The Relevance of Human Resource Management Systems in Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) face many challenges due to globalisation, changing demographic newlinestructures, technological disruption, and, more recently, sporadic occurrences like the pandemic. newlineAlthough higher education in India has grown over the decades, its average quality has not been up to newlineglobal standards. Very few Indian HEIs make it to the list of the top universities in the world. Most newlineuniversities performing exceptionally well in international university rankings appear to have been newlinepracticing state-of-the-art Human Resource Management (HRM). Various empirical studies have found newlinethat good HRM practices could improve organisational performance. To deal with the prevalent newlinechallenges, the strategy adopted by Indian HEIs needs to change focus, mainly towards building a newlineprofessional and empowered HRM. In a typical Indian HEI, the HRM continues to remain a pool of newlinefragmented administrative activities assigned to different organisational units to execute the directives newlinealready outlined in the HEI charter. In this context, HEIs in India need to develop strategic and newlineprofessional human resource management systems that focus on the simultaneous development of the newlineorganisation, its employees and students. In this research study, which is based on in-depth research of the newlineprincipal stakeholders of diverse sets of HEIs in India, the researcher attempted to understand best HRM newlinepractices and policies using qualitative research tools and techniques. To strengthen the research output, newlinebetter understand the functioning of HR practices in foreign HEIs, and facilitate valuable comparisons, newlinethe researcher also undertook a comparative study of HEIs in the United States of America (USA). newlineQualitative data was collected through web interviews from July 2020 till October 2020. The researcher newlineused thematic methods to analyse the data. The study reveals that public HEIs in India do not have a newlinededicated strategic and professional HRM structure. It is nascent in institutions of national importance newlineand priv