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You cannot underestimate the symbolic importance of the boardroom for HR people. It's not a question of influence or rewards, it's really all about recognition (HR Boardroom Director).
Introduction
For over two decades a place in the boardroom has been viewed as the Holy Grail for the HR profession in the UK ([42] Sisson, 1995; [24] Guest and King, 2004). This is certainly the predominant view in much of the prescriptive HRM literature: a seat on the board is the ultimate realisation of the desire of HR professionals to finally move from an old-style and marginal administrative support position to a new and more strategic role. Central to this ambition was the rise of the resource-based view of the firm that placed human resources, and by implication HR professionals, in a new strategic role in achieving competitive advantage ([4] Barney and Wright, 1998). This was reinforced by agendas of HR professionalisation designed to control access and improve the overall status of the profession ([21] Gilmore and Williams, 2007). But perhaps the most decisive influence on boardroom ambition has been the "Ulrich model" of "business partnering" which suggests that the HR function should forge a multi-level "partnership" between HR and line managers, and that this should ultimately be realised at board-level with HR directors operating as "strategic business partners" ([49] Ulrich, 1997). Although the Ulrich model had a strong focus on traditional operational delivery and transactional personnel administration it took the HR profession by storm in the US and UK during the late-1990s, mainly because it appeared to promise both a new era of "strategic HR" and a new board-level role for HR directors ([50] Ulrich and Brockbank, 2005). It is perhaps no surprise then that practitioner surveys consistently suggest that HR directors believe that most large organisations will have a HR director on their board within the next five to six years ([38] Rendell, 2007). For some, indeed, the fallout from the current financial crisis and economic recession may well accelerate this process ([6] Bogart, 2009).
There is, however, an alternative and growing stream of literature which suggests that HR, directors can exercise strategic influence without a place in the boardroom ([48] Torrington and Hall, 1996; [2] Armstrong, 2000; [27] Kelly and Gennard, 2001; [46]...