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The goal of this chapter is to explore the requirements modern companies expect of HR professionals’ competences.

Departing from the widely acknowledged HR competence studies of Ulrich and associates, we extended them with the continuous learning competence profile and HR professionals’ individual job performance. The empirical study is built on open interviews with HR leaders of ten large Dutch companies.

The study offers a new set of HRM competences. This set includes six HRM profiles: Business Focus, Learning Focus, Strategic Focus, HR Technology, HR Delivery, and Personal Credibility. Several contingency factors are thought to play a role in supporting these HRM competences: company culture, strategy, size, sector, scope, and position of HR professionals.

Based on these contributions, we recommended conducting a quantitative study to gain understanding of the relevance of the individual HRM job performance and to find associations between the HRM competences and the individual HRM job performance.

The focus of this chapter is a combination of HRM competences and the individual job performance of HR professionals.

Human resource analytics (HRA) is a practice that is emerging within the human resources function. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the knowledge that currently exists about HRA and to identify facilitators and restraints of using HRA. Based on both emerging trends in the literature and in-depth interviews with key practitioners in the field, the authors deduce recommendations for organisations to effectively employ HRA. The analysis shows that HRA is ready to add value towards organisational effectiveness, although barriers exist in realising its potential for the same. Facilitators of HRA include the right set of competencies, with relationship building identified as especially important.

Based on the human resources (HR) role framework (Conner and Ulrich, 1996), the purpose of this paper is to empirically explore why HR practitioners differ in their strategic partner role positioning. The present study suggests and tests a descriptive model regarding occupational and organizational characteristics associated with strategic HR role positioning.

In all, 100 questionnaires were collected from Israeli HR practitioners. Hierarchical regressions were used to test the association between occupational and organizational characteristics and the strategic role perception among HR practitioners.

Although the findings only partially supported the suggested model, significant associations between occupational and organizational characteristics and HR strategic positioning were found. HR practitioners in volatile organizational environments adopt a strategic role perception. Moreover, years of experience are also associated with an HR strategic role perception. Specifically, the major predictors of attaining a strategic partner role amongst HR practitioners are location of organizational activities mainly in the metropolitan area, and involvement in major organizational changes.

The sample had a positive bias of respondents. Questionnaires were delivered mainly to highly educated HR practitioners in notably professional HR departments. Data were based on self-reported one-time questionnaires.

The research has implications for the processes of academic education and professional training of HR practitioners and also their recruitment in organizations.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, recent studies aimed at exploring sources of variance in the strategic role perception amongst HR practitioners are rather scarce. This research helps to address this gap, while also broadening the literature regarding HR communities in the Middle East.

The purpose of this paper is to give an overview of the scientific evidence for reduced drinking in alcohol use disorders. While the aim of alcohol use disorders (AUD) treatment usually focuses on abstinence, only a minority of individuals with AUD enter treatment. Lack of alternative treatment goals, including reduced drinking instead of abstinence, have been identified as a potential barrier for treatment entry. Epidemiological and treatment outcome studies reveal that a large proportion of individuals with AUD are able to substantially reduce their alcohol intake for a prolonged duration of time.

A narrative review of the literature on prevalence rates and health effects as well as evidence-based approaches fostering reduced drinking in individuals with AUD is presented.

Reduced drinking is associated with improvements in both morbidity and mortality. Research has identified evidence-based psychosocial and pharmacological treatment approaches; however, implementation is still scarce.

Target groups for interventions fostering drinking reduction instead of abstinence are defined and desiderata for further research are outlined.

This paper aims to examine the future contribution of human resources (HR) in three areas: first, the evolution of four waves of HR value creation leading to an outside-in focus. Second, HR insights about individual competence (talent), leadership and organization capabilities (culture). Third, creating more effective HR departments and upgrading HR professionals.

The author, Dave Ulrich, has worked extensively on HR theory, research and practice. This paper synthesizes and extends his (and others’) thinking about HR’s evolving contributions.

HR is not about HR, but about helping an organization succeed in the marketplace through talent, leadership and organization. HR departments can be assessed and improved based on nine dimensions and HR professionals can recognize and master competencies that help them deliver value.

Reading should come away recognize where HR can continue to contribute to individual and organizational success through thinking outside in, delivering HR agenda (talent, leadership and organization), and improving the HR department and upgrading HR professionals.

This monograph reports on the strategic and operational roles of learning and development (L&D) professionals in Irish, UK European and US organisations including multinational corporations, small to medium enterprises, the public sector and not for profit organisations. This paper aims to investigate the contextual factors influencing L&D roles in organisations, the strategic and operational roles that L&D professionals play in organisations, the competencies and career trajectories of L&D professionals, the perceptions of multiple internal stakeholders of the effectiveness of L&D roles and the relationships between context, L&D roles, competencies/expertise and perceived organisational effectiveness.

The study findings are based on the use of multiple methods. The authors gathered data from executives, senior managers, line managers, employee and L&D professionals using multiple methods: a survey (n = 440), Delphi study (n = 125) and semi-structured interviews (n = 30).

The analysis revealed that L&D professionals increasingly respond to a multiplicity of external and internal contextual influences and internal stakeholders perceived the effectiveness of L&D professionals differently with significant gaps in perceptions of what L&D contributes to organisational effectiveness. L&D professionals perform both strategic and operational roles in organisations and they progress through four career levels. Each L&D role and career level requires a distinct and unique set of foundational competencies and L&D expertise. The authors found that different contextual predictors were important in explaining the perceived effectiveness of L&D roles and the importance attached to different foundational competencies and areas of L&D expertise.

This is one of the few studies to have investigated the L&D professional role in organisations from the perspective of multiple stakeholders using multiple research methods.

The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between the role of internal consultant and role of the HR practitioners in the manufacturing companies of Malaysia.

Three main elements in the competency of internal consultation are measured. They are: knowledge in the area of project management; internal coaching ability; and the ability to be a solution provider.

The HR practitioner needs to overcome many barriers to reach the ultimate goal of becoming a strategic partner in his or her organisation. The findings suggest that the HR executive that understands business strategy is more likely to develop HR processes and procedures that support the implementation of a business strategy and are therefore, better able to involve themselves in organisational development activities on a deeper level.

This study by its very nature is limited by virtue of its having been carried out only on manufacturing companies in Johor, the Southern‐most state of Malaysia. Thus, its findings cannot be generalised. The number of respondents in this study was relatively small (89) and does not fully represent the thousands of HR managers employed by manufacturers in Malaysia.

Even though the findings cannot be used to reflect the overall HR competency of internal consultation in Malaysia, it does serve as an exploratory study that can be expanded more broadly in the future.

The paper can help HR professionals to look more perceptively into the expectations of their CEOs concerning their role as HR practitioners and will be of interest to those working in that area.