The traditionally held raison d' etre of human resources functions is to attend to concerns of, and matters relating to people in organisations. Over the past two decades there has been an increasingly legitimate and convincing challenge of this view.

We have come to suspect that the traditional view of the HR role usurps something quite essential in terms of successful line command relationships, namely the capacity to make these relationships legitimate and therefore able to mobilise willingness. Simply put, the HR manager has been doing things which should be done by the line manager, and in doing so has disabled the line manager's capacity to win the loyalty and commitment of his people.

In the early eighties I became involved in a project concerned with the problem of employee discontent. This project was conducted under the auspices of the Chamber of Mines Research Organisation.

In the process of doing this work I came to realise that there were a few basic conditions which accounted for the loyalty, trust and commitment of employees. Whenever one asked why they would work for someone willingly they would list a whole lot of characteristics which could be categorised into two major themes or areas.

The first theme had to do with the idea of care. If someone worked for a boss because he wanted to, it was because the boss was approachable, listened, was supportive, and showed a genuine interest in the concerns and welfare of the subordinate.

There was, however, a second theme that had a much tougher feel to it. True, people would say their boss was fair and honest, let them get on with the job and gave them feedback. But their response to the argument that fairness does not mean the boss will always be nice was that the apparent toughness of a fair boss was what enabled them to learn and grow.

In short, there were two themes raised, namely care and growth. People would work willingly for a boss if he cared for them and gave them an opportunity to grow.

I have subsequently found this criterion to be universally true. It does not matter whether the person describing their ideal boss is literate or illiterate, ex-patriate or South African, sophisticated and educated or not. The same two themes of care and growth were raised.

The universal nature of these criteria makes sense when one considers that, in working for someone because you want to, you implicitly give that person the right to tell you what to do or to exercise power over you. This suggests that there is a connection between these criteria and the legitimacy of power.

Common expectation

It is as if all human beings have a commonly held expectation that people in charge should be there to care for and grow those in their charge. This makes sense if one considers that the first relationship of power one has is with a parent. In this relationship there are two people, a "big" one and a "little" one. The responsibility of the big one for the little one is quite specific. It is to care for and grow the little one.

When one considers who provides the actual care and growth of people in organisations, however, the union and the human resources function really stand out as the care-givers. This results in a fundamental undermining of the ability of line poeple to cultivate the commitment of their people.

We know now that you earn the right to tell people what to do and to exercise power over them because you care for them and grow them. If you give this job to HR or the union, then clearly these people will start to run the company.

We have come to call this phenomenon surrogate management. Surrogate management is the use of a stand-in or proxy function to attend to the people problems so that the management of the enterprise can get on with the real business of making money.

The problem with this view is that it completely undermines the conditions which account for the success of an enterprise. It really does not matter what the enterprise is – be it a socialist commune or a capitalist company – its success is normally judged on the basis of the size of the surplus which it creates.

A surplus suggests a very interesting phenomenon. It suggests that all of the participants in an enterprise have worked together in such a way that their total product is bigger than that which they took out. It suggests that they have given more than they have taken. This means that, in the collective sum of transactions, there has been a measure of unconditional giving. People have given for the sake of giving, not in order to get something.

This indicates that without the willingness of the people the enterprise is in serious trouble. Indeed, its capacity to create a surplus, and therefore be profitable, is compromised.

This willingness comes into play only when those who exercise the power in organisations, namely line managers and supervisors, do so legitimately because they have attended to the care and growth of their subordinates. To succeed in doing this, however, they have to claim back for themselves the role that they have fobbed off to the HR function and the union.

A key problem in this regard lies with the metaphors that we use to describe companies. We still view them in a very mechanical way, assuming that if all parts of the system work, then the machine makes money.

One of the parts of the system is human resources, which requires a specialist mechanic for repairs. What is not recognised is that surpluses are a measure of the degree to which people are giving more than they are taking and that, in these terms, it is the moral fibre of the people that actually accounts for the success of the enterprise.

This is not to suggest, of course, that there is no role for the human resources function at all. The HR function may still play a very constructive role in so far as it provides a consulting and advisory service to line management so that they can care for and grow their people better.

It is not, however, the function and role of HR to look after employees on behalf of line management. To do so is to weaken and finally destroy the fabric of loyalty, trust and commitment between their managers and subordinates, and it is this very fabric which binds enterprises together.

We can nurse a mechanistic view of an organisation as much as we like. The simple fact of the matter is that if the people are not committed to the business, and therefore willing to go the extra mile, we do not have a sustainable enterprise.