Strategic Approach to Hrm

Introduction As every organization consists of people, it is very important for the organization to be able to manage their people effectively and efficiently. Therefore, every organization has a division or department that manages this people-related issue. The department is usually called human resource department and the way organization manage their people is called Human Resource Management (HRM). HRM has changed over the time. HRM has been an issue in academic literature or organizational context. Many concepts about HRM have been introduced by scholars. One of them is strategic human resources management (SHRM). This concept uses strategic approach which means that the HRM plays strategic role in the organization. The purpose of the essay is to explain the characteristic of the strategic HRM and evaluate how the strategic HRM can help achieve the organizational objectives by using the existing theories or model. In this essay, the theories or models used are Harvard Model and Guest Model. However, there are some limitations in making this essay. The limitations are time, kind of sources, and word limit.

The Characteristics of Strategic Approach to HRM HRM plays an important role in an organization. As nowadays the world environment is changing and has entered the globalization era, organizations face more competitive environment. Therefore, practicing HRM using strategic approach has become increasingly more important. In the old days, HRM is not linked or integrated to the organizational strategic planning in many organizations. But now, many organizations practice HRM using strategic approach as Buyens and Vos (2001) suggested that the HR field has evolved from personnel management to HRM and after that from HRM to SHRM. HRM practices, even in China which used to be closed economy, has changed in the past two decades, for instance, strategic HRM has been practiced by many MNEs in China (Braun and Warner, 2002).