The worldwide financial crash and the ensuing recession have coincided with other significant long term changes for the Western Economies of Europe and the USA, especially the growing strength of newly developed economies, demographic and technological change, institutional crises and political uncertainty. The interconnected nature of businesses and societies mean the competitive landscape is being transformed, and new economic pressures and opportunities are producing new business models, a rebalancing of economies, and a new HRM.

The application of new technology to the processes and systems of people management is spreading, in a world where competitive advantage is increasingly about how smart the management processes are, and how well people are managed. This text is the first book to analyse the way these contextual pressures are producing a game change in the human resource function of management.

For anyone who has an HR role or is a line manager, or a student of management, and for those who teach, research or consult in the field, this book encapsulates these critically important trends and what they mean for managing people in the 21st Century.