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Theoretical perspectives for strategic human resource management
К содержанию номера журнала: Вестник КАСУ №4 - 2008
Автор: Богун Анастасия Юрьевна
The past decade has seen an increasing
interest in the strategic management of organizations. Numerous models of
strategic management have been proposed. This interest in strategic management
has resulted in various organizational functions becoming more concerned with
their role in the strategic management process. The Human Resource Management
(HRM) field has similarly sought to become integrated into the strategic
management process through the development of a new discipline referred to as
Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM).
Theoretical Models of HRM
Resource-based view of the firm. The most
recent entry into the theoretical discussions of strategic human resource
management comes from the organizational economics and strategic management
literature and has been coined the resource-based view of the firm. Since the
birth of strategy as a recognized area in the field of management, industrial
organization strategists have relied primarily on a single framework
(strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) to structure their research.
Major contributions to the strategy literature have centered around the
extenally focused portions of this competitive advantage model. Due to the
dissatisfaction with the static, equilibrium model of industrial organization
economics that has dominated the strategy field. This resource-based view of
competitive advantage differs from the traditional strategy paradigm in that
the emphasis of the resource-based view of competitive advantage is on the link
between strategy and the internal resources of the firm. The resource-based
view of competitive advantage is firm-focused whereas the traditional strategic
analysis paradigm has had an industry-environment focus. Central to the
understanding of the resource-based view of the firm are the definitions of
competitive advantage and sustained competitive advantage. Barney describes a
competitive advantage as when a firm is implementing a value creating strategy
not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors. A
sustained competitive advantage exists only after efforts to replicate that
advantage have ceased. According to the resource-based view of the firm,
competitive advantage can only occur in situations of firm resource
heterogeneity and firm resource immobility, and it is these assumptions that
serve to differentiate the resource-based model from the traditional strategic
management model. Firm resource heterogeneity refers to the resources of a firm
(i.e., physical capital, human capital, and organizational capital) and how
different these resources are across firms. In the traditional strategy model,
firm resources are viewed as homogeneous across firms in the industry. Firm
resource immobility refers to the inability of competing firms to obtain
resources from other firms. In the traditional strategy model, resources are
considered mobile in that firms could purchase or create resources held by a
competing firm. In order for a firm's resource to provide sustained competitive
advantages, four criteria must be attributable to the resource: (a) the
resource must add positive value to the firm, (b) the resource must be unique
or rare among current and potential competitors, (c) the resource must be
imperfectly imitable, and (d) the resource cannot be substituted with another
resource by competing firms. Therefore, given resource heterogeneity and
resource immobility and satisfaction of the requirements of value, rareness,
imperfect imitability, and non-substitutability, a firm's resource can be a
source of sustained competitive advantage. Barney states that the
resource-based view makes it clear that firms cannot expect to buy or purchase
sustained competitive advantages, in that the advantages, if they exist, can
only be found in the rare, imperfectly imitable, and non-substitutable
resources already present in the firm. Ulrich partially relied on the
resource-based theoretical perspective in describing human resources as a
competitive advantage. He expanded the model of competitive advantage to
include organizational culture, distinctive competence, and strategic unity as
"mediators" in the strategy-competitive advantage link. He then
discussed how human resource practices can be used by firms to develop
strategies that will lead to a sustained competitive advantage, stating that
there must be a focus on the relationship between human resources, strategies
and competitive advantage. Human resources can be considered as a sustained
competitive advantage rather than providing any justification for their
positions within the context of the theory. Relying on the assumptions of
individual ability being normally distributed, the four criteria for a
sustained competitive advantage were elaborated and we attempted to evaluate
the conditions under which human resources meet these criteria. First, in order
for human resources to exist as a sustained competitive advantage, they must
provide value to the firm. This condition requires that there is a
heterogeneous demand for labor (i.e., that firms have jobs that require
different types of skills) and a heterogeneous supply of labor (i.e.,
individuals differ in their skills and level of skills). Under these
circumstances, human resources can add value to a firm. A resource must be rare
if it is to be a sustained competitive advantage. Due to the normal
distribution of ability, human resources with high ability levels are, by
definition, rare. The goal of virtually all selection programs is to ensure
that the organization is hiring only the highest ability individuals. The
issues then are the validity of the selection system and whether or not the
organization is able to attract and retain those applicants deemed to be of the
highest ability. Thus, a firm could theoretically obtain employees of superior
ability through a combination of valid selection programs and attractive reward
systems. In order for a resource to be considered a sustained competitive
advantage, human resources must be inimitable. In this discussion, we use the
concepts of unique historical conditions, causal ambiguity, and social
complexity to demonstrate the inimitability of competitive advantages stemming
from human resources. Unique historical conditions refer to the particular
historical events that have shaped a firm's practices, policies, and culture.
Causal ambiguity describes a situation where the causal source of the
competitive advantage is not easily identified. Social complexity recognizes
that in many situations (e.g., team production) competitive advantage stems
from unique social relationships that cannot be duplicated. Due to the fact
that many competitive advantages that might be based in a firm's human
resources are characterized by unique historical conditions, causal ambiguity,
and social complexity, it is highly unlikely that well developed human
resources could be easily imitated. Finally, a resource must not have
substitutes if it is to be considered a sustained competitive advantage. One
could easily picture a firm that had the highest ability individuals who
constituted a competitive advantage. However, what happens if a competitor
develops a new technology that provides vast productivity increases greater
than the productivity differences in firms due to ability? If the technology is
imitable (which it likely is because a firm could simply purchase the
technology in the marketplace), then once the local firm purchased the new
technology, the human resources would once again exist as a competitive advantage.
Resource-based theory is currently receiving a significant amount of attention
in the strategic management literature. Great potential exists for the use of
the resource-based theory in SHRM research. The theory's focus on an internal
analysis of the firm provides an extremely important avenue for SHRM
researchers to examine the ways that firms attempt to develop human resources
as a competitive advantage. Thus, this theory provides a framework for viewing
human resources as a pool of skills that can provide a resource to serve as a
sustained competitive advantage. In addition, the need to integrate human
resource practices in the formulation stages of a firm's strategy seems
paramount for the continuing study of SHRM. The resource-based approach provides
a framework for examining the pool of human resources that may be either able
or unable to carry out a given strategy during the formulation phase of
strategic management. Thus, the resource-based view may demonstrate the fact
that strategies are not universally implementable, but are contingent on having
the human resource (i.e., personnel) base necessary to implement them.
The behavioral perspective. One of the
original and more popular theoretical models used in the SHRM literature is the
"Behavioral Perspective". The theory focuses on employee behavior as
the mediator between strategy and firm performance. It assumes that the purpose
of various employment practices is to elicit and control employee attitudes and
behaviors. The specific attitudes and behaviors that will be most effective for
organizations differ, depending upon various characteristics of organizations,
including the organizational strategy. Thus, in the context of SHRM, these
differences in role behaviors required by the organization's strategy require
different HRM practices to elicit and reinforce those behaviors.There must be a
rationale for the linkage of competitive strategies with HRM practices in order
to predict, study, refine, and modify both strategy and practices in certain
circumstances. The rationale implies that employee role behaviors are
instrumental in the implementation of the competitive strategies. These role
behaviors can vary along a number of dimensions, such as repetitive versus
innovative behavior, low versus high risk taking, and inflexible versus
flexible to change. The innovation strategies require among other things a high
degree of innovative behavior, a long-term focus, a high level of cooperative
behavior, a moderate degree of concern for quality, a moderate concern for
quantity, and a greater degree of risk taking. This can be contrasted with a
cost reduction strategy that requires such things as repetitive behaviors, a
short-term focus, autonomous activity, high concern for quantity, moderate
concern for quality, and low risk taking. HRM practices can be considered as a
menu of options for HR executives, from which they can choose the practices
that (a) promote the most effective role behaviors consistent with the
organizational strategy, and (b) are aligned such that each HR practice is
congruent with the others. HR philosophy, policies and programs express the
culture, values and goals of the HR function, it is the specific HR practices
that motivate employees to exhibit the needed role behaviors associated with
various strategies. All of the HRM activities must be consistent with each
other, and in turn, linked to the strategic needs of the business. Employee
role behavior, in a generic sense, is the main mediator between strategy and
the effective achievement of the strategy. Finally, the assumption of the
behavioral perspective is that strategies lead to HRM practices that elicit
employee role behaviors that lead to a number of outcomes that provide benefits
to the firm. Although firm performance seems to be the most obvious outcome of
good HR practices, Walker and it was noted a number of additional outcomes of
SHRM such as employee attitudes, accident rates, productivity, and labor costs.
Once again, though this model seems to have some intuitive appeal, there is no
empirical data demonstrating that employee role behaviors do lead to positive
organizational outcomes. Thus, the entire model could be tested to demonstrate
(a) different strategies are associated with different levels of firm
performance, and (b) that the relationship between strategies and firm
performance is either mediated or moderated by HRM practices and employee role
behaviors.
Cybernetic systems. Another set of popular
theoretical models being applied to SHRM research is the use of cybernetic
systems models. Cybernetic models vary in their treatment of the system. Some
models focus on closed systems (much like the behavioral perspective) that seek
to set up mechanisms to buffer the technological core from the environment.
Other models treat systems as being open to exchanges with their environment.
Open systems models are based on the general systems models, and hold that
organizations can be described as input, throughput, output systems involved in
transactions with a surrounding environment. Organizations consist of the
patterned activities of individuals aimed at some common output or outcome.
These activities can be characterized as consisting of the energic input into
the system (i.e., inputs of people, money, technology, etc., the transformation
of energies within the system (i.e., putting the inputs to work together) and
the resulting product or energic output (i.e., the product that results from
the patterned activities of the input and throughput phases). Central to open
systems models is the idea of a negative feedback loop that informs the system
that it is not functioning effectively, thereby allowing for changes to reduce
any discrepancies. The inputs in the HR system are competencies (i.e., skills
and abilities) of the individuals in the organization that the firm must import
from its external environment. The throughput process can be characterized by
the behaviors of those individuals in the organizational system. Finally, the
outputs consist of both performance (e.g., productivity) and affective outcomes
(e.g., job satisfaction). SHRM consists of two general responsibilities:
competence management and behavior management. Competence management deals with
those things that the organization does to ensure that the individuals in the
organization have the skills required to execute a given organizational
strategy. This recognizes the negotiations with the external labor environment
in order to attract, select, retain, and use employees with the necessary
knowledge, skills, and abilities for executing the strategic business plan.
There are four competence management strategies. Competence Acquisition refers
to the activities such as training and selection that seek to ensure that the
individuals in the organization have the required competencies. Competence
Utilization deals with activities that seek to utilize latent skills or skills
that had been deemed unnecessary under a previous strategy. Competence
Retention is a strategy aimed at retaining various competencies in the organization
through reduction of turnover and constant training. Finally, Competence
Displacement consists of activities aimed at eliminating competencies that are
no longer necessary for the organizational strategy. Behavior management is
concerned with ensuring that once individuals with the required skills are in
the organization, they act in ways that support the organizational strategy.
Similar to the approach of the behavioral perspective, Behavioral Control
consists of activities such as performance appraisal and pay systems that seek
to control employee behavior to be in line with organizational goals.
Behavioral Coordination strategies consist of appraisal and organizational
development activities that seek to coordinate behavior across individuals to support
the organizational strategy. The major focus of the model is on the
coordination of various HR practices across subfunctions (i.e., selection,
appraisal, compensation, training, etc. An open systems view of SHRM requires
organizations aligning all of the various HR practices toward some strategic
end, rather than simply focusing on how one set of practices (e.g.,
compensation) supports a firm strategy. Thus, the research implications of this
theory would focus on examining exactly how organizations develop and align HR
practices across traditional functional lines. There is a hybrid model of SHRM,
combining cybernetic systems and behavioral perspectives which is called a
"control theory" view of SHRM. The behavioral perspective has not been
thorough in explaining how various HRM practices work in combination and
managers have a clear understanding of the organizational context, knowledge of
required behaviors from all levels of employees, and knowledge of the HRM
practices that will elicit the behaviors required to achieve the organization's
strategic goals. The administrative information mediates the relationship
between strategy and HRM control.
The control theory model is based on
cybernetic systems and implies that the control process includes (a) superior
intentions, (b) influence mechanisms, and (c) evaluation and feedback. In this
model, the various HRM practices can be combined into three types of control
systems: (a) behavior control, (b) output control, and (c) input control. The
organizations seek to control inputs (through selection and training),
behaviors (through behavior-based appraisal and reward systems), and outputs
(through outcome-based appraisal and reward systems). This model also
emphasizes the need for coordination across various HRM practices. However, it
goes beyond most other models by explicitly recognizing the imperfect nature of
decision making in SHRM due to bounded rationality and/or uncertainty. Most
models tend to implicitly assume that environmental and strategic contingencies,
the exact competencies and role behaviors necessary to achieve the strategy,
and the proper HRM practices to elicit these competencies and behaviors are
perfectly known, can be put in place on a timely basis, and can be quickly
revised as needed. A fruitful avenue for future research is the contextual
factors that affect SHRM decision makers to develop and/or use certain HRM
strategies. In addition, although not explicitly explored control theory (and
open systems theory in general) in the cybernetic sense, is a dynamic model of
constant environmental monitoring and internal adjustment. Most SHRM
researchers have tended to focus on cross sectional studies that only give a
glimpse of the relationships among practices at a particular point in time. However,
practitioners are often more concerned with the constant monitoring of the
outcomes of HRM practices and the corresponding adjustment of those practices
whenever the outcomes tend to deviate from those desired. In order for these
cybernetic models to describe true open systems, they must be expanded to
consider the relational feedback from the environment and to discuss the
internal HRM adjustments in response to this feedback. Thus, this theory has
impressive potential for examining how SHRM practices change or need to change
over time.
Agency/transaction cost theory. One popular
theoretical model in the strategic management literature that has recently been
applied to the HRM function is the exploration of transactions as means of
controlling employee behavior. An agency/transaction cost theory approach to
examining the problems of human exchange is based in the fields of finance and
economics. The approach seeks to identify the environmental factors that
together with a set of related human factors explain why organizations seek to
internalize transactions (as opposed to transacting in the market place) as a
means of reducing the costs associated with these transactions. The approach
identifies bounded rationality and opportunism as the two human factors that
serve as major obstacles to human exchange. Bounded rationality is the term
used to refer to the fact that people are subject to information processing
limits. Opportunism refers to the fact that people will act with self-interest
and guile in pursuing their own goals. The pairing of uncertainty with bounded
rationality results in a situation where it is very costly or impossible to
identify all future contingencies and specify all of the appropriate responses
to each contingency. Opportunism is relatively harmless so long as competitive
(large numbers) exchange relationships exist. However, when paired with small
numbers exchange relationships, opportunism must be held in check by costly and
risky short-term contracting. Transaction costs are the costs associated with
negotiating, monitoring, evaluating and enforcing exchanges between parties,
and they are incurred in order to make exchanges more efficient. As transaction
costs increase, there is a tendency to internalize the transaction through organization.
The agency problem exists when one party requires services from another in a
situation where uncertainty exists and both parties will behave
self-interestedly. Agency costs are the costs associated with establishing
efficient contracts between parties. Agency/transaction cost theory has been
very popular in the strategic management literature for studying
diversification, internalization and restructuring. Because of the fact that
agency/transactions cost theory seeks to explain control in organizations, they
have implications for the design of HRM practices. The central premise of the
transaction cost approach is that employees have strong incentives to shirk
(reduce their performance) and free-ride (rely on the efforts of others in the
group) and no incentive to increase their performance unless task conditions
allow employees to demonstrate their unique contributions and to benefit from
those contributions. It views the aggregate performance of groups or
organizations as contingent upon the control systems used to monitor employee
behavior. Thus, the role of HRM practices is to allow for the measurement of
unique contributions and to provide adequate rewards for individual employee
performance. These practices are the means through which firms are able to
align employee behavior with the strategic goals of the organization. These
models have recently been linked to human resources through the concept of
bureaucratic costs. Bureaucratic costs refer to the transaction costs
associated with managing human resources in a hierarchy. These costs are
defined as the negotiating, monitoring, evaluating, and enforcement costs
associated with managing human resources when an authority relationship exists.
Thus, all the presented assumptions are the
theoretical basis for a successful development of any enterprise and they
should be implemented into practice and only then will it be possible to see
the real value of their existence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Fombrum, C. Strategic
Human Resource Management. - New York: Wiley, 1984.
2. Kanter, R.M. Frontiers
for Strategic Human Resource Planning and Management. – Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1983.
3. Smith-Cook, D., & Ferris, G.R. Strategic Human
Resource Management and Firm Effectiveness in Industries Experiencing Decline.
– Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
К содержанию номера журнала: Вестник КАСУ №4 - 2008
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