Nowadays analysis point out that human beings are not “commodities” or just “resources”, but are creative and social people that make class contributions further than ‘labor’ to a society and to civilization. The wide term human capital has progressed to enclose some of this complexity, and in micro-economics the term “firm-specific human capital” has come to stand for a meaning of the term “human resources.”

The discuss about “human resources” versus human capital thus in a number of ways echoes the debate concerning natural resources versus natural capital.

A significant controversy regarding labor mobility demonstrates the broader philosophical issue with usage of the words “human resources”: governments of developing countries often regard developed countries that encourage immigration or “guest workers” as appropriating human resources that is rightfully part of the developing country and required to further its growth as a civilization. They dispute that this appropriation is comparably to colonial commodity fiat wherein a colonizing European authority would define an arbitrary price for natural resources, extracting which diminished country natural capital.

As a general rule, heavily unionized nations such as France and Germany have adopted and encouraged job descriptions only particularly within certain trade unions. One view of this trend is that a solid social consensus on political economy and a good social welfare system facilitates labor mobility and tries to make the entire economy more effective, as labor can move from one enterprise to another with little disagreement or difficulty in adapting.

A opposite view, traditional to capitalist parties, is that it is the infrastructural capital and (what they call) intellectual capital possessed and fused by “management” that provides most value in financial capital terms. This similarly justifies a bargaining position and a common view that “human resources” are interchangeable.

A sign of agreement on this latter point was the ISO 9000 series of standards that in its 1994 revision could be unstated to require procedures or a “job description” of each participant in a productive enterprise. The 2000 revision of ISO 9001 in contrast needs to identify the processes, their progression and interaction, and to define and communicate responsibilities and authorities.

Supporting the chief role of “human resources” or human capital in enterprises and societies has been a recognized role of Human Resource socialist parties, that argue that value is first and foremost founded by their activity, and for that reason give explanation for a larger claim of incomes or relief from these enterprises or societies. Critics believe this is just a bargaining tactic which grew out of various practices of medieval European guilds into the modern trade unions and collective bargaining units.

The more traditional usage within corporations and  businesses refers to the individuals inside the firm, and to the segment of the firm’s organization that works with hiring, firing, training, and other personnel questions.

 

The purpose of Human Resources is to maximize the feedback on investment from the organization’s human resources and minimize financial risk. It is the accountability of human resource managers to manage these activities in an efficient, legal, fair, and consistent way.

Human resources is considered to be a term with which a lot of organizations describe the mixture of traditionally administrative personnel roles with performance management, employee relations and resource planning. The sphere draws upon concepts developed in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Human resources have at least two related explanations depending on context. The original meaning derives from political economy and economics, where it was by tradition called labor, that is one of four factors of production.

Human resources management fulfills the following key functions:

1)                  Recruitment Strategy Planning;

2)                  Hiring Processes itself;

3)                  Selection of candidates;

4)                  Training and Development of personnel;

5)                  Evaluation and Management;

6)                  Process of Promotions;

7)                  Redundancy;

                  Managing Industrial and Employee Relations;

9)                  Record keeping of all personal data;

10)              Compensations, pensions, bonuses and so on in liaison with Payroll;

11)              Confidential advice to internal ‘customers’ dealing with problems at work;

12)              Process of career development.

Process of sourcing includes

1) advertising, a common part of the recruiting process, frequently encompassing multiple media, such as Internet, newspapers, job ad newspapers, professional magazines, screen advertisements, job centers, as well as campus graduate recruitment programs;

2) recruiting investigation, which is the practical identification of relevant talent that may not respond to job postings and other different recruitment advertising methods described above. This initial research for so-called passive scenario, also called name-generation, results in a list of prospects who can then be contacted to importune interest, obtain a resume and CV, and be screened.

Bigger employers tend to undertake their own internal recruitment, using their human resources department. Additionally to coordinating with the agencies mentioned above, in-house recruiters are able to advertise job vacancies on their own websites, organize employee referral schemes, and focus on campus graduate recruitment. On the other hand a large employer may prefer to outsource all or some of their recruitment process (Outsourcing recruitment process).