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Human resource strategy and planning has changed and grown significantly during the last 25 years. We can track these developments from functional strategies in the 1980s to capabilities strategies in the 1990s to results strategies today. Strategic shifts in HR mirror the business and labor market conditions of the times and follow influential breakthroughs in business thinking, from the 7-S model to competing on core competencies to the current rise of operating models and execution. Longer-term changes in the employment relationship, from relational to transactional employment, and the current emerging three-part workforce of elites, profit makers, and costs, provide another important context for HR strategy and a way to view the future. Looking ahead we can see differentiated, results-based strategies and plans for different workforce segments. We can also envision the need for more vital contributions from HR in HR and business strategy and ethical and cultural leadership.
What do these people have in common: Ray Kroc, the Beatles, Ronald Reagan, and our esteemed HRPS colleague, Jim Walker? Each took something that had been forming for a while, and gave it a structure, focus, and practice not existing before, allowing it to grow and flourish. HR strategy and planning may not be on the same par with fast food, rock 'n roll bands, and modern conservatism, but the development of our field could not have started without the publication of Jim's classic book, Human Resource Planning (Walker, 1980).
The beginning of a discipline can rarely be pinpointed, but, almost 25 years later, we can see clearly the journey that Jim's book helped launch. His book may not have been the first call to HR professionals to think strategically, but it surely was the first to tell them how to do it, and it was, by far, the most complete. I remember thinking then that doing this would pose a huge challenge, but that was the point. Doing strategy is hard work, which is precisely why it can bring such big rewards.
Jim's voice was not alone. About the same time, two best-selling books ascribed a much-higher weight to the value of people in business success than ever before, in Search of Excellence (Peters & Waterman, 1982) and Corporate Cultures (Deal & Kennedy, 1982) talked about...