Strategic Human Resourcing: Principles, Perspectives and Practices

Citation

Stephens, B. (2001), "Strategic Human Resourcing: Principles, Perspectives and Practices", Personnel Review, Vol. 30 No. 1, pp. 119-126. https://doi.org/10.1108/pr.2001.30.1.119.3

This book claims to provide a distinctive contribution to the literature on human resource management for three reasons. First, it is structured around a processual view of work organisations and of “human resource strategy‐making” – the basic perspective that frames all the contributions that follow. Second, each chapter is based on an examination of the principles, policies and practices of human resource management. “Principles” refers to the concepts that lie behind what managers do or seek to do. These principles are assumed to be manifest in different ways (“policies”), and in the processual approach adopted there is an emphasis on the choices that managers can make to deal with the employment relationship, albeit these choices are made within the context of various contingencies and constraints. The implementation of policy options arises through various “practices”. Third, the contributors reflect on the emergent trends in HRM that are to be found in a range of organisations, both in the UK and around the world.

Of the three reasons put forward in claiming a distinctive contribution, it would appear that the processual approach adopted is perhaps the main. The processual view is set out as an alternative to orthodox systems views of human resource strategy‐making, in contrast to the classical, rationalistic, top‐down mode of strategy‐making often assumed in (human resource) management texts. It lays an emphasis on notions of incrementalism and crafting, viewing HR strategy‐making not as a plan to be implemented but as “the pattern to be seen over time in the way management handles the human resources of effort, skill and capability that are needed for the organisation to continue in the long term”. It also emphasises the role of choices, values, politics, negotiation, and conflict.

“Strategy as pattern”, the view adopted here, recognises that strategies are seen as the outcomes of both planned and unplanned activities; that policies often emerge out of actions that have already taken place; and that strategy and implementation tend to happen simultaneously. The interplay of choice, chance and circumstance is stressed in shaping the emergent pattern of outcomes.

However, the search for fit between strategies and organisational contingencies, central to the orthodox views of strategy, still figures in this text. This search for fit is at two levels: vertical integration between the human resource strategy and the organisational context; and horizontal integration between different elements of HRM.

A further distinguishing feature claimed for the view of management adopted in this text is that human resource strategy is seen as a facet of the general managing of an organisation. It is therefore the concern of all managers, not just the activity of human resource specialists (though their particular contribution is acknowledged) nor one practised only by “top managers”. The term “human resourcing strategy” is preferred rather than the term HRM strategy as, it is argued, there cannot be an HRM strategy that stands outside of the overall organisational strategy.

The book is structured into five parts, each containing a number of chapters. The first chapter in Part 1 introduces the overall concepts used in the book and examines the strategic aspects of human resource management. The authors indicate that the processual approach, which underpins the rest of the book, will be developed in various ways, and with reference to a number of specific aspects of human resourcing, in subsequent contributions. Issues related to human resource planning (where the concept of strategic exchange is used to develop the processual view), the use of flexibility, and the international dimension of these issues are explored in subsequent chapters in Part 1.

Three chapters in Part 2 discuss human resourcing policies in practice through a consideration of: assessment, selection and evaluation (and the exchange approach based on negotiation); performance management; and performance pay (where analysing performance management as folklore is seen as allowing managers to craft relevant interpretations of their organisational and personal roles).

In Part 3, employee training and development and management development are examined in detail, in two separate chapters. Part 4 focuses on the law, ethics and equality management, with a chapter on each of these topics. Finally, in Part 5 there is a consideration of the employment relations dimensions of human resourcing through a discussion of employee participation and involvement, industrial conflict, and through an examination of industrial relations in the global automobile industry.

The editors’ comments in the introduction indicate that the processual approach is developed in various ways in subsequent contributions. An additional chapter to draw together these developments of their basic approach could therefore usefully have been included. Such a chapter might also usefully have discussed general issues associated with the management of change within a processual approach. There is only fleeting reference in the main body of the text to the developing literature and issues surrounding HRM as an ideal set of practices and HRM as bundles (configurational fit). Temptingly, but perhaps belatedly, the “Afterword” by Ward Griffiths, of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, refers to the work of Patterson et al. (1997), Huselid (1995) and Pfeffer (1998).

As noted earlier, the processual approach adopted emphasises notions of incrementalism and crafting, viewing HR strategy‐making not as a plan to be implemented but as “the pattern to be seen over time in the way management handles the human resources of effort, skill and capability that are needed for the organisation to continue in the long term”. Given this view, one might also expect more discussion of issues such as those surrounding the nurturing of tacit knowledge and its role in a resource‐based view of HRM.

Despite these observations, the text is “reader‐friendly”. Each chapter contains learning objectives, activities for the reader, definitions of key terms, chapter summaries, a case study, discussion points and a guide to further reading. The text is likely to be appropriate for its intended readership – personnel practitioners and line managers seeking to develop further their knowledge and understanding of current operational HR practice, as well as those studying on generalist management programmes such as the DMS or MBA, on specialist HRM courses and final year undergraduates.