Relationship between Strategic Management and Strategic Human Resource Management - Essay Example

Relationship between strategic management and strategic HRM A strategy is a process which directs an action towards a desired outcome. It might be a corporate, business, functional or an enterprise strategy. Corporate strategy is the business you ought to be engaged in while business strategy is the tactic to beat the prevailing competition. On the other hand, functional strategy is the operational methods employed in order to implement the tactics while enterprise strategy matches internal capabilities with external environment. Strategic management process is a full set of commitments, decisions and actions needed for an organization to attain strategic competitiveness and earn above average returns. Thus strategic management is the process by which firms analyze and learn from stakeholders inside and outside the firm, establish strategic direction, create strategies to help attain established goals and execute strategies to satisfy key organizational stakeholders. The process entails studying the external and internal environments to help in identification of marketplace opportunities and threats and thus help in determination of how to utilize core competencies and strategic intent to leverage resources, capabilities and core competencies to win competitive battles. This calls for integration and implementation of strategies while seeking feedback to improve strategies. Core competencies are created when resources and capabilities of a firm are valuable, rare, costly to imitate and non-substitutable. Studies have indicated that human resources can be core competencies of firm if managed well. Strategic human resource management conveys the sense of human resource management in a strategic context. This can only take place when there is some connection being made with the strategic process through which the aims of the firm are managed, that is, strategic management. Strategic human resource management is an approach which entails decision making based on the intentions of the firm concerning people essential components of the firm’s business strategy. It provides a relationship between the HRM and strategic management in the firm. Whereas strategic management entails a full set of commitments, decisions and actions needed for an organization to attain strategic competitiveness and earn above average returns, strategic HRM is the overall direction the firm wishes to pursue in attaining its objectives via people. This implies that without strategic human resources management, the strategic management cannot be attained fully. Strategic HRM is an approach which deals with long term issues facing people in the firm as part of strategic management thrust of the business. It covers macro-organizational concerns relating to structure and culture, organizational effectiveness and performance, matching resources to future business requirements and management of change. Both strategic management and strategic HRM support activities which gives a firm competitive strategy although strategic management covers all the activities in the firm which support this. On the other hand, strategic HRM is limited to HR activities which are used to support the firm’s competitive strategy. Therefore, at strategic level of organizations, strategic management and strategic Human Resource Management are inextricably linked. Job design Job design process entails definition of how work will be performed and the tasks that will be needed in a given job. Four job design approaches have been identified: the motivational–behaviorist approach; the mechanical approach; the biological, biomechanical, and ergonomics approach; and the perceptual-motor approach. The motivational–behaviorist approach lays focus on the job characteristics which affect t the psychological meaning and motivational potential and it visualizes attitudinal variables as the most important outcomes of job design. It focuses on increasing job complexity via job enlargement, job enrichment and construction of jobs around socio-technical systems. Skill variety, task identity, task significance, autonomy and feedback are job characteristics which determine the motivational potential of a job. They affect three psychological states of employees (experienced meaningfulness, responsibility, and knowledge of results). High job characteristics results in a high level of internal work motivation, higher quantity and quality of work, and higher levels of job satisfaction. For the positive effect to be attained, employees must have adequate levels of satisfaction with the work environment, the necessary ability to perform the job, and a need to grow. The mechanical approach stems its roots from the classical industrial engineering and it focuses on designing jobs around the concepts of task specialization, repetition and skill simplification. The approach is a modification of scientific management and it calls for the job to be designed very simply. Under this approach the firm reduces its need for high ability individuals and workers are easily replaceable without incurring much cost on training a new employ to perform the job quickly and inexpensively. The biological, biomechanical, and ergonomics approach comes from the study of body movements (biomechanics) and its is concerned with examination of the interface between physiological characteristics of individuals and the physical work environment. This approach aims at minimizing the physical strain on the workers by structuring the physical work environment around the way the body works. The approach tries to reduce outcomes such as aches and pains, fatigue, and health complaints. This approach has been applied in redesigning equipment to minimize occupational illness such as carpal tunnel syndrome and to minimize the physical demands to allow women to perform the jobs. The perceptual-motor approach originated from the human factors literature and it focuses on human mental capabilities and limitations. It aims at designing jobs in a way that ensures that they do not exceed the mental capabilities of people. This approach tries to improve safety, reliability and user reaction by designing jobs in a manner which reduces information-processing requirements of the job. Like mechanical approach, this approach strives to reduce cognitive demands for the job. Performance management Performance management is the systematic process by which a firm involves its employees, individually and as members of a group, in improving the effectiveness of the organization in the accomplishment of the firm’s mission and goals. Employees’ performance management entails planning work and setting expectations; continually monitoring performance; developing the capacity to perform; periodically rating performance in a summary fashion; and rewarding good performance. Planning work and setting expectations entails a clear way of communicating the work expected at the movement and upcoming work. This should also entail definition of the expectations of the employee to avoid cases where the employee is sidelined in the evaluation criteria. Planning work and setting expectations results in creation of a system of predictable rewards for good performance and consequences for poor performance. This allows the employee to reasonably assume the consequences of work performance. Continually monitoring performance involves consistent measurement of performance and pro vision of ongoing feedback to employees and work groups on their progress toward reaching their goals. This requires that firms perform progress reviews with employees where their performance is compared against their elements and standards. Continuous monitoring provides the opportunity to check how well employees are meeting the predetermined standards and to implement changes to unrealistic or problematic standards. This can also allow identification of unacceptable performance at any time during the appraisal process and necessary assistance provided to addresses such underperformance instead of waiting until the end of the year when summary rating levels are assigned. Developing the capacity to perform involves evaluation of employee developmental needs and addressing these needs. Development increases the capacity of employees to perform through training, provision of assignments which introduce new skills or higher level of responsibility or improvement of work processes. Good performance among employees is encouraged when they are given training and developmental opportunities. This also strengthens job related skills and competencies in addition to helping employees to keep up with changes in the workplace such as new technology introduction. When processes of performance management are carried out, an excellent opportunity is provided for identification of developmental needs. Thus during planning and monitoring of work, deficiencies in performance are identified and hence can be addressed. In addition, this allows identification of areas which can improve good performance and thus an action can be taken to help successful employees improve even further. Periodically rating performance of employees in a summary fashion allows firms to look at and compare performance over time or among various employees. this allows the firms to identify their best performers. Rating entails evaluation of the employee or group performance against elements and standards in an employee’s performance plan and assigning a summary rating of record. The firm’s appraisal program should have procedures against which rating of record is assigned.. rating of record is based on work performance during the entire period of appraisal. Rewarding entails recognition of employees, individually and as members of groups, for their performance and acknowledging their contribution to the firm’s mission. Good performance is recognized without waiting for nominations for formal awards to be solicited. It ought to be a continuous process. Most of actions that reward good performance such as saying “thank you” do not require a specific regulatory authority. However, awards regulations provide a wide range of forms that more formal rewards can take such as time off, cash and many none monetary rewards. When all these five components of management performance are effectively implemented in such a way that they work together and support each other they result in effective performance management. The stages of morality development Kohlberg’s stages of moral development breaks down our development of morality into three levels each of which is divided into two stages. The three levels are pre-conventional level which occurs from age zero to age nine; the conventional level which occurs from age nine to adolescence and post-conventional level. The pre-conventional morality has stage 1 (obedience and punishment orientation stage) and stage 2 (individualism and exchange stage). Stage is similar to Piaget’s first stage of moral thought. At this stage the child assumes that powerful authorities hand down a fixed set of rules which he or she must unquestioningly obey. Thus the child obeys the rules in order to avoid punishment, determines a sense of right and wrong by what is punished and what is not punished, obeys superior authority and allows that authority to make rules and is responsive to rules that will affect his/her physical well being. Children at Stage 2 recognize that there is not just one right view that is handed down by the authorities and that different individuals have different viewpoints. Since everything is relative, each person is free to pursue his or her individual interests. Children at this stage are motivated by vengeance, is self absorbed, believes in equal sharing regardless of need, believes that the end justifies the means, will do a favor only to get a favor and expects to be rewarded for every non selfish deed he/she does. The conventional level has stage 3 (good interpersonal relationship) and stage 4 (maintaining the social order). At stage 3 children see morality as more than simple deals. They believe that people should live up to the expectations of the family and community and behave in good ways. To them, good behavior implies having good motives and interpersonal feelings such as love, empathy, trust and concern for others. At stage 4, the individual becomes concerned more with society as a whole. At this stage emphasis is on obeying laws, respecting authority and performing one’s duties so that the social order is maintained. The post-conventional morality level has stage 5, stage 6 and stage 7. At stage 5 the individual is motivated by the belief in the greatest amount of good for greatest number of people. He believes in contracts in which both parties compromise yet both receive benefits through consensus rather than majority rule. An individual at this stage respects the rights of minority and believes that change in the law is possible but only through the system. At this stage the individual is at par with the official morality of the nation. At stage 6, the individual losses the ability to compromise high principles and thus may forfeit his/her life in order to uphold them. He/she believes that there are high moral principles than those held by social rules and customs. The individuals use passive resistance to disobey social rule that he or she has rejected and believes in granting justice and dignity to all human beings. At stage 7, an individual is a justice seeker in an unjust world and neglects any consideration for self. References Chandler, A. 1962. Strategy and structure: Chapters in the history of the industrial enterprise. London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Hyman, R. 1987. Strategy or structure? Capital, labour and control. Work Employment Society, vol. 1, no. 1, 25-55. Kohn, A. 1993. Punished by rewards: The trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A’s, praise, and other bribes. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. Quinlan, M., Bohle, P., and Lamm, F. 2010. Managing occupational health and safety: A multidisciplinary approach, 3rd Ed. Sydney: Palgrave Macmillan Smith, C. 2010. Go with the flow: Labour power mobility and labour process theory. Edited by Thompson, P. and Smith, C. Working life: Renewing labour process analysis. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Snell, R. Chapter 8: Managing ethically. Edited by Linstead, S., Fulop, L., and Lilley, S. Management and organization: A critical text. Pp. 356-393. Read More