Philosophy

Don't think about philosophy and then attempt to do anything useful.  Like Rincewind's spell in the Discworld series of books by Terry Pratchett, it doesn't take kindly to company in your head. 

Let's take a question posed in my Human Resources Management Class this week. 

Given organisations are in a constant state of flux, is HR planning all that useful in a modern context? 

 

Valid question, something that requires a thoughtful, practical answer.  Not all that easy though if you have been considering life, the universe, and everything recently.  

If you are given to skepticism, In the manner of David Hume then there is no clear relationship between events, it is a casual fling at best, performing an action doesn't guarantee a particular reaction.  If you press a light switch, you can't be sure the light will come on (perhaps the bulb has blown). 

Since you can't be sure that an action will cause a result, why would you plan anything given that the outcome is unknown ? 

Hume decided that the better question was perhaps, how could you not.  Life without the projection of events based on casual relationships would be impossible.  Why would you eat, if you were not sure that it would satisfy your hunger ? You do eat, it is a part of life, as Hume put it "nothing is more usual".  Planning is then a consequence of usual and necessary behavior (if you don't want to stay hungry then you plan to eat knowing that it will sate hunger), and so planning is not the question here, it is a norm. 

Heraclitus would certainly help us with this flux problem, he was a scientific kind of guy and he practically invented the idea.  

 

On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow.

 

That a river flows and that the water is constantly changing is necessary for the river to exist as it is without changing (into a lake). Constant flux is just that, constant and it defines existence. Without it organisations would not be organisations as we know them,  the modern age would not be the modern age without the flux.  In fact any age would not be an age without that flux element, it is in fact so much a constant that it should be taken out of the question as it is an inherent part of the environment in which the question is asked.  

 

So the question is:

 

 Is Human Resources useful ? 

 

Well .... Yes, aren't all resources (i.e.  assets that can be drawn on  in order to function effectively) useful ?  


Somehow I don't think that answer will get me the mark.