Patronage This Report Attempts to Define Patronage

Patronage This report attempts to define patronage in regard to the Human Resources perspective. The work also looks at the major arguments that have historically be used in patronage systems as well as the counter points of what some critics may feel in regard to patronage. Patronage can be defined by any dictionary as the effect of special countenance or support; favor, encouragement, or aid, afforded to a person or a work; as, the patronage of letters; patronage given to an author.

But that definition only touches on the surface and does not clearly indicate the underlying meanings in regard patronage and to an employer or a Human Resources approach to work. From a historical perspective, patronage in the business and governmental arenas has often entailed or been seen by those not on top as a corrupt or unproductive system or approach to human resource management.

Some examples pertaining to patronage were that job applicants or promotions rarely looked at an individual's job performance, often did not appoint the best candidates or even made promotions available to each candidate. Promotions and hiring practices were far too often based on secretive and unchallengeable processes or were simply arbitrary and therefore restricted certain or specific nominees. Although a monarchy works on very different principals, it can serve as an excellent example of a business patronage scenario.

Consider that a Prince is a complete loser and a family acquaintance is much better qualified as a leader because he is completely brilliant at both politics and the social graces needed to become a king. The Prince in this scenario would have a patronage support by the system and therefore, although less qualified than the outsider, would still get the promotion to the head of state.

A more visual example of patronage can be seen in the DreamWorks film "Gladiator" where a corrupt Prince becomes Rome's Caesar even though Maximus the general was much better qualified for the job. From a human resources view, a much more realistic process that opposers of a patronage system would support would more than likely be a merit system.

In a pure merit-based system for example, all promotion and hiring appointments would be made following a competition based arrangement where merit rules are understood and can be challenged if any breach is suspected. Supporters of this type of system understand that the merit system is a much more viable method of personnel management.

Merit systems are technically designed to promote the efficiency and economy of the social, political and business initiatives of an organization and therefore serve the good of the company by providing a better selection and retention process that rewards initiative, creativity and other successes. From our example above, Maximus would have been the number one guy in the Gladiator movie because of his being better qualified for the job.

Merit systems as opposed to patronage systems tend be in favor of the employees because they tend to offer incentive and other opportunities on the basis of worth as opposed to favoritism or any assumed oligarchic privilege. As our economy becomes even more global, technologically founded and competitive, organizations will need to promote, train and retain the best employees. This fact alone is very detrimental to the human resource patronage approach to managing.