Contents: 1. Human resource management: a critical approach. 2. HRM in changing organizational contexts. 3. Strategic HRM: a critical review. 4. HRM and organizational performance. 5. HRM: an ethical perspective. 6. HRM practies to diversity management: individualization, precariousness and precarity. 7. Organizational outsourcing and the implications for HRM. 8. Reconfiguration and regulation of supply chains and HRM in times of economic crisis. 9. Knowledge and organisational learning and its management through HR practices: a critical perspective. 10. HRM in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). 11. Recruitment and selection. 12. HR planning: institutions, strategy, tools and techniques. 13. Performance management. 14. Reward management. 15. Human resource development. 16. Industrial relations and human resource management. 17. Human resource management in emerging markets. 18. Comparative HRM: the debates and the evidence. 19. International human resource management. Despite over three decades of debate around the nature of human resource management (HRM), its intellectual boundaries and its application in practice, the field continues to be dogged by a number of theoretical and practical limitations. Written by an international team of respected scholars, this updated textbook adopts a critical perspective to examine the core management function of HRM in all its complexity – including its darker sides. Human Resource Management: A Critical Approach opens with a critique of the very concept of HRM, tracing its development over time, and then systematically analyses the context of HRM, practice of HRM and international perspectives on HRM. New chapters commissioned for this second edition look at HRM and the issues of diversity, migration, global supply chains and economic crisis. This textbook is essential reading for advanced and inquisitive students of HRM, and for HRM professionals looking to deepen their understanding of the complexities of their field.