HRM

HRM strategic interventions will improve an organization's effectiveness

HRM strategic interventions will improve an organization's effectiveness

Strategic HRM can be regarded as a general approach to the strategic management of human resources in accordance with the intentions of the organisation on the future direction it wants to take. It is concerned with longer-term people issues and macro-concerns about structure, quality, culture, values, commitment and matching resources to future need. It has been defined as:

* All those activities affecting the behaviour of individuals in their efforts to formulate and implement the strategic needs of business.

* The pattern of planned human resource deployments and activities intended to enable the forms to achieve its goals.

Strategic HRM can encompass a number of HR strategies. There may be strategies to deliver fair and equitable reward, to improve performance or to streamline structure. However, in themselves these strategies are not strategic HRM. Strategic HRM is the overall framework which determines the shape and delivery of the individual strategies.

In the majority of organisations people are now the biggest asset. The knowledge, skills and abilities have to be deployed and used to the maximum effect if the organisation is to create value. The intangible value of an organisation which lies in the people it employs is gaining recognition by accountants and investors, and it is generally now accepted that this has implications for long term sustained performance.

Theoretical Foundations of HRM

The past decade has seen an increasing interest in the "strategic management" of organizations in the United States. Numerous models of strategic management have been proposed (e.g., Hofer & Schendel, 1978; Miles Snow, 1978; Porter, 1980). This interest in strategic management has resulted in various organizational functions becoming more concerned with their role in the strategic management process. The Human Resource Management (HRM) field has similarly sought to become integrated into the strategic management process through the development of a new discipline referred to as Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM).

This field of study has produced a number of conceptual and practitioner-oriented articles proposing the particular human resource (HR) practices that would be associated with various business strategies (Miles & Snow, 1984; Schuler & Jackson, 1987; Wils & Dyer, 1984). In addition, recent research has begun to examine the determinants of HR practices from a strategic perspective (Dean & Snell, 1991; Jackson, Schuler & Rivero, 1989; Snell, in press).

Given the relative infancy of this field of study, two deficiencies in this literature need to be addressed before significant progress can be made. First, at present there is no clear agreement regarding the delineation of the field of strategic human resource management (SHRM), particularly with regard to its definition. Thus, it has been difficult to differentiate between HRM and SHRM. Second, until recently there has been little in the way of strong theoretical models to aid in understanding both the role of HRM in organizations and the determinants of various HR practices. Similarly, without a strong theoretical foundation for understanding the determinants of HR practices, it is difficult to distinguish between ...