HRM: Strategy and Practice

COURSE OBJECTIVES
This course aims :
To enable the students to understand the HR Management
CO1: and system at various levels in general and in certain
specific industries or organizations.

To help the students focus on and analyze the issues and

CO2: strategies required to select and develop manpower
resources

To develop relevant research skills necessary for

CO3:
application in HR related issues.

To Enable the students to integrate the understanding of

various theoretical and practical HR concepts along with
CO4:
the domain concept in order to take correct business
decisions
 COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES
The students will be able to:
Develop an understanding of SHRM by examining the
CLO1:
various models of SHRM outlines in the literature.
Critically evaluate selected human resource practices in an
CLO2: organizational context utilizing relevant theoretical
frameworks.
Identify and appraise the ethical issues relating to being a
CLO3:
good employer.
Critically evaluate the advice that human resource
CLO4: practitioners would provide to managers of people in
organizations.
Understand the importance of thinking strategically about
CLO5: HRM from different theoretical perspective and the
implications for the role of HR professionals.
 What is Management ?
The process of Planning, Organizing,
Leading and Controlling
organizational resources to achieve
organizational goals
 Planning
Goals
Objectives
Strategies
Plans

Controlling Organizing
Standards Assurance Structure
Measurements
Human Resource
Comparisons
Management
Actions
Leading
Motivation
Leadership
Communication
Individual and
Group Behavior
Levels of Managers

Top
Managers

Middle
Managers

First-line
Managers
In Organizations…..
 Organizational Behavior

Systematic Study of how people

behave in organizations

OR
The field of Organizational Behavior
has developed to help us better
understand the behavior of
individuals and Groups
 Performance
Appraisal
Communication

Work
Design
Organizational
Structure

Jobs
Human
Behavior
Basic OB Model

Organization level

Group level

Individual level
  
Overview of HRM
Human Resource Management (HRM) is the design of
formal systems in an organization to ensure effective
and efficient use of human talent to accomplish
organizational goals.
 Human Resource Management (HRM) refers
to the policies, practices, and systems that
influence employees behavior, attitudes,
and performance.
Overall purpose of HRM is to ensure that the organization
is able to achieve success through people.
Human Resource Management Process
 Basic HR Concepts
• The bottom line of managing:
Getting results
• HR creates value by engaging in activities that
produce the employee behaviors that the
organization needs to achieve its strategic goals.
• Looking ahead: Using evidence-based HRM to
measure the value of HR activities in achieving
those goals.
 Line and Staff Aspects of HRM
• Line Manager
– Is authorized (has line authority) to direct the
work of subordinates and is responsible for
accomplishing the organization’s tasks.
• Staff Manager
– Assists and advises line managers.
– Has functional authority to coordinate
personnel activities and enforce organization
policies.
 Strategy
• Faulkner and Johnson (1992), strategy is concerned with
long term direction and scope of an organization, with
matches its resources to its changing environment.
• Strategy is a statement of what the organization wants to
become, where to go and how it means to get there.
– Competitive advantage – firm creating value for its customers by
differentiation
– Distinctive capabilities – characteristics that cannot be replicated
by competitors
– Strategic fit – matching organizational competences (internal
resources and skills) with the opportunities and risks created by
environmental change
 Human
Humans are uniquely adept / skillful at utilizing
systems of symbolic communication (such as
language and art) for self-expression and the
exchange of ideas, and for organizing
themselves into purposeful groups.
 Resource
A resource must add value to the organization,
it must be rare, it must be inimitable and there
must be no adequate alternates for the resource
(Barney, 1991). Human resources add
definitive value to the firms in the shape of
providing the firm with a competitive edge in
their environment.
 Management

The process of Planning, Organizing,

Leading and Controlling organizational
resources to achieve organizational goals.
 The Objectives of HRM
• The overall purpose of HRM is to ensure that the
organization is able to achieve success through people.
HRM aims to increase organizational effectiveness and
capability – the capacity of an organization to achieve its
goals by making the best use of the resources available to
it. Ulrich and Lake (1990) remarked that: ‘HRM systems
can be the source of organizational capabilities that allow
firms to learn and capitalize on new opportunities.’ But
HRM has an ethical dimension which means that it must
also be concerned with the rights and needs of people in
organizations through the exercise of social
responsibility.
 Theories of HRM
1. Contingency theory – HRM is influenced by the organization’s
environment and circumstances (Legge, 1978).
2. The RBV– HRM delivers added value through the strategic
development of the organization’s rare, hard to imitate and hard to
substitute human resources (Barney, 1991, 1995).
3. AMO theory – the formula Performance = Ability + Motivation +
Opportunity to Participate provides the basis for developing HR
systems that attend to employees’ interests, namely their skill
requirements, motivations and the quality of their job (Appelbaum
et al, 2000; Bailey et al,2001; Boxall and Purcell, 2003).
 The Hard and Soft HRM
• A distinction was made by Storey (1989) between
the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ versions of HRM. The hard
version emphasizes that people are important
resources through which organizations achieve
competitive advantage. These resources have
therefore to be acquired, developed and deployed in
ways that will benefit the organization. The focus is
on the quantitative, calculative and business-
strategic aspects of managing human resources in as
‘rational’ a way as for any other economic factor.
The soft version of HRM has its roots in humanism – an
approach devoted to human interests that views people
as responsible and progressive beings. It also traces its
origins to the human relations school founded by Elton
Mayo (1933), which believed that productivity was
directly related to job satisfaction and that the output of
people will be high if they like their co-workers and are
given pleasant supervision. But this is a fairly remote
connection. The soft version of HRM as described by
Storey (1989) involves ‘treating employees as valued
assets, a source of competitive advantage through their
commitment, adaptability and high quality (of skills,
performance and so on)’.
• The soft approach to HRM stresses the need to gain
the commitment (the ‘hearts and minds’) of
employees through involvement, communication,
leadership and other methods of developing a high-
commitment, high-trust organization. Attention is
also drawn to the key role of organizational culture.
• In 1998, Karen Legge defined the ‘hard’ model of
HRM as a process emphasizing ‘the close integration
of HR policies with business strategy which regards
employees as a resource to be managed in the same
rational way as any other resource being exploited for
maximum return’. In contrast, the soft version of
HRM sees employees as ‘valued assets and as a source
of competitive advantage through their commitment,
adaptability and high level of skills and performance’.
Why HRM is important:
– The success organization comes from successfully
implementing strategy and that the ability to implement
strategy comes from the organization’s people.
– High commitment management leads higher
productivity, smarter productivity and increasing
responsibility at lower organizational levels.
– HRM as a variety of task need the organization
understanding the strategy and should be performed in
a way that helps company deal effectively with any
environmental force and competition to ensure achieve
its goals and objectives.