates, forgivenes s is a transforming process, one that enables each person involved to see things differently. It empowers the forgiver and the forgivee by releasing the proverbial albatross from around their necks, freeing everyone to focus attention back toward their work and achieving the goals of the organization. As noted sociologist Hannah Arendt once wrote of forgiving:(It) . . . is the only reaction which does not merely react but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven (Arendt, 1959, p. 241).Source: M. J. Kurzynski .Journal of Business Ethics, 1998, Volume 17, Number 1, Pages 77-85译文：人力资源管理战略一个组织的人力资源,根据现行管理理论, 是最重要的公司投资。