“Flexible Firm” as a Hotel’s Human Resource Planning Strategy

MSc – Human Resources Management Main Assignment

“Flexible firm” as a Hotel’s Human Resource Planning Strategy
Overview Human Resource Management (HRM) textbooks often begin their sections of “HRM practices / functions” by first introducing the topic of Human Resource Planning (HRP) and secondly the topic of Recruitment and Selection, while other topics such as Training and Development, Reward Management, Performance Management, etc, are introduced in later chapters. It is observed that this sequence does not come without a reason. In many cases, the outcomes of HRP do determine how the other HR functions should play in sync with each another, so that all HR policies altogether integrate with business strategies to tackle the challenges in particular business environments effectively (M. Armstrong, 2010). HRP is also considered as an effective tool to facilitate vertical and horizontal integration in an organization (Beardwell, 2010) and is the starting point of HRM (O. O’Brien, 2012). In this connection, it is understandable to first look into the HRP function when evaluating the effectiveness of an organization’s HR strategies. In this essay, a Hong Kong 5-star hotel’s HRP function and HR strategies will be investigated against relevant HRP theories. The concept of “flexible firm” is particularly popular in the contexts of HRP. In view of this concept, organizations benefit from enhanced flexibility in resources deployment in functional and numerical terms (J. Atkinson and D. Gregory, 1986), or even in financial terms (M. Riley, 1996; K. Sisson and J. Storey, 2000). In practical cases, however, it seems uneasy for organizations to ideally gain those benefits which the theories’ suggest. Obviously, it is considered true to interpret in a way that there are discrepancies between theories and realities with regards to this “flexible firm” concept. It is also observed that these discrepancies vary across different types of industries, due to the fact that each
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