Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Leadership and Human Resource Management - Miscellaneous, grade: 2,3, University of Western Sydney (School of Management), course: Human Resource Strategy, language: English, abstract: During recent years an efficient Human Resource Management (HRM) hasbecome more and more important for companies to achieve and sustain both
competitiveness and economic success. Leopold, Harris and Watson (2005)
mentioned that Human Resources became matters of considerable competitive
advantage. Human Resources, respectively the skills and knowledge of an
organisation¿s staff, as Hamel and Prahalat (1994) called it, has transformed
through massive changes in the economical, technological, sociocultural,
judicial and political conditions to one of the most important strategic factor of
success for companies these days. HRM, as a reaction to these changes in
¿Personnel Management¿, attempts to find various methods of resolution for
practice. If ¿Personnel Management¿, ¿HRM¿ or ¿SHRM¿, they all have a common
goal: obtaining the achievement potential of all organisational members best as
possible. But the ¿HRM¿ approach goes beyond the traditional approach of
¿Personnel Management¿, having a broader focus on the necessary
interdependence of all components with each other as well as the connection to
other compartments of companies, whose success is seen in straight
connection with personnel measures.
Thereby Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) can be seen as
extension of HRM, and following the definition of Boxall (1996) it deals with the
relationship between the strategic management of an organisation and the
management of its human resources within this strategic context. In that case
the focus is on long-term personnel decisions as well as on the question how an
interaction of corporate and personnel strategy can be achieved.
Initially this work is going to introduce and define different organizational
strategies as well as key human resource strategies. This shall be followed by a
critical evaluation of the concepts by opposing the pros to the cons. Therein the
difficulties and between Organisational Strategy, Human Resource Strategy and
the Organizational Environment shall be shown. The work results in a final
conclusion.