A review of soft and hard approaches of human resource management and the success of real estate development in Nigeria

Human resource management is so unique that it strives for the best practice approach to the management of human resourceswith a view to achieving developmental and organisational purposes in the built environment. Many property developers/managers in organisation in the pasts, and currently, are still utilising the “hard” approach of managing human resource, and while others utilise the “soft” approach in managing their employees. The real estate development involves several stages with different professionals collaborating for successful development of the real estate and the challenges of finding the best approach to recruit, train, commit, reward and manage these unlike professions is alarming. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and assesses through review of the “hard” and “soft” approaches of HRM and come up with the best practice approach to provide real estate development success in Nigeria. Documentary sources of data collection was used in the study which involved only a conceptual review of online and visual documents; followed by an identification of, categories, limits of and interpretative of the documents utilising four criteria of how: authentic; credible; representative; and meaning; to the phenomenon in the paper context. The findings show that the “soft” approach should be the best practice approach to utilise in managing the different human resources involved in real estate development processes for successful on-time completion. The reflection suggests that the property developers/managers, educationalist, policy/decision-makers, governments and agencies should adopt and advocate for this approach integration in their organisation strategies. This should ensure and enhance effective and efficient performance toward achieving the purpose of any development target.It therefore recommends that since the ambiguities, discrepancies, and difficulties inherent in finding a common ground for the concept of HRM persist in the literature, more research and collaborations should be encouraged and sustained until a consensus impression for HRM is achieved