What makes HR immune to having 'boneheads' in any other company? If your risk is 'someone might be a bonehead' then having HR as a separate department doesn't help does it?
Possibly, but if you have a separation of duties with the manager and HR tasks, you’re more likely to have someone go to bat for you when one gets out of line.
When it all goes through a single person, there’s less of a balancing force there.
Nothing but as a manager I wouldn’t want to deal with clearly HR related issues alone.
Form a managers perspective I see HR essentially as your legal counsel, if the company wants to delegate that to the legal department sure but they’ll be likely overpaying those who’ll be tasked with dealing with HR issues all day long.
When it all goes through a single person, there’s less of a balancing force there.
Both obviously can be abused.