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Jack J. Phillips. Accountability in Human Resource Management Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1996, 342 pages, $34.95. Reviewed by John A. Lust, Professor of Management, Illinois State University, Normal, IL.
In Accountability in Human Resource Management, Jack Phillips attempts to solve one of the more vexing problems facing practicing HR managers: measuring and documenting the contribution of human resource related programs (and for that matter of an organization's people in general) to the company bottom line. This issue is not new and has spawned several alternate attempts at resolving the problem. The field of Human Asset Accounting that was tried in the 1960s, Wayne Cascio's (1991) work on the costing of human resources, and the work of John Boudreau (and others) on utility analysis come quickly to mind. Phillips takes a comprehensive approach in this volume and outlines a clear program that can be easily used in organizations. He sees the primary users of the book as practitioners (current HR managers and senior-level managers who are concerned about the impact of HRM in the organization) and future practitioners (students and persons preparing for HR careers). Phillips is to be applauded in that he has taken some reasonably complex material (much of it based on research methods and statistics) and written at a level that is accessible for his target audience.
Readers of this review may question the need for this volume, particularly given the popularity of Cascio's work on HR costing. Most certainly there is some overlap in the topics covered (for example, both examine issues such as turnover and absenteeism). However, the approaches taken by the authors are very different and, in fact, are complementary. Cascio focuses on behaviors and on deriving formulae to measure costs associated with them. Phillips takes a somewhat more macro approach in that a far greater percentage of his volume is focused on organization level analysis and the accumulation and presentation of various HR related costs....