netrashetty
Netra Shetty
H&R Block (NYSE: HRB) is a tax preparation company in the United States, claiming more than 22 million customers worldwide, with offices in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. The Kansas City-based company also offers banking, personal finance and business consulting services.
Founded in 1955 by brothers Henry W. Bloch and Richard Bloch, Block today operates 12,500 retail tax offices in the United States, plus another 1,400 abroad. Block offers its own consumer tax software called H&R Block at Home (formerly TaxCut), as well as online tax preparation and electronic filing from their website.
In fiscal year 2007, Block reported revenue of $4 billion and net income of $374.3 million.[1] The company was ranked 467 in the Forbes 500 list of top U.S. companies in 2006.[2] In mid-2007, Block had market capitalization of $6.45 billion.[3]
By early 2008, Block's market capitalization decreased to $6.06 billion, and the company was ranked number 1461 in the Forbes Global 2000.[4] In the fiscal year ending April 30, 2008, Block reported revenues of $4.4 billion and a net loss of $308.6 million
to most individuals do not have the ethical change skills to begin to know how to
confront a powerful, if largely implicit, set of management assumptions and
practices that reproduce values ``status quos'' in many work organizations. If an
expanded ethical obligation for HRM practitioners incorporates more of a
political change agenda, its success requires an attitude of risk taking and
rhetorical skills that most HRM practitioners do not currently possess and most
educational materials do not now encourage.
HRM practitioners would need developmental programs or sessions in
which commonly occurring corporate activities, such as another corporation's
downsizing decisions, were analyzed carefully for appreciative and/or critical
insights that might have been usefully applied. Such an actual downsizing
decision might be studied in terms of how the decision (content and process)
might have been handled differently by leaders having greatly varying cultural
or political values assumptions. Further insights might well come as HR
managers explored how different downsizing decisions might affect current
and future employee perceptions of a different psychological contract, as well
as potential career paths or opportunities, at the firm. Likewise, HR
practitioners might examine any one political or cultural set of values
assumptions that seemed to influence a particular downsizing decision and
then see how different skills of the change agents involved in enacting the
decision led to different employee perceptions and results.
These HRM developmental sessions might go beyond such initial activities
to studying the values, strategies or tactics of their own corporate leadership.
Analyzing founding and influential managers who established explicit and
implicit values in the organization, HR practitioners might examine approaches
for how to communicate alternative values positions on HRM issues to such
high-level managers in an assertive, but less personally confrontational,
manner. When and how to take HRM ``voice'' risks with top managers are skills
that need to be developed through special learning sessions and actual practice
in finding ``voice'' opportunities and methods.
An expanded HRM ethical obligation must arise from values assumptions
about change that not all HRM professionals share in an era when many
conservative views on social wellbeing are being communicated and reinforced.
Also, few HR managers selected and socialized within American work
organizations are subject to ethical discourses that challenge their assumptions
concerning basic employment practices. Whether recent, largely academic,
discourses concerning expanded ethical obligations will have negligible or
somewhat greater influence on future ethical reforms for HRM practice
probably depends greatly on the rhetorical frequency, force and creativity of
their appeals, relative to other rhetorical voices, within the HRM profession and
society. However, Mangham (1995, p. 202) warns that the plethora and
stridency of voices concerning moral responsibilities can leave individuals in a
condition of moral confusion and uncertainty leading to relative inaction.
Implications for HRM education
Ethical reforms along the lines suggested by recent radical critics may not
occur rapidly in most American work organizations, given current social and
political patterns. Certainly, though, all positions concerning HRM ethical
obligation have a necessary place in our institutions of higher learning. HRM
faculty would seem to have a role in presenting various conceptions of ethical
HRM practice, whatever their own ideological or political assumptions. They
also need to allow students to discover their own evolving sense of ethical
obligation in societal and organizational membership as well as to practice the
rhetorical or communication skills to exercise this membership.
Functional objective:
To maintain the department's contribution at a level appropriate to the organisation's needs. Resources are wasted when HRM is more or less sophisticated than the organisation demands. A department's level of service must be appropriate for the organisation it serves.
Personal objective:
To assist employees in achieving their personal goals, at least insofar as these goals enhance the individual's contribution to the organisation. Personal objectives of employees must be met if workers are to be maintained, retained and motivated. Otherwise, employee performance and
satisfaction may decline, and employees may leave the organisation
Founded in 1955 by brothers Henry W. Bloch and Richard Bloch, Block today operates 12,500 retail tax offices in the United States, plus another 1,400 abroad. Block offers its own consumer tax software called H&R Block at Home (formerly TaxCut), as well as online tax preparation and electronic filing from their website.
In fiscal year 2007, Block reported revenue of $4 billion and net income of $374.3 million.[1] The company was ranked 467 in the Forbes 500 list of top U.S. companies in 2006.[2] In mid-2007, Block had market capitalization of $6.45 billion.[3]
By early 2008, Block's market capitalization decreased to $6.06 billion, and the company was ranked number 1461 in the Forbes Global 2000.[4] In the fiscal year ending April 30, 2008, Block reported revenues of $4.4 billion and a net loss of $308.6 million
to most individuals do not have the ethical change skills to begin to know how to
confront a powerful, if largely implicit, set of management assumptions and
practices that reproduce values ``status quos'' in many work organizations. If an
expanded ethical obligation for HRM practitioners incorporates more of a
political change agenda, its success requires an attitude of risk taking and
rhetorical skills that most HRM practitioners do not currently possess and most
educational materials do not now encourage.
HRM practitioners would need developmental programs or sessions in
which commonly occurring corporate activities, such as another corporation's
downsizing decisions, were analyzed carefully for appreciative and/or critical
insights that might have been usefully applied. Such an actual downsizing
decision might be studied in terms of how the decision (content and process)
might have been handled differently by leaders having greatly varying cultural
or political values assumptions. Further insights might well come as HR
managers explored how different downsizing decisions might affect current
and future employee perceptions of a different psychological contract, as well
as potential career paths or opportunities, at the firm. Likewise, HR
practitioners might examine any one political or cultural set of values
assumptions that seemed to influence a particular downsizing decision and
then see how different skills of the change agents involved in enacting the
decision led to different employee perceptions and results.
These HRM developmental sessions might go beyond such initial activities
to studying the values, strategies or tactics of their own corporate leadership.
Analyzing founding and influential managers who established explicit and
implicit values in the organization, HR practitioners might examine approaches
for how to communicate alternative values positions on HRM issues to such
high-level managers in an assertive, but less personally confrontational,
manner. When and how to take HRM ``voice'' risks with top managers are skills
that need to be developed through special learning sessions and actual practice
in finding ``voice'' opportunities and methods.
An expanded HRM ethical obligation must arise from values assumptions
about change that not all HRM professionals share in an era when many
conservative views on social wellbeing are being communicated and reinforced.
Also, few HR managers selected and socialized within American work
organizations are subject to ethical discourses that challenge their assumptions
concerning basic employment practices. Whether recent, largely academic,
discourses concerning expanded ethical obligations will have negligible or
somewhat greater influence on future ethical reforms for HRM practice
probably depends greatly on the rhetorical frequency, force and creativity of
their appeals, relative to other rhetorical voices, within the HRM profession and
society. However, Mangham (1995, p. 202) warns that the plethora and
stridency of voices concerning moral responsibilities can leave individuals in a
condition of moral confusion and uncertainty leading to relative inaction.
Implications for HRM education
Ethical reforms along the lines suggested by recent radical critics may not
occur rapidly in most American work organizations, given current social and
political patterns. Certainly, though, all positions concerning HRM ethical
obligation have a necessary place in our institutions of higher learning. HRM
faculty would seem to have a role in presenting various conceptions of ethical
HRM practice, whatever their own ideological or political assumptions. They
also need to allow students to discover their own evolving sense of ethical
obligation in societal and organizational membership as well as to practice the
rhetorical or communication skills to exercise this membership.
Functional objective:
To maintain the department's contribution at a level appropriate to the organisation's needs. Resources are wasted when HRM is more or less sophisticated than the organisation demands. A department's level of service must be appropriate for the organisation it serves.
Personal objective:
To assist employees in achieving their personal goals, at least insofar as these goals enhance the individual's contribution to the organisation. Personal objectives of employees must be met if workers are to be maintained, retained and motivated. Otherwise, employee performance and
satisfaction may decline, and employees may leave the organisation