Abstract:
University education system is always disparaged by many parties.
Especially these criticisms are made about the management graduates.
There is no any argument that the management education system and its
theories & concepts were brought from the western philosophy. In Sri
Lanka, management education has a history of over fifty years. However,
many practitioners blame the management graduates regarding their
orientation of theory than the practices. Therefore, there is a knowledge
gap about to what extent the theory of management applies in to the
practices. This is common in the field of human resource management.
Therefore, the problem of the study is that whether there is a difference
between the theory and practice of human resource management in the
practical scenario. Using 80 human resource managers in the apparel
industry in Sri Lanka, researchers tried to find the perception of HR
Managers about the differences of theory and practice of human resource
management in the apparel industry. 17 areas/activities of human
resource management were asked from the selected sample and the closed
ended questionnaire was distributed to them. Univariate statistics were
used to analyses the primary data gathered from the sample and the main
finding of the study is that there was moderate level of differences of
theory and practices of human resource management in the apparel
sector in Sri Lanka. However, there is a trend of applying the theory of
human resource management into the practice in this sector through
entering the human resource management graduates.
