Strategic Human Resource Management
Lectures
Lecture 1
Human Resource Management
Expresses not only personal, but also the resources of personal.
Strategic Human Resource
Deals with alignment between individual goals and organizational goals.
The more educated the people (when money is not an issue any more) than the drive is
meaningfulness and purposefulness.
“Employees matter and the management of employees (Human Resource Management) is a
potential source for achieving organizational goals”
Strategic Human Resource Management in the 21st Century
• Impact of organizational change.
• Competitiveness.
• Three perspectives
- MHRM: Power Distance, very low acceptable in the Netherlands, very equal.
- IHRM.
- SHRM: align micro focus with organizational level.
• Stakeholder perspective: team members, labor market, society. Across the globe, institutional
pressure is very di erent.
• Balanced approach.
Organizational change
• Acquisitions.
• Mergers.
• Reorganizations.
• Strategic alliances.
• Private equity interventions.
• Global crisis.
• Financial crisis.
• Aging population.
This has impact on organizations and impact on employees.
Organizational Change and Competitive Advantage
The relevance of optimal coping with change is embedded in the concept of competitive
advantage.
Competitive advantage
• Is important for organizational survival.
• And is at least partly manageable by Human Resource Management.
Three HRM perspectives
• Micro HRM - MHRM.
• International HRM - IHRM.
• Strategic HRM - SHRM.
Micro HRM (MHRM)
Micro HRM (MHRM) covers the sub functions of HR policy and practice including:
• Recruitment and selection.
• Induction and socialization.
• Training and development.
MHRM is closely related to the studies in Organizational Behavior and Occupational Psychology
often focused on the impact of single HR practices on employee attitudes and behaviors.
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, International HRM (IHRM)
International HRM (IHRM) is concerned with HRM in multinational companies (MNCs) and HRM
across borders. IHRM is focused on issues such as the transferability of HR practices across
business units in di erent countries, the optimal management of expatriates and the impact of
di erent institutional country contexts on Human Resource Management.
Strategic HRM (SHRM)
Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) focuses on issues of linking HRM to the
business strategy, designing high performance work systems and adding value through good
people management in an attempt to gain sustained competitive advantage. The concept of ‘ t’
plays a central role within SHRM.
Three perspectives in studying SHRM practices
• A multi-actor perspective (multiple stakeholders including employees, managers, HR
professionals, work councils, trade unions, top management, shareholders, nanciers and
government).
• A broad societal view with an emphasis on di erent institutional contexts, for example, on the
level of branches of industry, regions and countries.
• A multi-level perspective including the individual employee perspective and the strategic
organizational perspective.
Boxall & Purcell (2008)
• HRM covers all workforce groups, including core employees, peripheral employees and
contingent workers.
• HRM involves line and specialist managers, and is not solely aimed at employees.
• HRM is al about managing work and people, collectively and individually.
• HRM is embedded in industries and societies.
HRM needs to be focused on each employee (ook schoonmakers).
The balances approach
In the strategic balance model, organizational succes can only be achieved when nancial
performance and societal performance of an organization are above average in the particular
population in which the organization is operating (Deephouse, 1999).
The balanced approach in HRM
• Goals of the individual employee.
• Organizational goals.
• Societal goals.
Lecture 2
SHRM
• The more t (alignment), the better.
• How does the environment impact the organization.
• What is relevant in light of our purpose (why), mission (how) and vision (what)?
- Deze moet je in acht nemen bij het opstellen van een strategie.
• Enactment is needed.
• Mis ts cost a lot of money and reduce individual and societal well-being.
Fit-theory: understanding ‘the shaping of employment relations and (s)hrm in relation to
performance’
Multiple ts in SHRM
• Internal/ horizontal t.
• Vertical/ strategic t.
• Institutional t.
• Organizational t.
• Person-environment t (hoofdstuk 7).
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,Understanding the concept of strategy
• Strategy: an organization’s intention to achieve certain goals through planned alignment (or t)
between the organization and its environment.
- Goal-based strategy based on the organization’s vision (what) and mission (how) (inspired by
its purpose, beliefs and values = why).
- Strategic formulation is the process of forging a cohesive integrated set of strategies
designed to deal with the environment and achieve the business strategic goals.
- Strategy implementation is the actions the organization takes to execute the strategy it has
formulated.
Sectors of external environment
• The general environment: political climate, social trends, demographic trends, national culture,
regional culture.
• The business environment/ the population environment: the economy, customers, suppliers,
competitions, nancial markets, government regulations, technology.
SWOT analysis based on population or organizational elds
Organizational eld: “A community of organizations that partakes of a common meaning system
and whose participants interact more frequently and fatefully with one another than with actors
outside the eld (Scott, 1995, p. 6)”
• Should organizations take a broader view on the environment?
Strategic Management Process
1. Environmental scanning and analysis.
2. SWOT.
3. Strategy formulation.
4. Strategy implementation.
Functional silos
• Competitive strategy: markets to enter and
how to compete them?
• Financial strategy: how to fund the
business?
• Operational strategy: which supplies,
technology and methods?
• HR strategy: how to recruit, organize,
develop and motivate people?
Strategic or vertical t: four linkages
Alignment overal business strategy and the HR
strategy
• Administrative linkage.
• One-way linkage.
• Two-way linkage.
• Integrative linkage (ideal situation): strategy
and HRM. HRM is an equal player in
strategy development. HRM should be at
the table. They go together en discuss
together.
Strategic Choice or Agency
Extent of strategic choice available to rms?
5. Hyper-determinism.
6. Hyper-voluntarism.
Boxal and Purcell (2008): “ rms are neither fully constrained by their environment nor fully able to
create it”.
Oliver (1997): “organizations not only comply to (pressures from) their environments, but also
change these!
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, Historical background of the Six Component Model: Boselie’s HR Strategy Scan
The ‘Dutch school’ of contextual HRM
The Harvard versus Michigan approach
Beer
• Normative value based
framework.
• Strategic value proposition:
(meaningful work).
• Wider, more contextual,
multilayered approach
founded on long-term needs
of multiple stakeholders.
• Constant enactment of
organizational environment.
Also institutional mechanisms a ect HRM!
The six component models combines the market approach (how can we compete in the market?
What are the development? Labour market) and institutional approach. Institutions are values,
routines, norms and values that might be formalized or present in norms and behaviors of others,
Why do organizations look like each other? - isomorphism
• Coercive pressure: result from formal rules.
Coercive pressure imposes rules and
regulations on organizations that you have
to obey.
• Normative pressure: shared norms and
values that a ect HRM practices (through
particular professional groups).
• Mimetic pressure: organizations don’t know
the best way to act and then they copy the
methods from successful organization.
This institutional approach is corporated in the
model of Boselie.
The contextually-based HR theory
• Dominant coalition of stakeholders that have room to play around (have a say) in the HRM
strategy.
- Cultural heritage: path dependency.
- The systems a ect how you develop your HRM.
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