offered training and development opportunities to Soviet customers. Each of
these HR practices helped execute business strategy. The HR executives
who designed these new practices were strategic partners: They mastered
the skill of organizational diagnosis and aligned HR practices with business
strategies.
The metaphor for this role is the "strategic partner." HR professionals become
strategic partners when they participate in the process of defining business
strategy, when they ask questions that move strategy to action, and when
they design HR practices that align with business strategy.
The primary actions of the strategic human resource manager translate
business strategies into HR priorities. In any business setting, whether corpo-
rate, functional, business unit, or product line, a strategy exists either
explicitly, in a formal process or document, or implicitly, through a shared
agenda on priorities. As strategic partners, HR professionals should be able to
identify the HR practices that make the strategy happen. The process of
identifying these HR priorities is called organizational diagnosis, a process
through which an organization is audited to determine its strengths and
weaknesses.
In the past decade, increasing attention has been paid to the importance of
moving HR professionals into the strategic role. But in answering the call to
become "more strategic" and "more involved in the business many - HR
professionals have inappropriately identified this as the only HR role. The
implications of this are discussed below under "Paradoxes Inherent in Multiple
HR Roles.
Management of Firm Infrastructure
Creating an organizational infrastructure has been a traditional HR role. It
requires that HR professionals design and deliver efficient HR processes for
staffing, training, appraising, rewarding, promoting, and otherwise managing
the flow of employees through the organization. As a caretaker of the
corporate infrastructure, HR professionals ensure that these organizational