Mid Semester Examination

MSC525: Human Resource Management

Total Marks: 30 Time Duration: 1 hour

1) The trends shaping human resource management are influencing what human resource
managers do and how they do it. Highlight the changing role of HR focusing on these
new trends. (6 marks)

2) What are the different ways in which a company can achieve competitive advantage?
Explain how HR can be instrumental in helping a company create competitive advantage
(6 marks)

3) You are the HR manager of a multinational car company. Your company is planning to
build a manufacturing unit in a different country and expand their business. What are the
factors that you would take into consideration when undergoing human resource planning
for the same? (6 marks)

4) Read the below mentioned case and answer the following questions: (12 marks)
One way to see the significance of work design and job analysis is to learn from what
happens at companies that fail to define jobs. An anonymous employee of a multimedia
company told Entrepreneur magazine’s Scott Gornall about an editor who was given a
new job title, “creative manager of content.” Unfortunately, the scope of that job was
never specified or explained to others in the company.
The new creative manager appointed himself to teach the others how to be more creative.
He placed some magazines in a cubicle and called a meeting to announce that, henceforth,
that space was the Idea Lab, where employees could go to reflect on ideas. He drew up a
flow chart to explain the Idea Lab. He called monthly meetings for idea sharing.
His colleagues, unimpressed, felt that he was disturbing their work in order to justify his
new responsibilities, whatever they were. Perhaps in principle, a creative manager of
content would have met a real need for this publisher, but because the position and its fit
with the organization’s objectives were never clearly spelled out, the idea was wasted.

Questions:
(a) Why might management be reluctant to prepare a formal job description
for a position like “creative manager of content”? What are the pitfalls of
not doing so?
(b) What advice about the position would you give to this company’s
managers?