Universalism in Human Resource Management Is Dead - Research Paper Example

Question One: Universalism in Human Resource Management is dead The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has been experiencing exponential growth across the globe and becoming popular among companies especially since the 1980s. This can be attributed to the realization of the contribution of human resource to the success of firms in different industries. Human Resource management can be defined as the various practices and strategies employed in the management of the workforce of an organization (Higgins & McAllaster, 2004). These include training employees, attracting new employees, assessing performance of the employees as well as rewarding employees based on their performance among other strategies. The last twenty five years have witnessed the field of human resource undergo huge changes in a bid to make it a scientific discipline with its own theories, assumptions and strategies. These developments led to the introduction of HRM in the MBA curriculum, leading to the discipline becoming a major part of business strategy development (Budhwar and Khatri, 2001). Questions began to emerge however regarding the nature of human resource management as a discipline with many scholars and businesses criticizing it for lacking in credible theoretical foundations. This led to development of Strategic Human Resource management (SHRM), a sub field of Human resource management that focuses on integrating the process of strategic management in to the field of human resource management. This led to development of three main theoretical perspectives or approaches in the discipline, namely universalistic, contingency and configurational approaches. The universalistic approach in Human resource management outlines the best practices in the field with the objective of encouraging application of those practices by companies and businesses across the globe and from different industries (Goodman & Truss, 2004). This perspective highlights the fact that there are some HRM practices that are certainly better than others. Companies should therefore focus on adopting these best strategies for their own success in implementation of their Human Resource Management strategies. Among some of the practices identified by the proponents of the universalistic Human resources perspective include seven strategies namely selective hiring, employment security, extensive hiring, self-management teams, extensive training, reduction of differences in status, information sharing and high salaries and wages based on the company’s performance. Universalists in Human Resource management believe that these strategies should be applied universally by all companies and that they are bound to lead to great success (Balogun, 2006). Another reason why Universalists promote the application of universal best practices is rooted in the scientific belief that the relationship between dependent and independent variable is always the same universally. It therefore does not matter where the industry is located of in which industry it is, since the relationship between human resource and success of the company is the same universally. In the second approach, the Contingency perspective, the application of Human Resource policies by any company must be consistent with the other policies and functions of the company. This perspective lays great emphasis on aligning HRM policies with company strategies bases on the ‘best fit’ policy (Lewin, & Peters, 2006). The best fit policy posits that there are some Human resource policies that will fit better with the strategic functions and goals of the company. The company should therefore implement only those HR policies that better fit or merge with their general company strategies, policies and functions. Human Resource policies should be able to relate well with the companies lifecycle in order for them to be successful. Proponents of this perspective therefore suggest that companies should not implement Human Resource strategies simply because they work for other companies or because they are regarded as universal principles. Different companies have different operating external and internal environments. It is therefore not prudent to implement strategies that work well for companies in other environments (Ogbonna, E. & Wilkinson, B. 2003). The contingency perspective requires companies to customize various HRM policies and strategies to merge with their operating environment and best fit with the company’s functions and strategies. This approach therefore calls for longer human resource planning by companies, development of employee skills and promotion strategies among other strategies that should be customized by companies in order to achieve unprecedented success with Human resource management. The third main theoretical perspective in human Resource management is the Configurational perspective. Unlike the Universalistic and the contingency approaches, this perspective calls for a simultaneous fit between the external and the internal environments, the company’s business strategy and the Human resource strategy of a company (Paauwe & Boselie, 2003). This perspective implies that there is an interaction between the Human resource strategy and the business strategy of a company depending on the context or the environment within which the organization is. This perspective lays emphasis on a holistic approach in development of Human resource strategies by companies. The configurational perspective is more concerned with structure and pattern of human resource practices and how these practices can be relied upon to improve performance of organizations and companies. Just like the contingency approach, this perspective tries to match the policies of the organization, its structure, functions, and processes with strategical issues in human resource management. This perspective is also referred to as bundling by some Human Resource Scholars. This implies that an organization can imply more than one HRM strategies and practices in such a manner that they all complement each other (Paauwe & Boselie, 2003). For instance, a company can conduct employee training strategy and employee motivation strategy at the same time in order to improve the overall productivity of the firm. With these three human resource management perspectives in mind, it is important to note that there are very competing views in general in the field of human resource regarding which perspectives and theories should be used by companies. This has led to continued criticism of the HRM field as lacking in proper guidelines that can be used by companies to ensure greater success. There is need for Human resource scholars to identify the best strategies that can ensure success among companies in the contemporary world that is characterized with high competition and an ever changing environment. This led to shifting focus on those perspectives that can help both startups and established companies to be successful with their human resources management. The two main competing movements in the last few decades are the Universalists and the proponents of the contingency perspective. The Universal perspective has been predominant in Human resource management for a very long time but recent years have seen the contingency approach gain in popularity. As a result, recent scholars have been forced to raise the question as to whether there are any universal concepts, practices and strategies in human resource management that can be implements by all firms universally successfully. The Lincoln Electricity Company in the Unites States of America can be used as a good case study to illustrate the ineffectiveness of the universal principles of human resource management. The company had been very successful with its Human resource strategy for over a hundred years in which the company expanded to become one of the biggest companies in America (Purcell & Hutchinson, 2007). The company felt the need to expand to other markets on the global scene and ventured in Europe, Japan and in Latin American during the 1980s when America was experiencing a deep recession. While in these new markets, the company attempted to apply the same HR strategies that had been successful for them in America and which had been regarded as being universal principles (Paauwe & Boselie, 2003). The company began to experience difficulties implementing these strategies in these markets and after a few years, the company was almost on the brink of bankruptcy after loss making ventures internationally. This can be attributed to the failure of their Human resource strategy that had led to employment of managers that did not have experience in international markets. The company survived only after it changed its strategy to take in to account the new markets and the objectives of operating in these markets. As such it became important to link the HR strategy with the organization’s goals and objectives in the new environments, thus the failure of universalistic approach and the rise of the contingency perspective in Human resource management. Following the prospects of the Lincoln Electricity Company, it became clear that the strategies that were considered to be universal could not hold for all companies. In the contemporary world, different businesses have different goals and objectives and they employ different strategies to meet these objectives depending on the amount of resources available to them, their industries and their business environment (Ogbonna & Wilkinson, 2003). There can therefore be no universal concepts that can result in the same results for all companies. The universalistic approach is therefore faulty and cannot be implemented on the universal scale. It is however important to note that the concepts promoted by Universalists as being the best practices in HRM are not bad in themselves, but rather it is the idea that these concepts ought to be applied universally that is wrong. The seven HRM strategies identified by Universalist, for instance, can be very effective for some companies, only that they cannot be considered as universal concepts that ought to be applied by all companies in order for them to be successful. Even in the case of one company trying to apply these concepts and strategies in different markets internationally like in the case of Lincoln Electricity Company, they ended up leading to different and undesired results (Ogbonna & Wilkinson, 2003). There are very many successful companies across the globe today. Most of these companies link their success with their HR strategy as the main contributing factor. The importance of human resource in the success of firms cannot therefore be underestimated. The question however is would all these firms experience similar success if the implemented the same HRM strategy based on the so called ‘best practices’ posited in the Universalistic perspective? Recent research indicates that this would not be the case since the success of the human resource strategies of these companies has been shown to be dependent on how well the companies fit the strategies in their functions and business strategies and objectives. Companies and businesses should be more encouraged to compare how various HR strategies can merge with their business strategies and decide on which strategies best fit in to their functions and strategies. This in effect is the Contingency perspective. The contingence perspective has risen to prominence in the last few years and has proved to be successful to many companies across the globe. Despite realizing that there may be some HR practices that are better than others, businesses should try to determine which of these strategies best fits in their goals and business functions and strategies. Blind implementation of the ‘best practices’ identified by proponents of the universal theoretical model can lead to very adverse effects. The concepts of contingency theoretical perspective echo out the main objectives of the emerging sub-field of Human resource management, the Strategic Human Resource management (SHRM). SHRM is mainly concerned with linking and integrating contemporary practices in Human resource management in to the business strategies of various companies and supporting the adaptation of human resource management at all levels in the organizational structure of a firm (Higgins & McAllaster, 2004). It is therefore important for firms to integrate HR practices with their business strategies in order to achieve huge success in their functions and business operations both in the short and long run. Given the contemporary market demands and the pressure for companies to improve their performances in order to catch up with competition and the ever changing environment, the concept of universalism in Human Resource Management can be considered dead and cannot therefore hold. Therefore, there cannot be any other argument that any scholar or manager can put forward in favor of the current models and strategies that are being considered as the ‘best practices’ in Human resource Management (HRM). Contemporary scholars and specialists in Human Resource should act only on the basis that any strategy or policy that ought to be adopted in HRM by any company should be based on the contingency of the specific policies and the competitive contexts of the company. The concept of Universalism in Human Resource management is therefore dead. References Balogun, J. 2006. ‘Managing change: Steering a course between intended strategies and unanticipated outcomes’, Long Range Planning, 39(1): 29-49. Budhwar, P. and Khatri, P. 2001. HRM in Context: The applicability of HRM models in India. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 1(3): 333–356. Goodman, J. & Truss, C. 2004. ‘The medium and the message: communicating effectively during and major organisational change’,Journal of Change Management, 4(3): 217-228 Higgins, J. M. & McAllaster, C. 2004. If you want strategic change, don't forget to change your Cultural artifacts. Journal of Change Management, 4(1): 63-73. Lewin, A. Y. & Peters, C. 2006. ‘Offshoring Work: Business Hype or the Onset of Fundamental Transformation’, Long Range Planning, Vol 39, pp 221-239. Ogbonna, E. & Wilkinson, B. 2003. ‘The false promise of organizational culture change: a case study of middle managers in grocery retailing’, Journal of Management Studies 40(5): 1151-1178. Paauwe & Boselie, 2003. Challenging (strategic) human resource management and the relevance of institutional setting, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 56-70. Purcell, J & Hutchinson, S. 2007. ‘Front-line managers as agents in the HRM-performance causal chain: theory, analysis and evidence, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 17 (1): 3-20. Read More