Hrm and Srhm for Competitive Advantage

Globalization, the global financial crisis, shortage in the work force, changing in business context and skill gaps have been significant issues and affect the ability of organizations to compete. Businesses will lose its competitiveness unless they have a well-trained, highly skilled, well-prepared and productive labor force. Becker and Huselid (1999) concluded that the foundation of a value-added HR function is a business strategy, which relies on people or employees as a source of competitive advantage. This essay is going to explain more the relationship between strategic management and human resource management; the importance of human resources for business; therefore, discuss how strategic human resource management may contribute to the competitive advantage of the firm. This essay will have four parts: first part is concepts of human resource management and strategic human resource management, the theoretical perspective about them in the resource-based view; after that it will explain the link between them, how them related to each other; then how the strategic human resource management have an impact on a firm’s competitive advantage will be discussed; finally is the conclusion.

First of all, it is needed to understand the basic concept of human resource management, strategic management as well as strategic human resource management. It is easily to get confused with these concepts because each of them has their own purpose but still relating to each other. Basically, strategic management is about overall management, for the whole organization. Human resource management and strategic human resource management are only parts of strategic management and they focus on only the human capital of the firm. Strategic management (Kramar, Bartram & De Cieri, 2011) is a process or approach to addressing the competitive challenges faced by an organization. Its goal is to deploy and allocate the resources in a way that provides the organization with a... [continues]

Read full essay