How Hr Contributes Towards Making Their Human Resources Into a Competitive Advantage

In an era of organizational flux due to competition and globalization, companies and employees are faced with constant change. Leaders must be able to adapt to change as the environment shifts. HR has been known as the organizational change agent, administrative expert, and employee advocate. More recently they have been regarded as business strategic partners for many organizations. In order to be successful and remain competitive in today’s market, Human Resources (HR) must be considered a strategic partner if an organization wants to flourish. Top executives today commit significant resources to ensure that their company’s functions are capable of rapid change and achieving their

Different scholars have defined the nature, scope, importance & purpose of HRM in different ways. Listing all the definitions given to HRM by the scholars in the field lies beyond the scope of this study. Given that, an attempt was made to select the most comprehensive and relevant definitions of HRM to this subject of study as follows:

According to Johnason, P. in 2009, human resource management (HRM, or simply HR) is a functional department in organizations designed to capitalize on employee performance in service of an employer's strategic objectives. HR is mainly related to the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and systems. HR departments and units in organizations in general, undertake a number of activities such as employee recruitment, training and development, performance appraisal, and rewarding in term of benefits and salary increment. HR is also concerned with industrial relations, that is, the balancing of organizational practices arising from collective bargaining and from governmental laws.

Consequently, ten years earlier, HRM is more likely to be a department for people who got demotion to go. Business people’s understanding of HRM was not comprehensive enough. Therefore its theory and practice were not operated in a right way. It is fortunate today that this science has got more and more attention. People begin to realise its impact on the financial performance. It is a totally new area of management practice. Time for HRM dynasty has come.

Business environment is facing a rapid change that reminds the business management to focus on its core competencies to survive and sustain in the competitive environment. The core competencies can be developed by strategic human resource management. According to Armstrong (2006) employees are the valued assets for a company. The strategic human resource management is mainly developed in accordance to the fact that human resources need to be managed strategically for the company to enjoy sustainable competitive advantage.

Human Resources often begins as very tactical policies, records, compliance, discipline, compensation, benefits, job descriptions, hiring, performance management (). Taken to the next level, HR becomes strategic, connecting employees to the business mission, values, and vision, in order to drive business results (). Employee goals and metrics align to the business strategy and rewards tie into results. Additionally, careful consideration is given to developing talent pipelines, employee succession plans, and career planning in order to respond flexibly to the inevitable work flow and staffing changes that all businesses experience ().

Human Resource Management (HRM) are activities managers perform to plan for attracting, develop, and retain a productive workforce (Kinicki & Williams, 2016). The role of human resource management is to prepare, develop, and administer policies and program designed to make expeditious use of an organization human resources. Part of control which is concerned with the people at work and with their relationship within an enterprise. HRM have their hands full; they have to face employees daily with a complaint, write-ups and sadly terminating of the worker. All areas of HRM such as, staffing, orientation, training, development, pay wages benefits are all significant parts that are dealt with daily. Human resource management presents itself as

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

Human Resource Management (HRM) is the terminology used to illustrate formal systems devised for the management of people within an organization. It is the method of managing an organization or company that is directly related to the employees of that particular organization. The success of a business often rely heavily on the performance of managing human resource. Maximizing the desires and benefits of an organization and helping a business grow by rewarding employees to help motivate and push them in their performance is one of the main aim of HRM. By doing this, it will have a positive impact on both the company and it’s entire organization.

Strategic Human Resource Management has been developed to give companies a competitive edge over other companies. Since widespread access to and the use of technology have resulted in tighter margins for maintaining a competitive edge,

In the past it was noted by Snell, Youngy and Wright (1996:62) that organisations would purposely 'take human resource out of the strategic equation'. Today it is widely accepted that linking HR to strategy because of a shift in ideas concerning competition and firm advantage (Snell, Shauder and Wright (2001:3)). This shift was identified by Quin (1992:241) "with rare exceptions, the economic and producing power of the firm lies more in its intellectual and service capabilities than in its hard assets"

The field of human resources (HR) plays a critical role in the performance and success of organizations. As organizations have become increasingly more complex, the effective management of HR has become even more important. The traditional perception of HR as only an administrative office is no longer valid. Instead, contemporary HR is directly involved with the internal organizational structure, business operations, and variety of functions carried out by employees on a daily basis (Reed & Bogardus, 2012). HR functions impact the organization’s strategic planning, improvement processes, and goal achievement. Six core bodies of knowledge provide the foundation for all of these HR functions. These areas are: strategic

Thus, management of resources is emphasized more than what product organization produce. So, managers have to manage people in line with organizational systems to achieve goals. Another implication is that competitive advantages can only be explained by human resources. Thus, manager has to integrate HRM practices with strategic management and is essential in order to develop and sustain competitive advantages. Resources are generally complex in terms of imitation or acquisition. Thus, when imitating successful competitors, begin by analyzing market strategies and processes. If these practices are not possible to imitate without new resources, then managers have to determine the possibility of acquiring these

However, according to Penrose (1959), the advantage a firm achieves may not be due to the fact that it has better resources but because it makes better use of these resources than other firms. The firm may maximize the use of its human capital resources by correctly assigning workers to positions in which they have high productivity (Tomer, 1987). Mahoney and Pandian (1992), gave support to this by stating that a competitive advantage may be more readily obtained when a firm's human resources are effectively matched with its strategy. Lado and Wilson (1994) opposed Wright's declaration of imitability and proposed that HR systems can be unique, casually ambiguous and synergistic in how they boost firm's competencies. These systems with all the complementarities and interdependencies among the set of practices would be impossible to imitate. A contemporary view came from Lepak and Snell (1999) who emphasized that variance presented itself among the uniqueness and value of skills. They proposed that seeking one HR strategy may place the variety of human capital available to the firm in the background of strategy implementation. Research carried out by Boxall and Steenveld's (1999) might hint that HR systems are more

Aim: This research will help us understand the role played by Strategic Human Resources Management in Organizational success, what role a HR manager plays in improving organizational efficiency and how it differs from traditional Human Resources Management.