There is nothing practical about this book. It is a looooong, purely theoretical torture with only a few examples that don't work too well in the real world. I had to buy it for one of my graduate classes and here I am three months later even more clueless than I was when I started. This book is very boring, painful to read. It doesn't help that the author is clearly biased in favor of traditional HRM and refuses to give much room to more modern thinking. The exercise book is a nightmare. The exercises are either impossibly difficult and time-consuming because the textbook does not offer valuable guidance for any practical problems, or they are an absolute waste of time - students basically have to copy a chapter. I could go on like this forever. In a nutshell: buy this book if you have to, but sell it as soon as you can.