Strategic HRM:
HRM → org. performance
How/why: Black-box debate
When: Contingency perspective
For whom: Dark-side perspective
Who: HR devolution
For whom: Differentiated workforce
Theory behind HRM-performance link
Resource-based view
AMO-framework Appelbaum
SHRM process model (Nishii&Wright)
Barney: valuable, rare, inimitable, non-substitutable
Boxall: Human capital & human process advantage
Ability: human capital theory
Motivation: social exchange theory
Opportunity: empowerment theory
Disconnection between actual and perceived HRM
Difference in exposure & perception to HR
Best practice vs best fit (contingency) debate
Contingency: suggest that effectiveness of hrm policies and practices varies among different context and situation → internal and external factors need to be taken into account when designing HR practices.
Types of fit (Wood; Peccei&van de Voorde): internal, strategic, organizational, and environmental
Mutual gains vs. critical (dark-side) perspective
Mutual gains: suggests that organizations implement hrm with the goal of enhancing positive employee experiences and work attitudes, thus resulting in more favorable employee outcomes, which positively impacts organizational performance
Dark-side (Van de Voorde): suggest that HRM almost always emerges as increased control and communicates high performance expectations to employees.
Labour process theory: fundamental conflict between the interests of owners and those of employees. HRM policies and practices that maximize shareholders gains do so at the expense of employees
Work intensification theory (Ramsay): driven by asumption that managers are considently driven by ways to make employees work longer and harder, as a means to maximize labour input
Occupational health psychology: How employees experience their work environment, and how these experiences influence their well-being.
- Energy depletion process
- Motivational process
- Job resource as buffer of health impairment process
Workforce differentiation: Idea that you don't invest equally in all your employees but that you do disproportionally invest in some employees
Two differentiation approaches
- HR architecture (Lepak&Snelle): differentiated based on uniqueness and added value of human capital
- Differentiated workforce approach (Huselid&Becker): focuses on the role of employees in achieving strategic value
A-position (Huselid et al): direct strategic impact
Stages: one size fits all, generic fit, differentiate by strategic capability, and differentiate by jobs within strategic capabilities
Approaches to improve HR function
- Added value (Ulrich) (strategic vs. operational focus): strategic partner, administrative expert, employee champion and change agent
- Strategic involvement (Wood): administrative, one-way, two-way, intergrative-way linkage
Storey's typology of personnel roles
Strategic/tactical vs (non-)inventionary: changemakers, advisors, handmaidens, regulators