Over the last quarter century, human resource management (HRM) has replaced the earlier and largely paternalistic personnel management (PM). Much of the debate has centered on whether HR is simply a progression from the previous PM with its focus on recruitment, training, remuneration and workplace welfare. With the advent of employment and health and safety legislation in the 1970s and 1980s, much of the justification for PM has now been enshrined in law. Human resource management has become more focused on business needs, focusing on the contribution of human resources to competitiveness and overall improvement of business performance. Human resource management has quickly been elevated to more senior management status given its need to be closely aligned to the overall business strategy if it were to directly contribute to the overall success and profitability of the organization. Furthermore, HRM has sought to closely align employees' interests with those of their employer. With its emanation from the United States, human resource management has to some extent diluted the role of unions as insurers of employees' interests. This definition of HRM, advocated by Guest, was characterized by a “hard-soft” continuum that distinguished between a benign resource-based management perspective and a more rigid perspective in which HR policy is closely aligned with strategy business and the company's budget objectives. Similarly, a “tight-mesh” scale was used to characterize the progression from the old reactive PM practice to the new proactive people management approach supported by a strong theoretical basis. The CIPD, the professional body of over 5,000 HR people in Ireland, defines HR strategy as “an approach to human resource management that provides a strategic framework to support the business in the long term… halfway through the document. .. a universal set of strategic prescriptions for all people management situations, at all times [pp316-317]. Over two decades ago, Farnham concluded that both the “old” PM and the “new resource management models resources continued to coexist and warned that there was little evidence of widespread adoption of a strategic approach to human resource management in most organizations BIBLIOGRAPHY Tom Redman and Adrian Wilkinson, “Contemporary Human Resource Management: Texts And Cases” (2nd edition, FT Prentice Hall, 2006) Factsheet on “Strategic Human Resource Management”, revised July 2013, CIPT website http://www.cipd.co.uk/hr -resources/factsheets/strategic-human-resource-management.aspx dated March 23, 2014 David Farnham, “Personnel in Context” (3rd edition, IPM, 1990) Patrick Gunnigle, Noreen Heraty and Michael J. Morely, “Human Resource Management in Ireland" (3rd edition, Gill & Macmillan, 2006)