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Abstract
Strategic human resource management (SHRM) has emerged as a significant issue in tandem with the increasing attention being given by the companies to strategy. Faced with an accelerating turbulence in its environment, the response of the corporation has been to attempt to build up a sound internal configuration that includes human resource management (HRM) systems. The key to providing an effective response is to have an HRM system attuned to strategic requirements. The philosophical and academic bases for SHRM, proposed during the past three decades, have followed differing paths. This article attempts to bring together the differing approaches to SHRM and presents a consolidation and evaluation of these viewpoints. The differing views are consolidated under four groups wherein SHRM is seen to be either strategy-focussed, decision-focussed, content-focussed, or implementation-focussed. A discussion highlights the problem of semantics and pinpoints the controversies and contradictions implicit in the different viewpoints. This article underscores the emerging area of agreement viz. the increasing emphasis on the strategic nature of HRM and considering human resource as a strategic resource to be used to create and sustain a competitive edge for organisations.
Key words: Strategic human resource management, Human resource management, Human resource strategy.
The concept of strategic human resource management (SHRM) originated in the USA soon after the development of the concept of human resource management (HRM) in the 1960s and 1970s. Since then it has been beckoning the academic and business world. But SHRM, from the beginning, has been viewed from different perspectives. The purposes of this article are to delineate the major approaches to SHRM, to make a critical analysis of each of them, and then to consolidate these approaches. Our aim is to draw conclusions on the basis of the discussion on the consolidation of the differing approaches to SHRM and propose a typology of these approaches.
Introduction
The concept of HRM developed initially from academic work in the USA in the 1960s and 1970s and since then has been adopted increasingly around the world (Brewster, 1994: 1). The meaning of the HRM is far from clearly established in the literature; different authorities imply or state different definitions and draw on varying evidence. Many have attempted to classify the various areas that HRM covers. For...