This text is designed to improve the student’s understanding of a wide range of HRM practices and issues. We aim to do this by grounding our discussion of HRM in the specific contexts and problems thrown up by real-life organisations. The case studies presented here, therefore, show the complex challenges facing managers and HRM practitioners in the current period. This is very different to the standard HRM text which offers a menu of HRM tasks which are assumed to be universally relevant. We have moved away from the idea that HRM involves a value-free and context-free set of tools and techniques. Instead, through our selection of cases we have sought to reflect the emerging problems and challenges which have brought about a perceived shift in the character and scope of HRM in contemporary organisations. This new agenda for HRM has been identified in a range of different research studies (Collinson et al., 1998; Scarbrough et al., 1998; Sparrow and Marchington, 1998).