ations could also be seen as an open system approach. The significance of systems thinking, then, lies in its ability to conceptualise complex, dynamic realities - the system and its internal and external relationships - and model them in a simple, coherent way that is yet pregnant with meaning and capable of being elaborated further when necessary.This means that we can use it to hold in our minds such complex ideas as those discussed in this section, without diminishing our aware- ness of their complexity and interrelationships. If we construe the contextually- embedded body of HRM thinking to be a system, then the ways of seeing and thinking being discussed in this section, the socio-historical issues and the nature of organizations and management, are all inputs into it from its wider environment. It 'converts' them to produce the HRM philosophies, policies and practices, these outputs themselves influence, indeed change, the wider environment by their effects upon, for example, the labour market, management-union relationships, or changing values about employment. We can also model the HRM of an organisation in a similar manner. In this case its inputs would include the outputs of the labour market, the policy outputs of the organisations business strategy, values about people and employment, the existence of the specialist HRM personnel. The conversion process transforms these inputs through many other processes, such as recruitment and selection processes, training and development processes, disciplinary and performance appraisal processes. The outputs of this organisational HRM system are the kinds of personnel and skills, attitudes and conditions of employment required to service the organisation. The 'waste' by products may be ineffectual personnel systems; highly trained staff that decide to leave the orgnisation, or poorly motivated, exhausted or stressed staff.We could als...
