Journal of Human Resources Management and Labor Studies

The current Practices of Human Resource Management in Higher Education institutions in Palestine
Raed A.S. Abu Teir, Ren-Qian Zhang

Abstract
The success of any educational institution is believed to rely mainly on the quality of its human resources and its consideration of human resource management as the heart of the educational administration(Jones & Walters, 1994).Addressing the environment of higher education which has become more competitive and open for market-driven decision making, human resources are the most powerful assets that an institution could possess to fit in this competitive environment and to suit the modern entrepreneurial paradigm. Human resource management plays the role of translating the organisational strategic aims into human resource policies and creating human resource strategies that could gain better competitive advantage (Tyson, 1997). This research focuses on the human resources in higher education as the basic element of improving the quality of higher education, which is considered a significant factor for social, scientific, technological, economic, political development of nations. Basically, this research proposes a model for human resource management in higher education and investigates the current realisation of this model in higher education institution in Palestine, in terms of the applied practices and the level of significant for each practice. Analysing the results may contribute to the overall knowledge of human resource management and be guidelines for further development in higher education especially in Palestine. A survey was developed based on two models of human resources that seen to be fit for the Palestinian higher education system, and sent to heads of human resource departments and their assistants of all institutions (N=53) in Palestine. The survey covered 8 basic practices, each including several tasks. The recipients were asked to check the applied tasks in their institution. The gathered sample included N=38 respondents, reaching a return rate of 71.7%. The result shows a variation in the number of institutions that actually apply the practices of human resources. Moreover, some practices are given more attention than the others revealing the current state of human resource strategies adopted in Palestinian institutions.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/jhrmls.v4n1a3