It can be argued that the concepts of strategic flexibility and fit are incom-
patible: ‘fit’ implies a fixed relationship between the HR strategy and
business strategy, but the latter has got to be flexible, so how can good fit be
maintained? But Wright and Snell have suggested that the concepts of fit and
flexibility are complementary – fit exists at a point in time, while flexibility
has to exist over a period of time.
PERSPECTIVES ON STRATEGIC HRM
Taking into account the concepts of the resource-based view and strategic
fit, Delery and Doty (1996) contend that ‘organizations adopting a
particular strategy require HR practices that are different from those
required by organizations adopting different strategies’ and that organiza-
tions with ‘greater congruence between their HR strategies and their
[business] strategies should enjoy superior performance’. They identify
three HRM perspectives:
- The universalistic perspective– some HR practices are better than others
and all organizations should adopt these best practices. There is a
universal relationship between individual ‘best’ practices and firm
performance. - The contingency perspective– in order to be effective, an organization’s HR
policies must be consistent with other aspects of the organization. The
primary contingency factor is the organization’s strategy. This can be
described as ‘vertical fit’. - The configurational perspective– this is a holistic approach that emphasizes
the importance of the patternof HR practices and is concerned with how
this pattern of independent variables is related to the dependent variable
of organizational performance. Organizational configuration has been
defined by Meyer et al(1993) as ‘any multi-dimensional constellation of
conceptually distinct characteristics that commonly occur together...
[which] may be represented in typologies’. Delery and Doty (1996) refer
to the Miles and Snow (1978) typology, which defines three ideal
strategic types of organizations – the prospector, the analyser and the
defender – as a configurational concept, and also mention MacDuffie’s
(1995) research, which identified specific configurations or ‘bundles’ that
enhance firm performance. Confusingly, configuration as described by
Delery and Doty appears to have two meanings: 1) the degree of fit
between a total HR system and an organizational type, eg the ideal types
of Miles and Snow; and 2) the extent to which HR practices are linked
together into a total system.
The concept of strategic human resource management l 39