Is Strategic Human Resource Management Real - Literature review Example

TRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IS REAL The change of business environment and stiff competitive in recruiting and retaining higher calibre of employees has lead to an increased dependent on employees in the performance of the organisation. Therefore, effective human resource management needs to adopt effective and efficient management of workers of organisation, for instance at a macro level, human resource management plays an important role in shaping the organisation’s culture, policies and practices. If the organisation’s management fails to effectively manage and retain their best their employees, the overall performance of the organization stagnates or fails altogether because the success of any organization depends on the performance of its employees. The human resource manager has to simultaneously re-defining his/her role to face the challenges and sound strategies of recruiting, training and retaining the best employees, so as to maintain competitiveness of the organisation in the globalized market. The human resource management has been changed dramatically in the organizations due to stiff competition, which has resulted in adaptation of new techniques and concepts. The main objective of adaptation of strategic HRM is to utilize the human resources in the optimum level, so as to maximize employees’ performance (Ajit, 2012). This paper will analyse how strategic human resource is important to an organization. Through the use of the understanding of the organization’s culture, policies and practices, the recruits, trains, retains and rewards its best employees. Use of competence models to explain how strategic human resource management is important in the times of changing social and economic balance among communities plus the stride made in the implementation of strategic human management. One of the main factors for developing effective HRM strategies is through having a common understanding about the organization policies, culture and practices in dynamic global markets. According to Diefenbach, the development of human resource involves the learning process and development of function of the organisation policies being relied upon to contribute more at a strategic level (Diefenbach, 2009). The strategic partner model proposes realignment between development of human resource and the line managers to facilitate the achievement of the organisational performance goals (Peterson, 2008). Finding a healthy balance between employee’s and organization’s goals has implications for the development of a variety of HR policies and tools, for instance, on the micro level, vertical integration of HRM refers not only to the external forces helping to shape HR, but also to the links between HR, wider organisational strategy and the management of an organisation as a whole. Whereas vertical integration of strategic HRM emphasises the importance of HRM realignment with an organisation’s priorities and its external context, while the horizontal integration underlines the fit between different HR policies, practices and the degrees to which they support or contradict each other. The rationale behind the strategic HRM thinking is that by integrating HRM with the strategy of the organization and by applying particular sets of human resource practices and policies, management of employees will be more effectively, and performance of the organization will improve (Farnham, 2010). Operating as a link between resources and the dynamic organization’s environment, dynamic capabilities of the organization assist in employing, training, retaining and reconditioning the critical human resource mix thereby sustaining the organization’s competitive advantage (Festing and Eidems, 2011). The concept of strategic human resource management it is real and has played a major part in the research and practice of management in the past three decades. HR issues are a shared responsibility of different actors within administration even argues that constituting and renewing the top team should be regarded as the most strategic concern of all in HRM particular importance. Lack of continuity due to changing governments and political priorities may contribute to the mixed signals about the importance of public service HRM efforts (Boxall and Purcell, 2011). The broader changes in social, economic, political and organization context have contributed into the origins and changes in HRM theories and practices. Strategic HRM arose in the 80s in an effort to restore the competitiveness of American industry. Through the globalisation and international trade, there is more competition, market dynamism, uncertainty and pressure for flexibility, has the major contributing factor for the increasing adaptation of strategic HRM policies and practices (Millmore et al., 2007). The strides made on personnel recruitment, training and management front as lead into development of strategic HRM, which is now viewed as a growing branch of HR managers and their increased desire to be strategic in managing human resource at the recruitment, retaining, appraisal, motivation and training level of an organization (Gooderham and Nordhaug, 2011). On the macro level, vertical fit assumes the presence of an organization-service-wide HR strategy and to provide a framework for designing, steering and coordinating micro-level strategic HRM policies and practices in individual organisations. Better co-ordination could help to prevent the introduction of conflicting regulations and policies by different regulatory organisations. Though in the absence of a broad consensus on the reforms of realigning HR and the development of line managers as means of filling the strategic vacuum and bring about necessary changes on HRM (Meyer-Sahling, 2011). The use of competency models as an integrative force between HR planning, recruitment, development and appraisals has been used, to indicate that strategic HRM is real and is being applied in various countries (Järvalt,(2007). According to the model, every line manager at any level of the organisation is having an important role in building up the strategic role of the HR function and contributing to the commitment of employees to better performance. Given these expectations, the move from centralised to decentralised decision-making and control has become a prominent issue. On the micro level of public service, line managers’ ownership of HRM and to the division of roles between HR professionals and managers in individual organisations has impacted the introduction and development of strategic human resource management. On the other hand macro level, strategic HRM includes the top officials’ ownership of HRM and their commitment to public service-wide HR strategy, support of political leaders to public service HR strategy and the strategic role of the coordinating institution (Meyer and Hammerschmid, 2010). According to Van Buren and company, suggested that giving best management practices from the universalistic perspective tends to ignore different contexts in which strategic HRM operates. The main problems of both the contingency and the configurationally perspectives, however, are related to the static, top-down and managerialist approach to defining strategies (Van Buren et al., 2011). The function is assumed to take a prominent position and a more pro-active role in developing organisations and their human resources. Various studies conducted in the private sector have even suggested that whether there is an HR professional in top management team could be a measure for assessing the strategic importance of HRM (Kazlauskaitė and Bučiūnienė, 2010). HR attempts to make it strategic by seeking to accomplish organisational goals and by acting as catalysts for HR efforts have also received some criticism. Due to the strategic and resource factors in HRM activities at times it appears that the human element has been neglected. Argue that until the facilitating and enabling role of HRM is understood and links are made between HRM and organisational outcomes of HRM will continue to be seen as an administrative function vulnerable to financial constraints in difficult times. The configurational perspective holds that coherence of HR practices is equally important and that unique mutually compatible HR practices have a positive effect on organisational performance. Considering the chronological development of strategic HRM literature, it could be argued that during the 80s, research was mainly conceptual where several theoretical foundations were established (Lengnick-Hall et al., 2009). The uneven development of public service HRM implies that there are organisations which do not yet understand the real value of the strategic approach, and they may need the necessary impulse from outside. For gaining this stimulus to understand the importance of HR function and also to enhance the capability for creating strategic HR systems, horizontal cooperation networks of HR professionals and managers could more soundly be used (Uus, 2007). Argue that a large part of the difficulties experienced in the quality of employee relations in the public sector occurs because governments change frequently, introducing new philosophies, policy requirements and senior leaders. The strategic HRM imperative has risen HRM’s positioning in organisational decision making processes: is now an expectation rather than an aspiration for senior HR managers. Strategic HRM, being more organisation-focused and fewer employees focused, creates a set of ethical implications for HR professionals as not all employees may be considered strategic. The organisations’ now demands for efficiency and drive for quality, HRM owes its momentum to technological developments, to changing values and increased workforce diversity. An increasing number of empirical studies analyse the effect of strategic human resource management on organisational performance at the empirical and conceptual level. In analysing the influence of these models that complements the others by adding recruitment, variables or relationships. Despite different approaches, this studies concludes that to simply rely on what strategies are stated rather than what strategies are in place, lead to ineffective implementation as well as ambiguous results in HRM has a positive effect on work performance, even though the size of the effects are often relatively small. Additionally, if there are different perceptions of strategic HRM among top management and line managers, ambiguous messages are usually communicated to downward in the implementation of strategic HRM, hence undermining the implementation of HRM policies and practices that would have otherwise improved the employees’ performance tremendously (Paauwe, 2009). Wright argues that Strategic Human Resource Development (SHRD) facilitates the development of core capabilities that are critical in developing and maintaining sustained competitive advantage, and the strategic model (Wright, 2008). Gavaran’s empirical analysis, which identified a complex and multilayered relationship that exist between various stakeholders, who are involved in the implementation of SHRD policies in an organization; where senior management, line managers and employees align their goals to those of the organization resulting in a cohesive organisational strategy in the fight to stay competitive. Therefore, it is imperative to develop dynamic capabilities to deal with future changes and uncertainties (Garavan, 2007). On one hand, organizations’ must develop human resource competency for the present, while on the other, they must train and increase human resource capabilities for the future in order to meet ever increasing demands of human resources personnel’. It must be highlighted that dynamicism in human resource development and capabilities, which is the major contributing factor in an organization’s ability to achieve, to remain competitive, given its market positioning and unknown interdependent paths (Chaio et al., 2010). So in the service industries, there is a need for performance indicators that are easy to practices, implement and can actually improve the perception of employees, in terms of changes in their attitudes, behaviour, and subsequent changes in outcomes at the organisational performance level. There is a growing recognition that intended strategic human resource management policies and practices may be different from the practiced one, as indicated in the human resource development model. These do suggest that expectations on the role of line manager are changing as organizations are striving to make the HRD function leaner and more strategic so as to have an added competitive advantage over their competitors. In this context, line managers are increasingly held responsible, accountable for human resource development and there being strategically positioned (Šiugždinien, 2008). Conclusion The strategic human resource development is real as can be seen from the arguments above, there a number or research that have been done in order to assess the impact of strategic human resource adaptation by various organization and countries, and it have been found out that those organizations or country who have adopted strategic human resource management have prospered more than their counterparts who are yet to apply these policies and practices. Since World War II, Japanese companies performed better because they adopted quality assurance policies to all their products, when other nations were not applying them and they fared well international, until the American companies too started adopting good manufacturing practices. With the resultant competition among these two major industrial plays lead to the advent of human resource development, which in turn lead to strategic human resource development. Strategic human resource would be understood by first understanding of the organization policies, culture and practices of an organization, through the finding of a healthy balance between employee’s and organization’s goals. HR issues are a shared responsibility of different stakeholders in an organization. There are a quite a number of strides made on the use of competency models in the recruitment, training and management, to indicate that strategic HRM is real and is being applied in various organization worldwide. The configurational perspective holds that HR practices have a positive effect on organisational performance and strategic Human Resource Development (SHRD) facilitates the development of core policies and practices that are critical in developing and maintaining sustained competitive advantage. 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