Strategy and Human Resource Management

Citation

Druker, J. (2003), "Strategy and Human Resource Management", Management Decision, Vol. 41 No. 5, pp. 523-524. https://doi.org/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” notions of “good practice” and a contingency perspective or “best fit” perspective. The ambiguities inherent in the interplay between “best practice” and “best fit” (where do choices for the “best fit” model come from?) are acknowledged. Third, it provides a distinctive structure, following the review of “strategy” and HRM, with a discussion of general principles involved in managing people and a consideration of changing business contexts. In this way it avoids the laudable but sometimes off‐putting ambitions of some HR texts to provide encyclopaedic coverage of the subject and offers as an alternative thematic focus, conceptual clarity and readability.

The perspective that is adopted is analytical rather than normative, underpinned by an approach that is essentially contingency based. The term “strategy”, in line with previous work from the authors, is taken to mean the critical choices that managers make over time when faced with “strategic” problems in the business environment. The “resource‐based” view of the firm (Barney, 1991) provides a rationale for the critical nature of the contribution of human resources as a focus for the discussion. Core themes draw on earlier, research based publications from the same authors, with reference particularly to the individual and collective dimensions of management style.

Having read this book, a manager would be better equipped to analyse work‐based problems and review potential “HR” choices and solutions at a general level. One chapter is devoted to individual performance management and this deals with questions of ability, motivation and opportunity with reference to “bread and butter” personnel topics – recruitment and selection, development, motivation and reward management. Psychological contracting is debated here too.

Interestingly, the text acknowledges and discusses differences of interest within the workplace in a chapter on “employee voice”. The employee perspective is sometimes neglected in the HR literature and where it emerges it is in connection with employee attitudes and performance – in relation to the “high performance workplace” and questions of commitment. Employees are acknowledged within the perspective offered here as having a different, legitimate and potentially conflicting perspective. The perspective adopted here – based on the notion of “management style” – will be familiar to readers of Purcell and Ahlstrand’s HRM in a Multi‐divisional Company (1994). It encompasses both union representation and other forms of employee consultation, referring without too much detail to the growing scope of legislation, but emphasising too that management makes decisions based on the sorts of relationships that it wants with employees and with their representatives.

Ultimately, the authors argue, the HR goals of an organisation will reflect financial and business priorities, but they should not neglect the wider social context. More attention to questions of organisational culture and values might have been welcome, given this emphasis and, if there is one area which could be further developed it would be this one.

This book emerged with high commendation in a “trial run” with Masters’ level, professionally based students. It is a text that is immensely readable and immediately relevant to Masters’ level students concerned with strategic issues in HRM. After years of an annual change to the “core text” as successive publications have been critiqued by my students, it is comforting to find a publication that receives such a positive response. As far as they were concerned – and given a selection of other texts targeted at the same sort of audience – Boxall and Purcell’s book was way ahead of the competition and comes as highly recommended.