Summary, Lectures & Articles - Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM): MAN-BCU008A

SHRM LECTURES & SUMMARY

 28 questions from book by Boselie
 10 questions from book on communications in organizations
 10 questions on the articles
 12 questions on the (guest)lectures

HC 1

3 PARTS OF HRM

1) Micro HRM (MHRM): studying the shaping of the employment relationship at the individual
employee level (e.g. recruitment&selection, induction&socialization, training&development)
2) International HRM (IHRM): studying the shaping of the employment relationship in an
international context (e.g. transferability of HR practices, impact of different countries on
HRM)
3) Strategic HRM (SHRM): studying the shaping of the employment relationship taking into
account the internal and external organizational context (e.g. linking HRM to business
strategy & adding value through good people management to gain sustained competitive
advantage) concept of ‘fit’ plays a central role within SHRM.



5 ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES

1) Internalization (when a business decides to handle a transaction internally rather than route it
out-of-house to another entity to handle)
2) Individualization (individual)
3) Informalization (flatter, less hierarchical levels)
4) Informatization (technological changes, ICT)
5) Intensification (more network orientation reaching career goals, spending time with family,
work life balance protection)



SHRM IN THE 21ST CENTURY

 Impact of organizational change
 Competitiveness
 3 perspectives of HRM (micro, international, strategic)
 Stakeholder perspective
 Balanced approach



ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE -> the relevance of optimal coping with
change is embedded in the concept of competitive advantage

Competitive advantage -> important for organizational survival, partly manageable by HRM



3 PERSPECTIVES IN STUDYING SHRM PRACTICES

,  Multi-actor perspective -> multiple stakeholders (e.g. employee, manager, shareholder,
government)
 Broad societal view -> different institutional context (e.g. industry branches, regions and
countries)
 Multi-level perspective -> including individual employee perspective and strategic
organizational perspective




4 CONTRACT TYPES

1) Legal contract -> rights & obligations of both parties (e.g. vacation days)
2) Economic/transactional contract -> e.g. salary and working hours
3) Psychological contract -> unwritten expectations from both actors
4) Sociological contract -> social aspects in relation (e.g. the bond with colleagues)

Core employees -> people that work permanent in a company and are under contract

Peripheral employees / contingent workers -> people that often work temporarily in a company (e.g.
cleaning team)



Traditional HRM: focuses only on valuable employees

The new HRM model: focuses on the whole workforce



The Anglo-American model (USA): focuses on creating shareholder value in terms of profits and
market value (hard HRM)

Rhineland model (Europe): acknowledges multiple stakeholders affecting the employment
relationship in organizations (soft HRM)

Balanced approach: blends the insights from an economic and an institutional perspective in order to
create a balanced and sustainable organization



THE BALANCED APPROACH IN HRM

 Goals of the individual employee
 Organizational goals
 Societal goals

HC 2

Best-practice proposition (Pfeffer, 1998) -> universalistic perspective: one best way of doing things
for every company. One size fits all in HRM (supported by empirical research, however criticized for
its lack of attention to contextual factors)

,Best-fit proposition (Delery & Doty, 1996) -> HRM’s success depends on the alignment with the
organizational context

 Internal context
 External context




Purpose -> the ‘why’: e.g. Why are we making this product?

Mission -> how to accomplish the purpose (how)

Vision -> how you envision your efforts in the market (what)

Enactment -> you scan the environment and see what is going on and how you can envision the
future




Best (HR) practices -> people management activities that are created and implemented by
organizations to increase the organizational performance without any institutional obligation such as
a law

ILLUSTRATIONS OF PFEFFER’S 7 BEST HR PRACTICES

1) Selective recruitment & selection -> focus on selective part, where you are trying to recruit
and select the best person for the job and the organization (e.g. using intelligence tests)
2) Extensive training -> employee development through training programs (e.g. e-learning)
3) Performance-related pay (PRP) -> reward that is linked to the profits of an organization
(bonuses for when you perform well as an individual or a team)
4) Teamworking -> decentralizing responsibility with autonomy and self-responsibility in work
design and planning for a group of employees
5) Information sharing and communication -> through the intranet and other media. The top
management support and involvement in communication is crucial for the changing process
of an organization
6) Reduction of status differences -> no status symbols (e.g. no executive parking spaces)
7) Employment security -> providing insurance for unemployment, disability and death for
employees and their families



UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONCEPT STRATEGY, BASED ON THE BEST-FIT PROPOSITION

Strategy is generally defined by and organization’s intention to achieve certain goals through planned
alignment (or fit) between the organization and its environment (De Wit & Meyer, 1998).

, The business strategy is composed of multiple strategies that cover multiple silos within the business,
like human resources or marketing (Boxall & Purcell, 2003)

- Competitive strategy: which market should we enter?
- Financial strategy: how can we fund this strategy?
- Operational strategy: which supplies do we want to use?
- HR strategy: how can we recruit people?

HR strategy is one of the functional silos. Whereas SHRM is focused on the alignment or fit between
the strategy of an organization and the HR strategy of that organization.




STRATEGY SCAN

Strategy scan is a tool that can be used to get an indication of the fit between HRM and the context of
an organization. The underlying assumption is that better fit leads to better performance (Boon,
2008)

1) The human resource strategy and practices -> HR related (e.g. selection & recruitment,
compensation & benefits, appraisal & performance management, development,
participation)
2) Configuration and organizational fit -> internal organization context (about history, culture,
ownership, technology and workforce)
3) The external general market context and strategic fit (market mechanisms that affect all the
organizations in a specific country or region)
- Macroeconomic situation (e.g. economic growth, increasing oil prices)
- Labour market situation (e.g. ageing population in NL, labour intensification)
4) The external population market context and strategic fit (market
mechanisms/developments that could influence an organization)
- e.g. competitors, technology development, market growth, maturity of the market
5) The external general institutional context and environmental or institutional fit
(institutional mechanisms that influence the organizations in a country)
- e.g. legislation, culture of a country, norms & values
6) The external population institutional context and environmental or institutional fit (specific
institutional mechanisms linked to their population; only affects your sector)
- Influence of unions and branch specific stakeholders (e.g. Greenpeace)

(About the above: general = all organizations in region; population = one specific organization)



Employability paradox = if, employers give their employees a training, the employers are afraid that
the employee will leave to the competitor with their new knowledge