Converging and diverging trends in HRM: The Philippine 'halo-halo' approach

• Main Author: Amante, Maragtas S. V.
• Format: text
• Published: Animo Repository 1997
• Subjects: Personnel management—Philippines; Human Resources Management
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/faculty_research/5581
• Institution: De La Salle University

In the Philippines, a diversity of historical, institutional, foreign and local influences provides the background for the entry of human resource management (HRM) strategies - summarized as the pragmatic ('best approach') model developed in the West. These trends tend to diverge from the traditional prototype of rigid labour standards and adversarial labour relations, which was an American post-colonial legacy. At the same time, the efforts by both employers and government policy makers to emphasize human resource development (HRD) tend to converge. At the firm level one venue for the convergence towards HRM strategies takes place in various labour-management co-operation schemes. Labor-Management Councils (LMCs) provide chances to accommodate local cultural values and sensitivities. These practices could be called the Philippine meztizo or halo-halo (blended or mixed) approach, which is most appropriate in the Philippine workplace but which may not work in other foreign contexts. Through case studies this contribution analyzes trends in the convergence and divergence of employment practices in the Philippine workplace. The first section examines the current environment for HRM practices. The second section presents the most important elements of these work practices, through such aspects as compensation, hiring and recruitment, employment relations, and the like, concluding that benchmark practices in HRM bring about convergence, but in the final analysis the difference is made by innovations in entrenched institutional and local work practices.