State of the Field of Strategic Human Resource Management

Abstract

Human resource management (HRM) professionals use the term “strategic human resource management” to convey their thinking that effective strategic HRM contributes to business effectiveness. While many HRM scholars have this understanding of what “strategic HRM” means, the meaning of this term has varied across time, between cultural contexts, and as reflections of the diverse disciplinary identities of strategic HRM scholars. Nevertheless, a grand unifying aspect of scholarship on strategic HRM is the assumption that further insights about managing human resources can be gained through research that treats the many activities involved in managing the workforce as a set of activities that, if properly aligned with the needs of the business, can result in many positive consequences. Thus the field in the early 21st century generally defines scholarship on strategic HRM as the study of sets of HRM elements and their interrelationships with other elements comprising an organizational system, including elements in the organization’s internal and external environment as well as the multiple stakeholders who evaluate the organization’s effectiveness and determine its long-term survival. Central to this definition are three essential constructs: HRM Systems, HRM Partnerships, and Multiple Stakeholders.