Towards a European Model of Human Resource Management

Abstract. The concept of human resource management (HRM) has been much debated in the literature. The concept developed initially from work in the U.S.A. in the 1960s and 1970s and since then has been adopted increasingly around the world. This paper argues that in Europe there is only limited acceptance of the organi-sational autonomy upon which the concept is based, and that, there-fore, different approaches to the notion of human resource manage-ment are required. External constraints are analysed and a new model of the concept that would encompass EuroHRM is proposed. This paper examines the concept of HRM from a European perspective. Although much of the seminal work on the concept in the U.S.A. looked to challenging practices in Japan and the Pacific and in Europe, the theory that developed was rooted in a U.S. "ideal " which has at its core the notion of organisational auto-nomy. The way that the concept developed in the U.S.- its reliance on specific aspects of Japanese practice; on the examples of a small number of private secto