The concept of strategic human resources management (SHRM) holds
considerable promise for improving government performance. However, to
realize this promise, it is necessary to invest the concept with clear
meaning. This article explores unresolved issues regarding the meaning
of SHRM and its relevance to public organizations. Arguing that the
value of the concept is undermined by tying it too closely to strategic
planning, the article offers an expanded, two-pronged understanding of
SHRM. The personnel office, in addition to helping the agency implement
strategic initiatives, also carries out an integrated personnel program
guided by a coherent theory about what it should be doing and why.
The concept of strategic human resources management (SHRM) is well
established in business literature.[1] It refers to ongoing efforts to
align an organization's personnel policies and practices with its
business strategy. The recent interest in SHRM reflects a growing
awareness that human resources are the key to success in both public and
private organizations. Yet, despite this growing awareness, the
relevance of SHRM to public organizations is far from clear. Government
agencies rarely operate in competitive markets and thus do not develop
business strategies in the same sense that private organizations do. And
because they function within larger systems of authority, they do not
enjoy the same degree of autonomy that private organizations do to alter
their personnel policies or provide performance-based incentives to
employees. Given these inherent differences, SHRM cannot be transferred
successfully from the private to the public sector without tailoring its
design and implementation to the unique characteristics of public
organizations.
At present there remain many unresolved issues about what
modifications are required and the probabilities of their success. If
SHRM is to succeed in fundamentally altering the role of the personnel
department and the practice of public personnel management, greater
clarity is required regarding the concept of SHRM and how it is to be
implemented in public organizations. Accordingly, this article examines
unresolved issues regarding the relevance of SHRM for government
agencies and closes with an argument for an expanded understanding of
what it means to manage human resources strategically.
Procedural and Structural Prerequisites: Unresolved Issues
Figure 1 presents a conceptual framework representative of the kind
found in the business literature. It depicts SHRM as a process that
merges strategic planning and human resource management. Specifically,
it views SHRM as a continuous process of determining mission-related
objectives and aligning personnel policies and practices with those
objectives. The personnel department plays a strategic role to the
extent that its policies and practices support accomplishment of the
organization's objectives. Key components include analyzing the
agency's internal and external environments, identifying the
agency's strategic objectives, developing HR objectives and
strategies consistent with the agency's goals (vertical
integration), and aligning HR policies and practices with each other
(horizontal integration). For this conceptual understanding of SHRM to
be implemented successfully, certain structural and procedural
requirements must be satisfied. These core requirements include the
following:
1. An established strategic planning process.
2. Involvement of the HR director in the strategic planning process
and full consideration of the personnel-related implications of the
strategic objectives or initiatives under discussion.
3. A clear statement, written or unwritten, of each agency's
mission and the strategic objectives to be achieved in pursuit of
mission.
4. The vertical alignment of personnel policies and practices with
an agency's mission and strategic objectives, and the horizontal
integration of personnel policies and practices with each other.
5. A personnel office whose organizational role and structure are
consistent with and contribute to the attainment of the agency's
mission and strategic objectives.
These prerequisites capture what is required to integrate strategic
planning with human resources management in a way that enhances
organizational performance. Such an integration is difficult to achieve,
for example, if there is no strategic planning process in place, no
participation by the personnel director, and no subsequent development
of personnel initiatives designed to support identified objectives.
These prerequisites are explored below, along with unresolved issues
about how to fulfill them in governmental settings.
An Established Strategic Planning Process
The role of strategic planning is to provide agencies with a clear
sense of direction by clarifying mission, setting priorities, and
identifying goals and objectives. NAPA's Guide for Effective
Strategic Management of Human Resources recommends a short and simple
planning process, five to seven days in length, which establishes five
or six key objectives to be accomplished during the next few years.[2] A
short and simple process has the advantage of providing a clear sense of
direction to line and staff officials without becoming an overly
elaborate and ultimately hollow planning exercise.
Most federal agencies engage in strategic planning because they are
required to do so by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993.
The extent of its use among state and local governments, although
somewhat less clear, is indicated by the results of two studies. Of
those responding to a national survey of state agencies conducted by
Berry and Wechsler, 60 percent said they had strategic planning
processes in place.[3] Similarly, in a study of municipalities with
populations between 25,000 and 1,000,000, Poister and Streib found that
60 percent had adopted strategic planning in at least one department or
program area.[4] These findings indicate that a large and growing number
of state and local agencies are using strategic planning as a basic way
of doing business.
One unresolved issue is whether the goals of SHRM are best achieved
through a single, top-down, jurisdiction-wide strategic planning process
or by separate agency-level planning processes. The business literature
promotes strategic planning as a company-wide process in which top
executives identify strategic objectives for the entire organization and
managers develop their operational plans accordingly. But however
appropriate this may be in the private sector, it is less so in the
public sector. The essential task of government agencies is to execute
public law. Because each agency has a unique mission and set of mandates
to carry out, a single, top-down strategic planning process is less
appropriate for purposes of SHRM. As Poister and Streib observed in
their study of municipal governments, strategic planning may be
"more useful for major organizational units with a unified sense of
mission rather than a highly diversified and fragmented municipal
jurisdiction as a whole."[5] While it is true that states such as
Oregon[6] and communities such as Rock Hill, South Carolina[7] have
engaged in strategic planning, such efforts are typically short-term
exercises designed to resolve jurisdiction-wide problems or policy
issues rather than institutionalized processes designed to enhance
agency performance. Enhanced performance is the purpose that SHRM is
intended to serve. Because each agency has a unique mission and set of
mandates, SHRM logically requires agency-level strategic planning
processes guided by legislative intent as well as the chief
executive's policy or political agenda. The subsequent integration
of agency plans into a jurisdiction-wide strategic plan is not required
for purposes of SHRM.
A second unresolved issue is whether SHRM requires a particular
kind of strategic planning to deliver on its promise of enhanced
organizational performance. Strategic planning may be practiced in a
variety of ways.[8] It may be externally-oriented, bringing together a
diverse range of stakeholders to resolve issues of mutual concern, or
internally-oriented, bringing together a cross-functional team of agency
officials to set internal priorities and objectives. It may be mandated
from above for purposes of accountability, or adopted voluntarily by an
agency to establish a clear sense of direction. It may comprise a
temporary, problem-specific process that ends when the immediate problem
has been resolved, or an ongoing, institutionalized process for goal
setting and issues management. Lastly, it may follow the Harvard policy
model and call for extensive analysis of the agency's internal and
external environments, or it may avoid lengthy analyses, opting instead
for simple goal-setting exercises.[9] Process characteristics are
important because they affect how seriously strategic planning is taken
by agency staff, its perceived value as a management tool, and how much
it ultimately contributes to organizational performance.
Advocates of SHRM tend to assume an institutionalized,
internally-oriented strategic planning process adopted by agencies to
clarify their missions, set priorities, and decide upon strategic
objectives. There are, however, two contrasting approaches in current
use. Little attention has been given to which of these is best suited to
SHRM. The performance management approach, which is typically mandated
by law or executive order, aims to ensure accountability. Under this
approach, strategic objectives are stated in terms of desired results,
such as a ten percent increase in the number of criminal cases closed
successfully, and appropriate performance measures are identified to
track success in achieving identified objectives. Although touted as an
important governmental reform by members of the managing-for-results
movement,[10] this approach relies upon several problematic assumptions.
Among these are that agencies do not and will not pursue meaningful
results on their own initiative, that rational planning models are
appropriate for use in the public sector, that agencies can in fact
translate their missions into measurable outcomes, and that agencies
should be rewarded and sanctioned according to their degree of success
in achieving their stated objectives. Despite the difficulties inherent
in this approach, it has been mandated for use in the federal government
as well as in many states. By contrast, the issues management approach
is undertaken voluntarily to address emerging issues, internal or
external to the agency, that are likely to affect its ability to carry
out its mission.[11] Its primary purpose is adaptability rather than
accountability. Under this approach, strategic objectives are stated in
terms of the actions required to achieve a desired future state.
Although the planning process is sometimes institutionalized and
ongoing, in many cases it is undertaken on a limited basis to address
emerging areas of concern. Examples of the latter include a federal
agency seeking to maintain program quality in the face of budget cuts, a
suburban school district wishing to explore educational reform
initiatives, and a public library struggling to maintain employee morale
as demand for its services continue to rise.[12] The issues management
approach tends to emphasize political rationality (doing what is
politically acceptable to powerful stakeholders) over formal rationality
(utilizing objective criteria and cost-benefit calculations to determine
how best to attain agency goals). Key stakeholders are often brought
together to negotiate an agreement about what to do and how. This
approach also tends to be more pragmatic than ideological, reflecting
the assumption that strategic planning is a valuable management tool for
adjusting an organization to its external environment and keeping it
focused on desired future states. Although tracking success with
quantitative measures is not excluded under this approach, emphasis is
placed on addressing issues affecting the agency's ability to carry
out its mission rather than managing performance through the use of
outcome measures.
Although this issue remains unresolved, it is possible to cite
three reasons why the performance management approach is less suited to
the purposes of SHRM. First, its underlying assumptions are difficult to
satisfy in practice, potentially leaving participants frustrated and
undermining their commitment to the process. As Bryson and Roering have
cautioned, "a strategic planning system characterized by
substantial comprehensiveness, formal rationality in decision making,
and tight control will work only in an organization that has a clear
mission; clear goals and objectives; centralized authority; clear
performance indicators; and information about actual performance
available at reasonable cost. Few public-sector organizations - or
functions or communities - operate under such conditions."[13]
Second, performance management systems are usually mandated from above
and monitored by budget and planning offices. The problems associated
with mandating strategic planning for purposes of control are well
established.[14] Such systems tend to create an underlying air of
distrust, which undermines commitment to the process. They tend to skew
goal statements, choice of performance measures, and actual behaviors
towards those results that are easiest to achieve, whether or not they
truly enhance organizational performance. Third, the model of SHRM
presented in Figure 1 calls for the alignment of personnel policies and
practices with strategic initiatives designed to help the agency adapt
to or cope with internal and external pressures. It does not call for
their alignment with performance measures as such. Managing issues and
measuring program results may be complementary processes, but planning
for action and planning for control are two very different things. In
the final analysis more research is required to determine whether the
issues management approach is best suited to the purposes of SHRM or,
alternatively, whether it is possible to integrate the two approaches
successfully.
Involvement of the Personnel Director in Strategic Planning
SHRM as conceptualized in Figure 1 requires more than an
established strategic planning process. It also requires the full
involvement of the personnel director in that process. This is necessary
to ensure that the strategic initiatives under discussion are evaluated
in terms of their implications for human resources. When a new program
initiative is under consideration, for example, the personnel director
can offer an analysis of the gap between current human resources
capabilities and projected needs. Similarly, if an agency wishes to
adopt a customer-service orientation, the personnel director can explain
the difficulties inherent in changing an organization's culture and
the kinds of training and incentives required to accomplish it
successfully. Involvement by the personnel director is also necessary so
that the personnel staff can obtain a better and more complete
understanding of the agency's mission and the issues confronting
line managers.
Although examples of strategic partnerships are increasingly
heralded in professional journals and at management conferences, many
jurisdictions still do not include human resource professionals in
strategic deliberations. An unresolved issue here is how to forge such a
partnership. Traditionally, agency executives have tended to view the
personnel office as a staff agency performing relatively routine
functions and occupying a relatively low status in the organizational
scheme of things. Consequently, they have not been inclined to involve
personnel directors in strategic deliberations. At the same time many
personnel directors have been slow to insist upon a strategic role
because their professional training has not prepared them to perform
such a role. Training in personnel management tends to emphasize the
administration of personnel systems rather than general management or
organizational development.
A Clear Statement of Strategic Objectives
Strategic goals and objectives, key products of the planning
process, are often stated in a written plan. This plan provides a useful
guide to the personnel office as it seeks to align existing policies and
practices with strategic objectives. A written plan is not, however, an
essential requirement of SHRM. As noted in NAPA's Guide for
Effective Strategic Management of Human Resources, "the absence of
a written plan developed at the agency level does not mean that SHRM
cannot exist. The HR office can develop its own plan for linking its
goals to the agency's goals, or the staff can be reminded of the
need to factor the agency's strategic goals into its daily
operations."[15] For purposes of SHRM, all that is required is that
members of the personnel staff know and understand the agency's
strategic objectives so that they can contribute to their attainment.
Although this requirement appears straight forward enough, most
discussions of strategic planning fail to define what the term strategy
or strategic objective means in a public context. In private sector
firms practicing SHRM, a business strategy is designed to give them a
competitive edge over other firms in their industry. They have three
basic strategies from which to choose.[16] The innovation strategy
involves developing a unique product or service, or concentrating on a
specific market niche; the quality enhancement strategy involves
offering products or services that are superior in quality; and the cost
reduction strategy involves reducing costs so that the firm can offer
goods and services at the lowest possible price. Firms may also explore
different growth strategies, such as those involving mergers and
diversification. Once business strategies are selected, specific
objectives are identified and the task of aligning personnel policies
and practices begins. Because public agencies are embedded in authority
networks rather than economic markets, what it means to select a
"business strategy" is much less clear. As Wechsler and
Backoff have noted, the "strategies of public organizations, unlike
business strategies, are produced in response to a variety of competing
signals that emanate not from markets but from complex political,
economic, legal, and organizational structures, processes, and
relationships."[17] Whereas business executives are relatively
unconstrained in making strategic decisions, the constraints encountered
by public administrators often cause them to make strategic choices
other than those they believe are best suited to mission attainment.
Factors influencing choice of strategy include the political goals of
elected officials, demands of powerful stakeholders, judicial mandates,
budgetary constraints, the organization's capacities and resources,
and its relationships with other organizations. Agencies are more likely
to engage in strategic planning and more likely to succeed in
implementing their intended objectives when they possess internal
capacity for performance (adequate funding, personnel, and management
systems), a supportive political environment, and a weak or divided
external influence field. Conversely, strategies tend to be shaped by
external demands rather than internal intentions when an agency
experiences a hostile environment and low internal capacity.
An agency's strategy may be understood as the basic pattern
reflected in its policy decisions and actions. Wechsler and
Backoff's analysis of state agencies in Ohio revealed three basic
patterns. Developmental strategies involve actions taken to enhance the
agency's resources, status, influence, and capacity for future
action, presumably as it relates to mission attainment. Developmental
strategies are often products of a formal planning process in which
strategists and planners deliberately seek to develop capacity so as to
maintain internal control and enhance organizational performance.
Political strategies involve actions taken either to balance competing
stakeholder demands or to reward supporters of the administration by
moving the agency in specific policy or programmatic directions. For
example, control over internal operations may be tightened in order to
further a specific political agenda. Such strategies are adopted where
political and partisan pressures are high. Protective strategies involve
actions designed to accommodate external pressures or appease external
stakeholders while maintaining the organizational status quo. It is a
reactive strategy more or less forced on an agency by an overtly hostile
environment and weak internal capacity for strategic action. It is a
pattern that is highly frustrating for agency staff.
Steeped in the rationalistic assumptions of planning theory,
discussions of SHRM tend to envision agencies pursuing developmental,
capacity-building strategies rather than political or protective
strategies. In practice, however, a developmental strategy requires
widely shared objectives, the capacity to plan and carry out strategic
initiatives, extensive discretion, adequate resources, and relatively
weak or divided external forces - conditions which often cannot be
satisfied. Although Backoff and Wechsler do not address issues relating
to SHRM, their analysis strongly suggests that SHRM may look very
different in agencies engaged in political or protective strategies.
Rather than helping an agency develop its capacity for mission
attainment, the personnel office may be asked, for example, to help the
agency secure the political loyalty of career civil servants, recruit
and reward based on partisan or political criteria, or tighten control
over employee performance. In short, although the concept of SHRM, with
its emphasis on linking means and ends, strongly implies an
institutionalized process utilized by agencies pursuing a developmental
strategy, it must be kept in mind that agency performance can be defined
in terms of political and protective objectives as well, and that SHRM,
as it is generally understood, may be undermined or derailed as a
result.
Alignment of HR Policies and Practices with Strategic Objectives
Although their mandates are set by external actors, agencies still
must interpret their mandates, clarify their missions, and seek
agreement among key stakeholders regarding how their missions will be
carried out. Statements of strategic objectives, written or unwritten,
emerge from these decision processes. The core requirement of SHRM is
the alignment of personnel policies and practices with the agency's
strategic objectives. Although many examples of alignment have been
reported in the literature, no classification system has yet been
proposed to capture how alignment is accomplished. In general, the
reported examples tend to fall into one or more of the following
categories:
1. Adapting to environmental change. This category includes actions
taken by the personnel office in response to external events or trends,
such as budget cuts, tight labor markets, changing demographic
characteristics of workers, and new technologies. During a period of
retrenchment, for example, the personnel office can help managers
communicate to staff members the reasons behind staff cutbacks and how
they will be accomplished, develop and introduce an early retirement
incentive program, counsel those who must be laid off about alternative
job opportunities, provide stress management programs for those anxious
about their jobs or struggling to cope with increased workloads, and
explore the use of temporary or contract employees to ease workload
burdens. Adaptive responses of this kind may or may not be guided by a
formal statement of agency objectives.
2. Building human capacity to support strategic initiatives. Human
resources planning is a traditional personnel function. It involves
forecasting future staffing needs and taking steps to recruit new
employees or train existing employees to meet the forecasted demands.
What is unique in the context of SHRM is analysis of the gap between
current and required capacity for each new strategic initiative. If an
agency has decided to serve a new clientele group, expand services into
new areas, or take on an entirely new program, the personnel office can
play a strategic role by recruiting new employees with the requisite
skills or enhancing the skills of existing personnel through training
and development.
3. Changing organizational culture. Many public organizations have
followed their private sector counterparts by reinventing and
reengineering themselves. Major reform initiatives often require new
organizational cultures, cultures driven by different values and
requiring different behaviors. Adopting a "customer-service"
orientation, for example, has become a common strategic objective in
both the private and public sectors. The personnel office can help
develop a shared commitment to service quality and customer satisfaction
through its employee orientation sessions and training programs. It can
also redesign performance appraisal and incentive systems so that
employees are rewarded for emphasizing quality and customer service. The
personnel office can undertake similar efforts in agencies seeking to
move from a process-oriented to a results-oriented culture.[18]
4. Preparing employees for change. Staff members often resist the
implementation of major reforms because of implicit or explicit threats
to personal security. Thus, in addition to taking steps to develop a new
organizational culture, the personnel office can also take steps to
prepare employees for impending changes. It can, for example, encourage
managers to involve employees in the design and implementation of the
new program or reform initiative, help communicate the purposes behind
the changes and the benefits to be derived from them, and provide
additional training opportunities so that staff members are prepared to
function successfully under the new order.
5. Supporting a specific "business strategy." This
category, which overlaps with the preceding ones, is distinguished by
the selection of a specific business strategy for success. Many of the
examples of alignment in the business literature envision this kind of
situation. When Marriott, for example, decided to gain a competitive
advantage by being "the employer of choice," the personnel
office altered its policies and practices so as to attract and retain
the very best workers available.[19] Another business strategy is to
become "a high commitment" organization. In this instance the
personnel office is charged with altering its policies and practices to
encourage employee development and empowerment. Indeed, some advocates
tend to equate SHRM with the adoption of "progressive"
policies designed to boost employee commitment and performance.[20] The
common denominator in these business strategies is the belief that human
resources are the key to organizational success.
These five kinds of actions are undertaken to achieve vertical
integration. Vertical integration is a measure of how well personnel
policies and practices, individually and collectively, contribute to
organizational objectives. As indicated in Figure 1, horizontal
integration is important as well. This is a measure of how well
personnel policies mesh with each other in contributing to
organizational objectives. The goal is to develop an integrated
personnel program in which policies and practices in one functional area
do not work at cross purposes with those in other areas.
Changing the Role and Structure of the Personnel Office
The first four requirements of SHRM cannot be satisfied unless the
personnel office fundamentally alters the way it does business. An
unresolved issue is how to do so. Advocates of SHRM have offered several
recommendations in this regard. First, the personnel office must develop
the capacity it needs to support strategic initiatives. This means it
must develop staff expertise in job design, organizational development,
change management, employee motivation, and human resource theory. The
personnel staff must also develop knowledge of general management,
agency mission, and the specific personnel problems facing managers.
Whether this strategic role should be assigned to a special unit within
the personnel office or should be expected of all personnel staff
remains an unanswered question. Because the strategic and operational
roles of the personnel office are contradictory in many respects,
performing both roles in an integrated fashion will remain an ongoing
challenge.
Second, the traditional control orientation must be superseded by a
service orientation. The required line-staff partnership cannot be
forged as long as the personnel office is perceived by agency managers
as an enforcer of rules and a source of suffocating red tape. According
to SHRM advocates, a service orientation can be established by assigning
primary responsibility for human resource management to managers and
creating service teams comprised of personnel generalists to assist
managers in achieving mission-related objectives.[21] Under this
proposal, personnel generalists are to perform a service-oriented role
both when administering personnel systems such as classification and pay
and when consulting with managers about specific personnel problems or
objectives. Adopting a service orientation does not require that the
personnel office abdicate its responsibility for safeguarding merit,
employee rights, and equal employment opportunity. Rather, it means
carrying out this responsibility as legal counselors rather than police
officers. If the personnel office is to contribute more directly to an
agency's mission, shifts in role orientation are important. For
SHRM to be implemented successfully, according to NAPA, "the HR
staff must believe that their mission is helping the agency accomplish
its mission by assisting supervisors in managing their human
resources."[22]
Lastly, many advocates of SHRM believe that highly centralized
personnel systems must be decentralized and deregulated. Perry and Mesch
argue, for example, that the implementation of SHRM is incompatible with
highly centralized personnel systems.[23] Possessing unique missions and
mandates, and facing unique situations, agencies must be able to tailor
their personnel policies and practices to their strategic needs.
Centralized personnel systems deny them the flexibility they need.
Structural reforms may include reducing the number of centralized
personnel regulations to the bare minimum needed to enforce statutory
requirements, devolving responsibility for classification and applicant
screening to the agency and bureau level, and delegating policy making
authority downwards so that agencies can establish personnel policies
suited to their individual needs. Advocates of structural reform believe
that certain positive effects will follow, including greater flexibility
and timeliness in personnel decision making and improved line-staff
relations.
In fact, however, decentralization and deregulation may not be a
prerequisite for the successful implementation of SHRM. Structural
reform efforts tend to encounter serious obstacles and create new
problems. For example, devolution of authority means that agency
personnel must be trained to handle personnel transactions formerly
handled by a central personnel office and new ways must be found to
coordinate the efforts of all line and staff officials engaged in
performing the personnel management function. Some of these obstacles
may prove insurmountable, creating additional redundancies and waste and
further undermining agency performance. From the perspective of SHRM,
structural reform may not be necessary as long as each agency has
sufficient authority and flexibility to align its personnel policies and
practiceswith its strategic objectives. This, too, remains an unresolved
issue.
An Expanded Understanding of SHRM
What it means to manage human resources strategically can be
understood in more than one way. The difficulty with the understanding
discussed above is that it lacks an integrated and sustained focus on
the organization's human resources. Because it is closely tied to
the practice of strategic planning, it envisions the personnel office
taking only those actions necessary to support a specific strategic
objective. In this instance the role of the personnel office may be
strategic but it is also somewhat ad hoc and reactive. In actuality
there is much the personnel office can do to advance an agency's
strategic interests other than, or in addition to, supporting the
initiatives that emerge from a strategic planning process.
An alternative understanding of what it means to manage human
resources strategically has been suggested by Eugene McGregor.[24] The
role of the personnel office, according to this understanding, is to
help "manage strategic resources strategically." It begins
from the premise that many, if not most, government jobs are
knowledge-intensive, involving the creation of knowledge or the creation
of "smart products" through the application of "trained
intelligence." Where this is the case, the intellectual capital
stored within the workers becomes the critical resource for the
organization and must therefore be viewed as a strategic resource.
Managing this strategic resource strategically involves determining
essential knowledge, skills, and abilities; improving recruitment and
selection methods; developing the capacities of all employees so that
the agency can respond to any opportunity or threat appearing on the
horizon; and fostering employee commitment so that human capital is not
lost to other employers. In short, this alternative understanding
envisions a personnel office pursuing an ongoing, integrated program for
enhancing organizational performance by acquiring, developing, and
managing human resources strategically.
With these observations in mind, it is possible to suggest an
expanded, two-pronged approach to SHRM in which the personnel office, in
addition to helping the agency implement strategic initiatives, also
carries out an integrated personnel program guided by a coherent theory
or philosophy about what it means to manage human resources
strategically. A theory or philosophy of this kind specifies how human
resources must be treated, how much money must be invested in developing
human capital, the kind of culture and work climate that must be
established, and the specific attitudes and behaviors that must be
elicited if the agency is to achieve its vision of success. That
personnel offices are rarely guided by such a theory has been cited as
the primary reason for their low institutional standing.[25] If the
personnel office succeeds in developing such a theory in consultation
with agency officials and legislative bodies, the next step is to
identify and implement appropriate human resource strategies. Six human
resource strategies are identified in Figure 2. Although these
strategies are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, they
nonetheless serve to illustrate the connections between values and
vision, desired outcomes, and the programmatic means by which to realize
them.
Figure 2 Human Resource Strategies
HR Strategies Underlying Desired
Values Outcomes
Cost Containment Strategy. Containing labor
costs by setting salaries at or below market cost-
levels, adopting wellness programs and economy effective
managed care to reduce benefit costs, and staffing
using part-time, temporary, and contract
employees whenever possible.
Performance Management Strategy. Setting mission-
measurable objectives for employees and productivity related
making rewards contingent upon performance. results
Involvement Strategy. Providing employees, sense of
individually or in teams, with considerable ownership;
work autonomy, decision-making authority, empowerment enhanced
and responsibility for a "complete" task. motivation and
contribution;
employee
commitment
and retention
Retention Strategy. Providing the job
conditions necessary to retain valuable satisfaction;
human resources, including generous need employee
benefit packages, pay that is at or above satisfaction commitment
market, positive work environment, and and retention
family-friendly policies such as flextime
and day care assistance.
Investment Strategy. Increasing individual personal
competence and organizational capacity human competence;
by investing heavily in training and development agency
development. adaptability;
employee
commitment
and retention
Cohesion Strategy. Establishing a sense job
of community and strong social bonds satisfaction;
through agency newsletters, picnics, comradeship; cooperative
and recreational activities, and by openness; relations;
fostering open and trusting relationships trust. employee
between employees and managers.and retention commitment
The cost-containment strategy tends, in practice, to serve as a
default strategy. Although it is antithetical to McGregor's
understanding of what it means to manage strategic resources
strategically, it is often the strategy of choice among elected
officials concerned with holding the line on labor costs and budget
increases. Where there is no agreed upon vision of success, nor any
theory regarding the strategic importance of human resources to agency
performance, other strategies tend to receive little attention. However,
the convergence of several factors in recent years, including tighter
labor markets, a growing proportion of high-skill and
knowledge-intensive jobs, a better educated workforce with heightened
growth needs, and political pressures to improve government performance,
has turned attention to alternative strategies. The performance
management strategy, for example, has been adopted in jurisdictions
where the values and assumptions of the managing-for-results movement
have gained sway.[26] Similarly, because most government employees are
knowledge workers who can sell their intellectual capital on the open
market, many agencies are turning to a combination of the investment,
involvement, and retention strategies to attract, develop, and retain
the human resources they need to provide knowledge intensive services in
an ever changing environment. The investment strategy in particular
reflects a growing awareness that human competence is the engine behind
the creation of value.[27]
The strategies or combination of strategies chosen, if any, depends
on situational factors such as the nature of the work performed by
agency staff, the agency's capacity for pursuing excellence, and
the priorities of its leaders. Political and practical factors often
divert attention from developing a human resource philosophy or
expending funds to put it into practice. Indeed, as McGregor has noted,
"in the minds of many a case-hardened practitioner, the idea of
strategic public-sector human resource management may well be an
oxymoron."[28] But if the prospects for implementing SHRM in the
public sector are uncertain, the concept itself represents a valuable
goal toward which to strive.
Conclusion
The concept of SHRM as outlined above calls upon the personnel
office to adopt a strategic role in addition to its operational roles as
rule enforcer and guardian of the integrity of personnel systems. For
the personnel staff, adopting a strategic role means being more
responsive to agency goals by acting as consultants and service
providers to line managers; supporting the attainment of the
agency's strategic objectives; and carrying out an integrated,
philosophy-driven personnel program. Although the concept of SHRM is
steeped in problematic, rationalistic assumptions, it nonetheless holds
considerable promise for enhancing government performance. Its success
depends on whether the personnel office can integrate its strategic and
operational roles successfully and whether it can satisfy the norms of
political and formal rationality simultaneously. Too much is at stake
for this potentially valuable concept to become a label for yet another
failed management initiative.
Notes
[1.] Tichy, Noel M., Charles J. Fombrun, and Mary Anne Devanna,
"Strategic Human Resource Management," Sloan Management Review
23 (Winter 1982): 47-61; Cynthia A. Lengnick-Hall and Mark L.
Lengnick-Hall, "Strategic Human Resources Management: A Review of
the Literature and a Proposed Typology," Academy of Management
Review 13 (July 1988): 454-470; Randall Schuler, "Strategic Human
Resource Management and Industrial Relations," Human Relations 42
(No. 2 1989):157-184.
[2.] National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), A Guide for
Effective Strategic Management of Human Resources (Washington D.C.:
NAPA, 1996).
[3.] Berry, Frances Stokes and Barton Wechsler, "State
Agencies' Experience with Strategic Planning: Findings from a
National Survey," Public Administration Review 55 (March/April
1995): 159-168.
[4.] Poister, Theodore H. and Gregory Streib, "Management
Tools in Municipal Government: Trends over the Past Decade," Public
Administration Review 49 (May/June 1989): 240-248.
[5.] Poister and Streib, "Management Tools," 244.
[6.] Kissler, Gerald R., Karmen N. Fore, Willow S. Jacobson,
William P. Kittredge, and Scott L. Stewart, "State Strategic
Planning: Suggestions from the Oregon Experience," Public
Administration Review 58 (July/August 1998): 353-359.
[7.] Wheeland, Craig M., "Citywide Strategic Planning: An
Evaluation of Rock Hill's Empowering Vision," Public
Administration Review 53 (January/February 1993): 65-72.
[8.] Bryson, John M., Strategic Planning for Public and Nonprofit
Organizations: A Guide to Strengthening and Sustaining Organizational
Achievement (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1995).
[9.] Bryson, John M. and William D. Roering, "Applying
Private-Sector Strategic Planning in the Public Sector," Journal of
the American Planning Association 53 (Winter 1987): 9-22.
[10.] Osborne, David and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1992).
[11.] Bryson, Strategic Planning; Paul C. Nutt and Robert W.
Backoff, Strategic Management of Public and Third Sector Organizations
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992).
[12.] Bryson, Strategic Planning.
[13.] Bryson and Roering, "Applying Private-Sector Strategic
Planning," 15.
[14.] Mintzberg, Henry, The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning
(New York: Free Press, 1994).
[15.] NAPA, A Guide for Effective Strategic Management of Human
Resources, 17.
[16.] Porter, Michael E., Competitive Strategy: Techniques for
Analyzing Industries and Competitors (New York: Free Press, 1980);
Schuler, "Strategic Human Resource Management and Industrial
Relations."
[17.] Wechsler, Barton and Robert W. Backoff, "The Dynamics of
Strategy in Public Organizations," Journal of the American Planning
Association 53 (Winter 1987): 34-43.
[18.] Popovich, Mark G. (ed.), Creating High-Performance Government
Organizations (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998).
[19.] Ulrich, Dave, "Strategic and Human Resource Planning:
Linking Customers and Employees," Human Resource Planning 15 (June
1992): 47+.
[20.] NAPA, A Guide for Effective Strategic Management of Human
Resources.
[21.] Perry, James L. and Debra J. Mesch, "Strategic Human
Resource Management," in Public Personnel Management: Current
Concerns, Future Challenges edited by Carolyn Ban and Norma M. Riccucci
(New York: Longman, 1997), 21-34.
[22.] NAPA, A Guide for Effective Strategic Management of Human
Resources, 53.
[23.] Perry and Mesch, "Strategic Human Resource
Management."
[24.] McGregor, Eugene B., Strategic Management of Human Knowledge,
Skills, and Abilities (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991).
[25.] Christensen, Ralph, "Where is HR?" Human Resource
Management 36 (Spring 1997): 81-84.
[26.] Lawler, Edward E., Strategic Pay: Aligning Organizational
Strategies and Pay Systems (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990); Popovich,
Creating High-Performance Government Organizations.
[27.] Christensen, "Where is HR?"; Lee Dyer and Gerald W.
Holder, "A Strategic Perspective of Human Resource
Management," in Human Resource Management: Evolving Roles and
Responsibilities edited by Lee Dyer (Washington D. C.: Bureau of
National Affairs, 1988): 1-46.
[28.] McGregor, Strategic Management, 33.
Author
Jonathan Tompkins
Department of Political Science
The University of Montana
Missoula, MT 59812
406-243-5202
Jonathan Tompkins is Professor of Political Science at The
University of Montana. His primary teaching responsibilities include
course in human resources management, strategic planning, and
organization theory. He has published several articles relating to human
resource management and a text entitled Human Resource Management in
Government.
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