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During the last five years, a team of researchers has worked with the senior human resource (HR) teams of seven large companies with United Kingdom operations. This research initiative has focused on a number of aims, one of which has been to understand and model how business strategies are translated through human resource strategies and people processes into individual and organizational performance. This article summarizes the key findings, provides a map of how this translation takes place in these companies, and discusses why some people processes are more strongly linked to business strategy. (c) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Introduction
A key challenge facing organizations is how they continue to deliver sustained competitive advantage in the short-term while also preparing for longer-term success. It is widely acknowledged that the sources of sustained competitive advantage lie not only in access to finance or capital, but within the organization, in people and processes capable of delivering business strategies such as customer satisfaction or rapid innovation (Barney, 1991; Lundy, 1994). What is the precise role of people and processes in delivering business strategy? This article builds on previous models of strategic human resource (HR) processes and describes what role these processes play in linking business strategy and individual performance.
The majority of models of the strategic human resource process are normative, in the sense that they map how human resource management (HRM) should work and provide guidelines on best practice (e.g., Devanna, Fombrun, &Tichy, 1981; Schuler, 1988; Legnick-Hall &Legnick-Hall, 1990). Empirical models are more scarce, due to the relative lack of empirical research in the field. Those that do exist are relatively sophisticated and take into account a broader range of contextual and output variables (Hendry, Pettigrew, &Sparrow, 1988; Hendry & Pettigrew, 1990). Conceptual or theoretical models derived from the literature are also more scarce than are normative models. The Harvard Business School, in one of the earlier books on human resource management (Beer, Spencer, &Lawrence, 1984), put forward a conceptual map of human resource management to guide thinking on the subject, while both Storey (1992) and Guest (1988) have derived variables and models from the literature. We aim to build on these models by mapping, through a case-based methodology, the particular aspect of the model...