Human Resource Management

Criticism of the terminology

One significant worry with treating humans as resources or assets is the

possibility of commodification, objectification, and abuse. Humans are
not "commodities" or "resources," but rather imaginative, social creatures
who contribute to a successful organization. In contrast, the 2000 revision
of ISO 9001 mandates the identification of the processes, their order and
interaction, as well as the establishment and dissemination of roles and
authority.
In general, these strategies have been adopted and pushed by highly
unionized countries like France and Germany. The International Labour
Organization also made the decision to review and amend its 1975
Recommendation 150 on Human Resources Development in 2001,
leading to the development of its "Labour is Not a Commodity"
philosophy. According to one interpretation of these trends, strong social
consensus on political economy and an effective social welfare system
encourage labor mobility and tend to increase overall economic
productivity because workers can gain knowledge and experience in a
variety of ways and move from one business to another without much
controversy or difficulty adapting.

Labor mobility and the broader philosophical debate surrounding the term
"human resources" are key topics of debate. Governments of developing
countries frequently view industrialized countries that promote
immigration or "guest workers" as plundering human capital that is more
appropriately a part of the developing country and necessary to support
its economic success. In order to ensure that a developing country losing
its human capital does not lose the ability to continue training new people
in trades, professions, and the arts, the UN has gradually come to more
generally support[citation needed] the viewpoint of developing nations.
To this end, the UN has also requested sizeable offsetting "foreign aid"
contributions.