Strategic Human Resources Management in Government: Unresolved Issues.

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.