Customer Reviews

Compensation Management in a Knowledge-Based World (9th Edition)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

I assign this as one of two textbooks in teaching Compensation Administration in graduate school.

While it has undergone 9 revisions, the attempts to update it to today's compensation world are not adequate. Far too little is here concerning internet usage, for example.

But perhaps its greatest shortcoming is in its glancing treatment of group incentive plans as a key means to unlock workforce potential. It is a glaring and unforgivable gap.

If anybody out there knows of a better fundamental compensation textbook, I'd love to hear about it.

Compared to the other major textbooks out there, especially
the better reviewed book by "M" this is by far the more useful.
When I need to find something practical, like the Federal Evaluation System for example, or Multiple Linear Regression as a job evaluation tool, 95% of the time it is in Henderson and it is very well documented. Both these topics are barely touched on in the other major texts which I also own.
From a guy with a Ph.D. and 30 years of paying my bills with
comp information, give me Henderson any day.

This text was assigned for a Compensensation course I took in 2011. The teacher could certainly have selected a better book. I'm surprised that this book has continually updated editions, yet the examples used in the book are so very oudated (ie: from the 90's and early 2000's). A LOT has changed in the economy and the workplace since then to the extent that the data from a decade or more ago is not nearly as relevant as current data would be. Also, this book is not organized very well, it is really written like a book - but not like a text book at all. That is to say that the individual concepts are not structured in any different way. So, everything blends together, and it is hard to tell what is important to pay more attention to, and what is more background information. For example, when new word definitions are introduced, they are lumped right into the body of the text - not bold printed or anything - so, you really have to hunt for them.

I'm sure the information is all spot on, but it is laid out so poorly, that it makes it arduous learning material.

I received my book on time for the start of my class. Item

was in very good shape also! Thank you!

This has been my favorite textbook in my college career. It has rather short chapters, or the layout is good, it does not seem the chapters go on forever. It gets straight to the point and is very informative and the information interesting. Even though it is a textbook I wanted to keep reading it.

This book is well written, informative & exceptionally boring. Richard Henderson, a compensation master, is superfluously long in the tooth. This book will get you an A & put you to sleep.

I ordered a textbook for class and have never received it. I reached out to the seller on numerous occasions and never received a response. I had to ask Amazon to get involved and then received a prompt refund. If you are not going to comply and send the item your selling. DON'T BOTHER! It was a lot a messing around and I still don't have a textbook.

I thought this class would be one of my favorites, but the textbook saw to it that it would not live up to this expectation. The book is technical and boring. There isn't any anecdotal information (which I find very helpful for moving a student through the chapters). I don't know if there is a better choice out there, but if there is, teachers should make it.

This text was a quagmire of unreadable editorial comments! I purchased this book for a Human Resource class. I gained more knowledge from my fellow students than I did from this book. Defiantely skip it!