Strategic Human Resource Development

Citation

Mattacks, K. (2004), "Strategic Human Resource Development", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 25 No. 1, pp. 107-108. https://doi.org/10.1108/01437730410512804

Like many who have worked in organisations as an internal and external consultant during the last 20 years, I have often despaired at the unquestioning enthusiasm of senior managers for the latest “magic bullet” that will transform the business and reactive approaches to change that seem to treat people as little more as “costs on legs”. The range of sustainable interventions has also seemed limited. Strategic Human Resource Development provides a long overdue and thorough critique of what has been done in organisations over that time under the name of change and human resource development and proposes a different approach.

The author, Jim Grieves, is principal lecturer at Teesside Business School, University of Teesside, and sets himself some tough challenges at the outset of this book. He seeks to:

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  provide an awareness of the complexities of change management;

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  rescue the concept of human resource development form “..a mundane existence in the depth of training programmes…”; and

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  offer a new perspective – strategic human resource development – which seeks to “…promote a more enlightened, ethical and skills focussed vision of change management by placing human resources at the forefront of the change agenda” – a phrase that is repeated at least four times throughout the book!

Grieves does not pull any punches. As early as the introduction he attacks the reactive forms of change management:

Change often seems like a re‐shuffled pack of cards in which the content of each hand change but the form of the game remains the same…People still become alienated, stressed and exploited by new organisational forms: by employers who use information communications technologies as mechanisms to control and manipulate or by companies, such as Marconi or Enron, who fail their own workforce as well as other stakeholders – shareholders, local communities and even the nation‐state.

Challenging stuff and this approach and style persists throughout the book. Jim Grieves draws on the disciplines of human resource development (HRD), organisation development (OD) and strategic management and, in the early chapters, explores and critiques the roots of strategic human resource development, planned strategies for change such as Total Quality Management and Business Process Re‐engineering and argues for a more sophisticated an approach to analysing culture based on interpretation rather than the functional approach that has dominated.

In the second part of the book Grieves goes on to set out his case for Strategic HRD. His core argument is that, although OD had developed to the point where it has become much more aware of the behavioural dynamics that influence change, “downsized” and “delayered” organisations mean that the responsibility for handling change rests with team leaders and other middle managers armed with

“…prescriptive programmes based on half‐baked theories, lacking analytical awareness, organizational diagnosis, and methodological rigour…driven by the myopic vision of a garden pruned and maintained by managers looking for a quick technical fix”.

The next two chapters then focus in turn on the role and interventions of change agents and consultants. The interventions are demonstrated and explored through a series of case studies. The usual pattern is followed. There is a thorough demolition of the management consultancy industry with its interventions sold as products before proposing an approach built around crafted process and relationship skills.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book which is well‐argued, well‐structured and superbly referenced. It will be of value to those studying change and strategic management and human resource development at masters level and, although I do not see it as “a practical guide to managers” as the author suggests, it deserves an audience beyond that and I recommend it wholeheartedly to internal or external practitioners – particularly those in the major consultancy firms! I felt great empathy with the critique Jim Grieves offers and the chapter on consultants, clients and change agents is very useful in encouraging the reflective practitioner. Personally, I would have liked more of this and welcomed greater exploration of some of the new approaches that are emerging, such as appreciative enquiry and large group interventions, which seem in sympathy with Grieves’ approach to strategic HRD. But that may be the subject of a later book!

As I said at the outset, Strategic Human Resource Development is challenging. Whether it heralds a new approach to organisational change for the new century remains to be seen but it most certainly demolishes many of the recipes of the final part of the last one!