Personnel and human resources management
by Perfecto S. Sison · 1981
Genre: Business
Rating: 3.1/5
A serviceable 1981 HR primer that reveals more about management thinking of its era than about timeless principles. Useful for history; not for practice.
Sison's foundational textbook remains a serviceable primer for HR basics, though its optimism about management authority has aged poorly.
This 1981 business textbook was clearly written for students and junior practitioners entering the field, and it succeeds in that limited brief. The problem is that Sison's faith in hierarchical command-and-control management—rewarding compliance, punishing deviation—reflects an era of HR thinking that subsequent decades have largely dismantled. For historical context or classroom scaffolding, it has value. As a guide to contemporary practice, it's a relic.
Sison's book arrives at a moment when HR was still figuring out its own identity. Is it personnel administration (scheduling, payroll, records) or strategic management? The book straddles both, which means it covers ground: recruitment, training, compensation, labor relations, morale. For someone with no background, there's a logic to the progression. The writing is clear, even dry—Sison doesn't waste words on theory when a definition will do. The structure is pedagogical: concepts first, then application. For 1981, this was honest work.
What's genuinely useful here is Sison's attention to morale as a management concern. He understands that employee satisfaction isn't decorative—it affects productivity and retention. He advocates for careful job design, clear communication of responsibilities, and what he calls 'proper direction and coordination.' He also grasps that wage incentives alone won't build a healthy workplace. These insights aren't revolutionary, but they suggest a manager who has thought about the human side of the equation, not just the mechanical one.
But the book's foundational assumption—that management's role is to exercise authority and control, with rewards and punishments as the primary levers—now reads as quaintly paternalistic. Sison assumes workers need close supervision to do what management wants them to do. There's no discussion of autonomy, intrinsic motivation, or what later theorists would call psychological safety. The entire framework treats employees as inputs to be optimized rather than as agents with their own stake in the enterprise's success. For a 1981 textbook, this was mainstream. Today it's a museum piece.
The book also suffers from a lack of real case material or empirical evidence. Sison makes claims about what builds morale or improves retention, but rarely grounds them in data or extended examples. He cites other authors (Dale Beach, for instance) but doesn't engage critically with competing schools of thought. The result is a textbook that reads like received wisdom rather than tested knowledge. A reader in 2026 will find it thin on the 'why' behind recommendations, which matters if you're trying to adapt these ideas to your own context.
For undergraduate survey courses or for someone curious about how HR thought has evolved, this book has archival value. It shows what the field looked like before Drucker, before Deming, before the quality movement made employee voice central to organizational performance. But as a practical guide? It belongs on the shelf next to books on scientific management and Theory X. The real insight isn't what Sison says about motivation. It's what his confidence in top-down control reveals about the era he wrote in.
Key Takeaways
- Command-and-control HR
- Morale as output
- Historical artifact
Summary
- Comprehensive 1981 textbook covering recruitment, training, compensation, labor relations, and employee morale as core HR functions.
- Sison argues that high morale depends on clear job design, proper wage incentives, and good human relations, not just compliance mechanisms.
- The book is clearly written and logically structured for undergraduate students or junior HR practitioners with no prior background.
- Its core assumption—that workers require close supervision and rewards/punishment to perform—reflects management theory that later research would challenge.
- Lacks empirical evidence, case studies, or critical engagement with competing HR philosophies; relies on received wisdom rather than tested knowledge.
- Offers value as a historical artifact showing how HR was conceived in the early 1980s, before participatory management became mainstream.
- The absence of any discussion of employee autonomy, intrinsic motivation, or psychological safety dates the work significantly.
- Verdict: Useful for context and pedagogy, but not as a contemporary guide to building high-performing organizations.
Chapter Guide
- Chapter 1: Foundations of Personnel Work
- Introduces the purpose of personnel management and why organizations need a formal approach to staffing, supervision, and employee relations. Sets up the field as a practical discipline, not just a clerical function.
- Chapter 2: The Human Resource Function
- Explains how personnel work expands into human resource management: planning, coordination, and the alignment of people with organizational goals. Emphasizes the manager’s role in building systems, not improvising fixes.
- Chapter 3: Job Analysis and Manpower Planning
- Covers the logic of studying jobs before hiring people: task definitions, staffing needs, and forecasting labor demand. The book treats this as the quiet machinery behind every other HR decision.
- Chapter 4: Recruitment, Selection, and Placement
- Details how organizations attract candidates, screen them, and place them where they can actually do useful work. The focus is on matching people to roles with as little guesswork as possible.
- Chapter 5: Training, Development, and Performance
- Looks at preparing employees for current duties and broader responsibilities through training and development programs. Also connects performance appraisal to improvement, not just judgment.
Read the full review at https://reviewerinsight.com/book/69f576cec84c962c4b76be65/personnel-and-human-resources-management