The Nature of Human Resource

Management
Human Resource Management:
A strategic approach to managing
employment relations which emphasizes
that leveraging people’s capabilities is
critical to achieving competitive
advantage. This being achieved through a
distinctive set of integrated employment
policies, programmes and practices.
Theoretical perspectives on HRM

Five major HRM models:

Provide an analytical framework for studying
HRM.
Legitimate certain HRM practices.
Establish variables and relationships to be
researched.
Explain the nature and significance of key
HR practices.
Fombrun, Tichy & Devanna

Emphasizes the interrelatedness and the

coherence of HRM activities.
HRM cycle: selection, appraisal,
development and rewards aim to increase
organizational performance.
Fombrun, Tichy & Devanna
Fombrun, Tichy & Devanna

Prescriptive.
Ignores stakeholder interests, situational
factors and notion of strategic choice.
Expresses the coherence of internal HR
policies and the importance of ‘matching’
them to external business strategy.
 Harvard

Situational factors
Stakeholder interests
HRM policy choices
HR outcomes
Long-term consequences
Harvard
 Harvard

Classifies inputs and outcomes at both

organizational and societal level.
Absence of a coherent theoretical basis for
measuring the relationship between HR
inputs, outcomes and performance.
 Guest

Reflects view that a core set of integrated

HRM practices can achieve superior
individual and organizational performance.
HRM differs from personnel management.
Guest
Guest
 Warwick

Extends the Harvard framework.

Maps the connections between the outer and
inner contexts and explores how HRM
adapts to changes in context.
Warwick
 Storey

Demonstrates the differences between the

‘personnel and industrials’ and the HRM
paradigm by creating an ‘ideal’ type.
Characterizes HRM as ‘an amalgam of
description, prescription, and logical
deduction’.
Storey
Storey