Search results

The strategic human resource management (SHRM) emerged in the middle of the 1980s and is currently seen as a relevant research and practical field in the area of business administration (Kaufman, 2015). Its academic relevance has been receiving international attention due to the importance of the strategic performance of human resource management (HRM) (Jackson, Schuler, & Jiang, 2014). It is possible to define SHRM as a vertical connection between HRM practices and international strategy and horizontally as the congruence among the several human resource practices (Wright & McMahan, 1992).

Taking into consideration the emerging research gaps in the area, the necessity to bring to attention the implementation of policies and strategic practices of human resource management became prominent. Our study characterizes the national scenario regarding this specific research theme. For such, we developed a bibliometric review of national journals in the area of business administration with level Qualis B2 [1] or above, described the institutionalization of the research in Brazil and established a sociogram with research relationship networks in the country.

Between 1997 and 2017, only 19 articles on the implementation of SHRM were published in the 32 journals researched. The characterization of the studies indicates a predominance of qualitative articles, which adopt as methodological approach the case study, and most of them use interviews and content analysis as techniques of data collection and analysis, respectively. The use of such investigation tools is in line with the nature of the phenomenon studied. The scenario indicates that the implementation of SHRM is still a developing theme in Brazil.

There is a lack of studies that combine the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches and focus on public organizations. Besides, the results indicate the need to diversify the methodological approaches used. Regarding the institutionalization of research in Brazil, it is possible to notice the growth of research groups investigating SHRM, even though their only focus does not rely on implementation. The academic production regarding the theme is regionally located in the state of São Paulo, even though academic production is also to be found in a decentralized way in the country, with rare networks.

This way, the main contribution of this article is the accomplishment of the first bibliometric review regarding the implementation of SHRM in Brazil, showing the scientific community that the theme still presents a gap to be explored in national studies and showing human resource professionals and the society that the transformational switch of human management to organizational outcomes – despite prolific in the academia – still has not been realized in practice.

In the articles analyzed, the most common finding was that the effective implementation of SHRM and strategic practices of HR, such as the competency management, still deserves attention of the academia through the accomplishment of deeper qualitative studies that exhibit not only interfering factors but also the initiatives that must be adopted by the organization to favor the implementation process.

The interventions occurred in an organization can or cannot stem from an articulated HR strategy. Some policies can be implemented without a previous explicit planning, and other planned strategies may never even be effectively implemented (Truss & Gratton, 1994). As reported by Kaufman (2015), some critical success factors to a large-scale organizational change – which is necessary for the effective adoption of strategic HR models – are the commitment of leaderships and a carefully planned and managed implementation. For such, it is necessary to manage programmed organizational changes properly and to act promptly on the cultural pressure perceived by all levels of the organization (Guest, 1987). Such premises are associated with the SHRM perspective proposed by Wright and Snell (1998), in which the authors claim that the main role of HR is to implement organizational strategies. Lengnick-Hall et al. (2009) present a research agenda that highlights the need to give more emphasis on issues related to the implementation of strategic human resource management, specifically regarding the vertical and horizontal alignment of HR systems.

This study explores municipal leaders' perceptions on strategic human resource management in their local government organization. Previous studies on companies demonstrate that the top manager's perceptions of the importance of human resource management (HRM) for the organization are reflected in the quality of human resource management and its strategic role. The authors are interested in how leaders in municipalities perceive HRM.

The authors interviewed 30 leaders of Finnish municipalities for this qualitative study focused on municipal leaders' perceptions of HRM. The authors applied a discourse analytical approach in the analysis.

The authors recognized four discourses that frame perceptions of HRM: HRM as a strategic weapon, HRM as an underperformer, HRM as a matter of formality and HRM as a cost generator. In addition, the authors recognized that the discourses reflected leaders' self-positioning in relation to the power to impact issues related to HRM. Shifting between distinct roles demonstrated that municipal leaders' emphasis on HRM and its strategic alignment reflects the power relations in the municipality and the attitudes to the importance of HRM.

This study contributes to the academic discussions on HRM in municipalities and provides views on the municipal leader's role and impact on valuing and investing in HRM. From a practical point of view, the study will increase municipal leaders' knowledge of HRM's impact on the performance of the organization and also of the possible means of HRM.

The literature highlights the key role of human resource management in developing effective organizational performance measurement and management. To understand the state of the art of this role, the paper reviews the literature on human resource management in the performance measurement and management domain.

The paper conducts a bibliometric literature review on 1,252 articles to identify the prevailing research trends and the conceptual structure of human resource management in the performance measurement and management domain.

The study highlights a growing number of publications and four themes related to human resource management in performance measurement and management. It also underlines the shift from static to the dynamic performance measurement and management systems within organization which is expected to be more suited to current and future contexts.

The paper highlights the need to manage the identified themes as strategic organizational assets and further develop the strategic dimension of human resource management practices leveraging on project management and information systems.

The paper goes beyond the traditional focus on performance appraisal of human resource management studies and assumes the challenge of connecting two research fields: human resource management and performance measurement and management.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of innovative HR practices as an important mechanism through which strategic flexibility affects firm performance as well as the role of female leadership in this relationship.

Data were gathered from a sample of 113 firms in China. The authors collected information on organizational strategy, HR practices, CEO information, corporate social responsibility and other firm characteristics in terms of firm age, location, and financial performance. Conditional procedural analysis was conducted to test the model.

The authors found strong evidence in support of the mediation relationship in which organizations with a strong focus on strategic flexibility are more likely to adopt Innovative HR Practices. Furthermore, the authors found that the extent to which firms have adopted innovative HR practices has a strong effect on employee productivity. In addition, the authors found that female leadership enhances strategic flexibility-performance relationship.

Information on strategic flexibility, HR practices and firm performance was collected at the same time. Future studies based on panel data would be helpful to establish the causal relationships in the model.

The authors’ findings suggest that practitioners should put more emphasis on developing innovative HR practices, as they are required by strategic flexibility.

Firms pursuing strategic flexibility should feel more confident when appointing a female CEO, because the results show that female leadership may enhance the positive impact of strategic flexibility on firm performance.

This research study is the first empirical examination of the mediating influence of innovative HR practices on the relationship between strategic flexibility and firm performance. The study also shows that female leadership benefits an organization in implementing strategic flexibility. The results are of value to researchers, human resource management managers, employees, and executives who are seeking to develop practices that are flexible and innovative in order to stay competitive in dynamic environments.

It has been a tremendous challenge for organisations to navigate and survive the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper proposes a novel multi-level conceptual model, based on the resource-based view (RBV), to address the pandemic crisis and highlight the importance of strategic human resource management (SHRM) in promoting employee motivation and organisational resilience. The paper aims to provide insights and practical guidance for organisations to leverage their internal resources and capabilities to thrive in the post-pandemic landscape.

This paper conducted a comprehensive literature review of the existing research on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, SHRM, RBV, job satisfaction, turnover intentions and organisational resilience, covering the main contributors to this research stream and their findings.

The conceptual model presented in this paper offers five testable propositions to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on employee motivation and organisational resilience and how organisations can navigate challenging times through SHRM, which enables RBV. It highlights the foundational role of RBV and identifies the resources employed by SHRM as intervening constructs that significantly enhance employee outcomes, including motivation, job satisfaction, turnover intention and organisational resilience.

The proposed model counsels that organisations need to look beyond the straightforward application of SHRM and should enable the RBV climate to protect and uphold employee motivation and organisational resilience. Finally, measurement and analysis implications are presented for future research opportunities and managerial interventions to mitigate the impact of difficult times such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Currently, there is a lack of research regarding the conceptualisation of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on employee and organisational resilience. Therefore, the proposed model discusses the significance of the alignment of SHRM and RBV as a moderator of the relationships between the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, employee motivation and organisational resilience.

The purpose of this research is to explore the dynamics of using strategic human resource management (SHRM) practices in the public sector. More specifically, this paper tries to point out some main aspects of SHRM, which strongly influence the decision of employees to stay. The empirical study here tends to reveal greater insights into the SHRM-retention relationship and its validation at the National Bank of Egypt (NBE).

This research is co-relational in nature with cause and effect approach. The design of the study is both descriptive in the theoretical part and quantitative in the applied one. Theoretically, this paper adopted the analytical approach to define the main concepts, aside from an empirical study to investigate correlations in practice.

This paper concludes that the employment of best HRM practices is deemed a remarkable strategic tool in the retention of core public employees. Also, the results of analysis provide evidence that SHRM contributes to employee retention at NBE.

The findings and recommendations of this research can practically guide management to devise effective policies to improve employee retention using appropriate SHRM activities, particularly in the Egyptian public organizations.

This research has valuable implications for both theory and practice, as it offers several contributions to literature in the field of study, as well as the practical contribution.

This paper aims to identify relevant aspects to achieve advantage of the innovative potential of a human resource information system (HRIS). The present study compared the system implementation professionals’ perception of the results expected from the system, its characteristics and how it should be implemented.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight information technology specialists and ten human resource (HR) professionals from four organisations at different stages of HRIS implementation, in which two had it fully implemented and two were undergoing the implementation process. The resulting data were submitted to four sets of content analyses and then compared.

Findings suggest specificities in the perception of these professionals. Critical aspects regarding the effective adoption of HRIS were addressed, such as characteristics of the systems, implementation process and human resource management model.

The implementation of an HRIS alone does not ensure the achievement of the obtained advantages. The results of the present study provide guidelines for implementation of HRIS as innovation for a strategic management of people. These guidelines come from different knowledge areas and from different stages of implementation. These findings corroborate models of innovation diffusion and technology acceptance.

The purpose of this paper is to address gaps in the knowledge about human resource (HR) professional involvement in strategic decision-making in China compared with that in Australia.

First, the authors compare the strategic involvement of Chinese and Australian HR professionals. Second, based on the upper echelon theory, the authors compare the impact of chief executive officer (CEO) and top management team (TMT) between both countries on HR involvement in strategic decision-making. Data were collected from matched pairs of HR and TMT executives in China (n = 168) and in Australia (n = 102).

Results indicate a difference, despite of no statistical significance, in HR involvement in strategic decision-making between Chinese and Australian samples. TMT behavioural integration was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in a collectivistic culture (i.e. in China), but not in an individualistic culture (i.e. in Australia). However, CEO support for HRM was positively related to HR involvement in strategic decision-making in Australia, whereas it is not related in China.

The paper conducts a comparative study and practical, and research implications are discussed at the end.

This study aims to explore how human resource (HR) practitioners conceive of their practice, reveal challenges they grapple with in daily work and generate a conceptual framework of HR praxis.

The paper is based on interviews with HR practitioners in Sweden and a review of articles that examine aspects of HR practitioners' work.

The HR practitioners' work is fragmented and reactive, filled with meetings and affords few opportunities to work undisturbed. Operational tasks are prioritised over strategic work, and their work sometimes involves tasks that are not HR's responsibility. The nature of HR practitioners' daily work mimics the work of their main “customer”, i.e. managers within the organisations.

The HR practitioners were working mainly in the service of managers, which suggests that they have an internal focus. Consistent with current, prescriptive HR discourse, HR practitioners should adopt a multi-stakeholder perspective of human resource management (HRM) and a more external focus that is necessary to contribute to wider, organisational effectiveness. The findings could enrich what is taught in higher education by providing students with an account of the reality of HR practitioners' daily work.

The study provides a situated account of the daily work of HR practitioners, which is largely absent from the literature.

This work aims to determine how innovation orientation (IO), built from six dimensions (strategic, structural-process, human resources, technological, organizational culture and market) affects organizational performance (OP) with the inclusion of knowledge management (KM) as a mediator and technological readiness (TR) as a moderator in the model.

Questionnaires completed by business service companies were analyzed using multiple regression analysis (path analysis), including the mediating variable (KM) and moderating variable (TR). The construct was validated with positive outcomes.

Of the eight hypotheses, six were supported. The study results show that strategic, technological, organizational culture and market dimensions of IO positively influence KM. On the other hand, KM plays an important role as a mediator in supporting the relationship between the four dimensions of IO and performance. Moreover, TR, as a moderator, positively affects the relationship between KM and OP.

The study is the first to explore the relationship between six dimensions of IO and KM in business service sector. Furthermore, this study provides evidence that TR can be beneficial for companies with respect to effective KM, which leads to the better performance.