Analyzing The Matching Process : Human Resource Management And Competitive Strategies Essay

In today’s competitive and ever changing economy, the challenges of Human Resource Management (HRM) is becoming more demanding of strategic responses to its functions as the new era unfolds. The primary function of human resources is to use strategic goals and objectives in order to improve performance outcomes and develop organisational culture that foster innovation and flexibility. Staffing, training and performance management are important functions of human resources, if carried out effectively the success of a setting becomes imminent.

Furthermore, it is stated that HRM practices can also be categorized on the basis of their emphasis into three sets viz., quality focus, cost reduction, and differential innovation (Guest, 1997). The importance of effective HR practices can be judged by the fact that with the effective execution of HR practices, the employees tend to be more committed to their work and they go the extra mile to add to organization’s benefit.

In this assignment I have looked at strategic human resource management perspective in Marks and Spencer. Before move on the strategic human resource management, let us have a brief introduction about Marks and Spencer. According to the corporate website Marks and Spencer, started its business as a single market stall and grown to become one of the UK’s leading retailers of clothing, food, home products and financial services. Marks and Spencer employs 78,000 in the UK and abroad, have more than 700 stores and serve over 21 million customers every week. Marks and Spencer strongly committed to provide high quality products as premium prices. The company has an established brand name and exceptional financial turnover of £8 billion in 2012 (About Us, 2014).

In the modern and changing global business environment, human resources management (HRM) has been linked to the heart of business success and high performance of organizations (Haslinda, 2007). High demand for innovation, customer satisfaction and increased sales volume in the search and internet industry and finance industry has forced organizations such as Google Inc and Absa to incorporate human resources practices in their business strategy. Various human resources practices has been adopted at Google Inc Company and ABSA Group Limited, which include recruitment and selection, training and development, compensation, just to mention a few (Google Inc, 2012 ;Best employers, 2011). Despite sporadic arguments over the

Schuler, R. S., & MacMillan, I. C. (1984). Gaining competitive advantage through human resource management practices. Human Resource Management, 23(3),

HRM and performance is part of a wide-ranging area of study in this field. The advancement of theory and research on links between HRM and performance started in the 1980s.There has been a lack of consensus in developing a theory of HRM and performance, (Guest et al, 2012). Boselie et al, (2005) determined that up until his review RBV

The practise of Human Resources is moving from the traditional forms of managing people to a more strategic form whereby the Human Resources function is closely linked with organisational performance and success. This strategic form of human resources has increased the need for the Human Resource professional to understand the linkages between Corporate Strategy, Human Resource Strategy and Employee Integration.

Human resource management has gained atmost importance in the past few years. Studies have found that there is a relationship between human resources of an organization and performance. From an era of slaves to an era of knowledge resources, People have been regarded differently throughout the years. People are now considered to be energy resources which are directly responsible for the effective working of the organization. An organization with good human resources and its effective management forms an effective organization.

Human Resource hasn’t always been the hot topic like it is in today’s discussions on better performance management systems. Human resource has always been limitedly considered as the mere workforce that strictly follows the company’s mission and readily falls in compliance with the management’s decisions. That has always been the idea until recently, with gradual advancement in business studies, when effective HR management is considered probably the foremost contributing element towards increased overall productivity of an organization. A well-formed, well thought out and thoroughly connected HR policy that is structured as a self-empowered mechanism that digs deep getting to know about the issues and concerns of the common employee, addresses those concerns with the utmost hospitality and sets up checks and balancing systems to foresee any mishaps, communication gaps and other problems that might erode the relationship between the management and human resource in the future.

In today’s highly competitive world market, companies are intensely pressurized to survive any possible failures caused by their external threats and internal weakness. Coming with the intense competition in the world market are the changes in many aspects such as technologies, customer demands and customer tastes. All these dynamic factors have all combined to make the originally shrinking world market share much smaller, and make the intensive competition all the more fierce. The adaption to this changing wave of the highly competitive world market requires a willingness and real strategic actions of companies to make internal changes so as to be adapted to the world market to maintain the very survival of theirs. Generally speaking, such a desire and those actual strategies come from nowhere but within the companies internally. The following essay aims at exploring the extent to which the changes in Human Resources Management has contributed to the competitiveness on Marks and Spencer’s (M&S) after 1997, its crisis of describing by analyzing the HRM problems with which M&S was faced, by evaluating the approaches made by M&S to HRM change, which this article will argue it played a large role in enhancing the overall competitiveness of M&S in the global market.

To address my research question on why there is a need for the presence of a relationship between strategic management and strategic human resource management, and how we can make this relationship come about. Firstly, I started off by defining the two concepts of human resource management as well as strategic management. Secondly, I discussed the organisational history and the role of HR in the past, and where it (HR) is going. Thirdly, I discussed the existence, importance and implication of this relationship. Lastly, I discussed the means of making this relationship come

The concept of strategic human resources management tends to focus on organization wide human resource concerns and addresses issues that are related to the firms business both short-term and long term. Strategic human resource management derive from human resource management, which the influence of strategic human resource management will be addressed. Human resource departments need to transform human resources to strategic human resource as to ensure the effectiveness of the objectives of the organisation are achieved. More and more authors are still reshaping and redefining the broadly accepted definition of strategic human resource management however according to Caliskan (2010:102) mentions that many authors stand firm that strategic human resource management is concerned with the role of human resource management systems play in firm performance. In addition to that it highlights the importance of people management, as to improve the organisations performance and gain competitive advantage. In order to address the question of, what influence does the strategic human resource management play in the performance of an organisation. First issue of why is it important for organisations to have an effective and

There are a few theories supporting the act of HRM. Two of these theories; Resource-based View and Ability and Motivation and Opportunity theories give off an impression of being the most well-known theoretical frameworks used in the studies that connect HRM and organizational performance. The Resource-Based View (RBV) theory which mixes ideas from organizational economics (Penrose, 1959) and strategic management (Barney, 1991) has it that HRM conveys included worth through the strategic development of the organization’s rare, significant, difficult to emulate and difficult to substitute HR. The RBV sets up that competitive advantage no more lies in regular assets, technology or economies of scale, subsequent to these are anything but easy

Gerhart (2005) suggested that labour efficiency and the organizational performance are based on the various HR practices that takes place within the organization like recruitment and selection, training programs, innovative practices and compensation and benefits based on performance evaluation to name a few. The above said practices have found to be highly successful if implemented even in small to mid scale businesses as compared to inflexible HR strategies within the same sector (Way, 2002; Barton, 2004; Black & Lynch, 2001).

This essay will discuss and analyse Strategic Human Resource strategies and how these strategies impact on an organization 's performance and how literature supports or dispels these claims. This essay will focus specifically on High Performance Work Systems and how they impact the organisation and also the individual employee as “The proponents of Strategic human resource management make bold claims about its relevance to and its positive impact on organisational performance.” This essay will discuss those bold claims and determine how positive it is for the organisation’s performance.