Book: Practice of Human Resource Management in Canada

Last week, I finally got a paper copy of a new textbook I co-authored, entitled the Practice of Human Resource Management in Canada. This is an open educational resource (OER) in that students can download and use the pdf version for free. If you want a paper copy, it is $39.99 (about $120 less than commercial texts). The book also offers a more nuanced view of HRM because it tackles how workers’ interests can shape effective HR practices

I first tried to write an intro HR textbook about seven years ago. Despite having a contract with a publisher and a draft written, that effort failed because my then co-author and I had an unresolvable disagreement. That was the second co-authored book project that failed that year (for different reasons) and I swore off writing books.

But then commercial publishers began getting greedy. The price of textbooks went up, including the price of e-texts. One publisher discontinued access an etext in the middle of a course (ack!). Another publisher began discontinuing etexts a year or so after new (generally unnecessary) versions of textbooks came out, forcing unnecessary course revisions.

So Jason Foster and I decided writing an OER was a good option, both in terms of managing our workloads and student costs. We’d previous written Health and Safety in Canadian Workplaces together, so I knew we could get a book across the line, even though an intro HR book would be about twice as long.

It took us about eight months to write the book. We then located a publisher, went through peer review, and found funding. And then the publisher ghosted us. After four months of non response (and we still have no real idea what happened), we started again with another publisher (i.e., back through the proposal and peer review stages).

After more than three years of work, I’m pretty happy to see this out in the world and adopted into Athabasca University’s HRMT 386: Introduction to Human Resource Management starting for February (?) enrollments. It is interesting to see AU’s renewed institutional interest in OERs (largely seeking to reduce institutional costs) coupled with very little incentive or support for faculty to author them.

-- Bob Barnetson