Human Resource Management: the Views of Personnel Directors¹

John Gennard and James Kelly, who are Professor and Senior Lecturer respectively in the Department of Human Resource Management at the University of Strathclyde, use data from semi‐structured interviews with a number of personnel directors to consider whether, in their view, there is a new HRM paradigm and, if so, whether there is revolution/discontinuity or evolution/continuity with personnel management. They suggest that the contrast between the majority of those interviewed, who considered there to be no difference between HRM and personnel management, and a significant minority, who did, could largely be explained in terms of the extent to which the function was well established and/or needed to signal to other key actors that a new ‘order’ was necessary.