Search results

This article aims to explore how understanding the challenges faced by companies' attempts to create competitive advantage through their human resources and HRM practices can be enhanced by insights into the concept of strategic groups within industries. Based within the international hotel industry, this study identifies how strategic groups emerge in the analysis of HRM practices and approaches. It sheds light on the value of strategic groups as a way of readdressing the focus on firm and industry level analyses.

Senior human resource executives and their teams across eight international hotel companies (IHCs) were interviewed in corporate and regional headquarters, with observations and the collection of company documentation complementing the interviews.

The findings demonstrate that strategic groups emerge from analysis of the HRM practices and strategies used to develop hotel general managers (HGMs) as strategic human resources in the international hotel industry. The value of understanding industry structures and dynamics and intermediary levels of analysis are apparent where specific industries place occupational constraints on their managerial resources and limit the range of strategies and expansion modes companies can adopt.

This study indicates that further research on strategic groups will enhance the theoretical understanding of strategic human resource management and specifically the forces that act to constrain the achievement of competitive advantage through human resources. A limitation of this study is the dependence on the human resource divisions' perspectives on realising international expansion ambitions in the hotel industry.

This study has implications for companies' engagement with their executives' perceptions of opportunities and threats, and suggests companies will struggle to achieve competitive advantage where such perceptions are consistent with their competitors.

Developments in strategic human resource management have relied on the conceptual and theoretical developments in strategic management, however, an understanding of the impact of strategic groups and their shaping of SHRM has not been previously explored.

Wonders whether companies actually have employees best interests at heart across physical, mental and spiritual spheres. Posits that most organizations ignore their workforce – not even, in many cases, describing workers as assets! Describes many studies to back up this claim in theis work based on the 2002 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference, in Cardiff, Wales.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the moderating effect of environmental human resource management on the relationship between firms' environmental management practices and competitive advantages of cost and differentiation.

CEOs of Spanish chemical firms were asked to respond to a questionnaire containing the measures of the study variables. The final sample consists of 94 firms and the hypotheses were tested using partial least square methodology.

Empirical evidence showed that companies with a high level of human resource environmental practices can benefit from the advantages in costs and differentiation derived from the implementation of pollution prevention technologies.

From a theoretical standpoint, the paper discusses the moderating role of environmental human resource management practices in the relationship between pollution prevention technologies and economic performance. Empirically, it provides evidence of the role of human resource management practices and proactive environmental management practices in supporting competitive advantages of cost and differentiation.

There is noted emphasis on the role of small businesses as conduits for economic development especially in emerging economies. Given this, there is need for constantly seeking for ways to assist small businesses achieve success. Calls exist in the literature to investigate the combined role that strategy and human resource management practices can play leading to efforts of financial success.

A structured questionnaire was utilised and data collected from 401 small businesses operating in the Eastern Province of South Africa. Pearson product–moment correlation and hierarchical regression were used in the data analysis.

The results confirm that a direct relationship exists between strategy and financial performance. Further, the relationship is made significant only through the mediation effect of human resource management practices.

To fully realise the enactment of strategy within small businesses there is need to pay attention to the role that human resource management practices may potentially have on financial performance. Small business owner-managers need to ground their strategies with sound human resource management practices. Through this, firm financial performance can be attained.

The paper sheds light and presents a model that illustrates the mediating role of human resource management practices on the relationship between strategy and financial performance.

Proposes to assess the extent to which line management has responsibility for human resource management (HRM) practices in the enterprise. First, addresses a number of theoretical positions that include “traditional”, “cyclical” and “secular” approaches and that emphasizing “diversity”. Then deploys survey data based on the responses of more than 900 managers in the Institute of Management and located throughout the UK to assess these approaches. Investigates four main areas: employee involvement, training and development, rewards and work practices. Reveals that with the partial exception of rewards, line management is found to be dominant in most areas. However, this pattern is likely to have been historically the case rather than representing a “new wave” or movement associated with the rise of HRM itself.

The purpose of this study is to test a model where human resource inputs (e.g. motivation, employee skill) and human resource processes/practices (e.g. training and development; profit sharing) are hypothesized to contribute uniquely and positively to organizational outputs, i.e. job performance and firm performance.

The cross‐sectional study consisted of 350 business professionals (91 percent managers; 9 percent consultants) from a midwestern US professional organization who took a battery of survey measures via the internet.

After statistically controlling for the background variables (organizational type, size and status), the hierarchical regression analyses demonstrated that both the human resource inputs and process/practice variables explained statistically significant variance in each of the nine regression models. The effect size in each model was medium to large.

The findings illustrate the considerable utility of researchers and managers examining the entire human resource system of an organization when searching for productive leverage points to improve organizational outputs like job and firm performance. The results suggest that human resource managers can have a positive influence on firm performance through implementing and supporting organizational policies and procedures that serve to positively motivate workers (e.g. reasonable incentive compensation and rewards, fair grievance procedures, and performance management), and learning and development activities that stimulate optimal task and contextual job performance.

This article investigates the relationship between the functional areas of manufacturing and human resources by analysing the practices of human resource management associated with the competitive priorities of manufacturing strategy, e.g. quality, delivery performance, flexibility and cost. Within strategic business management, both the competitive priorities of manufacturing and the practices of human resource management need to be observed by the whole organisation. In this way, this study presents how human resource management practices are aligned to business strategies based on cost reduction, quality, delivery performance and product innovation. These practices may also be arranged in different ways in a particular competitive strategy.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between human resource management practices, breach of psychological contract and employee turnover intentions among hotel frontline employees, considering the scant research attention to frontline employee’s perspectives in Indian hospitality industry.

A survey design was used to collect responses from 294 frontline employees (front-office and food and beverage services). Multiple regression analyses have been used to test the hypothesized relationships.

Selection, training and compensation practices were found to influence employee’s turnover intentions. In addition, psychological contract breach was found to enhance employee’s turnover intentions, despite the implementation of effective human resource management practices.

This study examines the role of psychological contract breach as a moderator in the relationship between human resource management practices and turnover intentions in a highly labour-intensive context, the hospitality industry.

The purpose of this study is to explore the status and challenges of green human resource management practices in India, an under-researched area. Further, it proposes a theoretical framework to fill the identified gaps and build a sustainable organization.

Multimethod approach was used. The research was conducted in two phases. Archival research was conducted in the first phase, and a case study technique was employed in the second phase. In the first phase, an extensive literature review was carried out to gather insights on prevalent green human resource activities and their link with sustainable organizational development. In the second phase, data were collected from the manufacturing organizations to analyze the status of the activities identified in the first phase.

This study highlights status of green human resource practices such as environmental training, green recruitment, performance appraisal, employee involvement and compensation. The findings suggest that there is further scope to utilize the full potential of GHRM practices for encouraging pro-environmental behavior in the organizations. Analyses of data also reveal that top-management support and mutual learning among departments are crucial to facilitate green behaviors among employees.

This study provides a comprehensive literature review of green-human resource management practices. It suggests an interdisciplinary framework for building holistic sustainable organizations by integrating learnings from green human resource management, green supply-chain management, competitive advantage strategy and green corporate social responsibility. It highlights gaps in the system and provides insights to managers and policy makers on building holistic sustainable organizations.

This study fulfills the need to explore green human resource management in emerging economies like India. Studies like these are more important in developing countries, which have alarming environmental concerns and poorly implemented government regulations.

The increasing concern for the protection of the environment through pollution prevention, conservation of resources and less usage of energy has attracted several firms to align green practices with their supply chain and human resource policies and practices. This study explores the influence of green human resource management and green supply chain management practices on operational, market, financial, social and environmental performances.

The study uses partial least square–structural equation modeling approach to analyze the data gathered through structured questionnaires from supply chain and human resource managers in manufacturing and hospitality firms in Ghana.

It is established that green supply chain management practices play complementary partial mediating role between green human resource management and operational, market, social and environmental performances, while it plays competitive partial mediating role between green human resource management and financial performance. Subsequently, the analysis reveals that the synergy between green human resource management and green supply chain management creates the highest value in operational performance, followed by market performance, environmental performance, financial performance and social performance.

The study proposes and tests a conceptual model that examines the synergistic influence of green human resource management and green supply chain management on operational, market, financial, social and environmental performances.