In one of the earliest contributions, for example, Devanna et al. ( 1982 : 11 ) say of
the traditional personnel function, ‘The recent popularity of human resources
management is causing major problems for traditional personnel departments.
For years they have been explaining their mediocre status by bewailing their lack of
support and attention from the CEO.’ They then go on to outline a new approach,
saying: ‘Whether the human resources component survives as a valuable and
essential contribution to eVective management will largely depend on the degree
to which it is integrated as a vital part of the planning system in organizations. In
large part, the management of human resources must become an indispensable
consideration in both strategy formulation and strategy implementation.’
The next two decades witnessed a veritable explosion of writing and research on
strategic aspects of HRM, leading in short order to the creation of an entirely new
subWeld called ‘strategic human resource management’ (SHRM). As with the term
HRM, some authors deWne SHRM as a generic practice/approach, while others give
it a more particularized meaning. Wright and McMahan ( 1992 : 298 ), for example,
state that SHRM is: ‘[t]he pattern of planned human resource deployments and
activities intended to enable an organization to achieve its goals.’ This conceptu-
alization is generic since it encompasses all types of organizations and systems of
people management and requires only that the HRM deployments be chosen in a
forward-looking, integrated fashion in order to achieve the organization’s goals. It
also suggests HRM and PM are largely equivalent (since by logical inference
if SHRM is strategic then HRM is largely tactical, like PM). Other authors,
however, deWne SHRM more narrowly so it is eVectively coterminous with the
employment model in the HPWS. In this spirit, McMahan et al. ( 1998 : 197 ) state,
‘Today, what we call strategic human resource management may well be ‘‘second
generation’’ employee involvement with a relationship toWrm strategy and per-
formance.’ This conceptualization of SHRM is both narrower and more
prescriptive—narrower since it seems to limit the room for strategic choice to
some permutation of the HPWS and more prescriptive since it suggests that a
strategic approach to HRM should incorporate employee involvement and other
HPWS practices.
Regardless of deWnitional disputes, what can be unambiguously stated is that the
development of the SHRM concept led to a substantial resurgence of academic
interest in the HRM function and strengthening of both the theory and practice of
people management. In the area of theory, for example, SHRM provided intellec-
tual support for the idea that aWrm’s employees and HRM system can potentially
provide a long-run source of competitive advantage (Boxall 1996 ; Wright et al.
2001 )—a contention that appeared to receive empirical support in studies that
found a positive link between advanced HRM practices andWrm performance
(e.g. Huselid 1995 ; Becker and Gerhart 1996 ).
HRM in all guises was also promoted by several developments outside academe.
One example is the large-scale growth of government regulation of employment
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