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.

  1. Energy depletion process
  2. Motivational process
  3. 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

  1. HR architecture (Lepak&Snelle): differentiated based on uniqueness and added value of human capital
  1. 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

  1. Added value (Ulrich) (strategic vs. operational focus): strategic partner, administrative expert, employee champion and change agent
  1. 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