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Strategy and Human Resource Management Peter Boxall and John Purcell Palgrave Macmillan Basingstoke 2003 xii + 287 pp. ISBN 0-333- 77820-0
Review DOI 10.1108/00251740310479368
The last two decades have seen an exponential growth in the number of publications on the subject of human resource management. There is now no apparent shortage of literature bearing this label, analysing changes in work, employment and industrial relations. Nor is there a lack of "how to do it" textbooks in the field. It might be argued then, that there was little need for another volume concerned with human resource management. Yet such a perspective would be ill-founded, since the publication (Palgrave, Macmillan, 2003) from Peter Boxall and John Purcell on Strategy and Human Resource Management has managed to find a very distinct niche in a market that appeared to be full.
This book is important for three reasons. First, its significance rests in the fact that it articulates very clearly the links between business strategy and human resource management - links that are widely assumed or asserted to be important but that are less frequently explored in theory and in practice. Second, it provides a valuable discussion of the tensions between the "universalist"...