1.0 IntroductionThis literature review aims to aid our understanding of the correlation between human resource management (HRM) and organisational change (OC). We look into four key areas such as: integrating HRM and OC; theories of strategic HRM; HRM's supportive vs. strategic role - should HR professionals maintain its traditional supportive role or adopt strategic roles; and lastly, how HR professionals manage resistance to change.We identified that HRM's focus is on managing people within the employer-employee relationship. It involves the productive use of people in achieving the organisation's strategic business objectives and satisfying employee needs. HRM needs to be more then jus ...view middle of the document...
Strategic HRM focuses on the linking of all HR activities with the organisation's strategic objectives (Stone, 2005). In Jacobs, Johnson and McKeown's (2007) article: HR is required to act as both a stabilizer and champion in the midst of storms of change. The rest of the organisation looks to HR to provide needed structures, processes and approaches to support change. Also to see that change efforts deliver long-term results.Stone (2005) and Heathfield (2007) both mentioned that the HR professional's role must parallel the needs of his changing organisation; these roles include strategic partner, employee advocate, change champion and administrative expert. HR professionals must fully develop themselves as whole leaders, owning both internal knowledge such as mission, values and strategies as well as explore vast knowledge outside their current sphere of responsibility, in order to effectively manage cross-organisational initiatives (Losey, 2004).2.0 Literature Review - Critical Issues2.1 The integration between Human Resource Management (HRM) andOrganisation Change (OC)HRM is not purely coordinating an organisation's human resources; it plays a role to intentionally incorporate the interest of an organisation and its employees (Stone, 2005). When an organisation is expecting to transform, the alignment between organisation's strategies and HRM's policies and strategies plays a critical part. With that integration, HR functions can support and facilitate the achieving of organisation's strategic goals. In addition, Guest's approach demonstrates such integration is able to achieve superior individual and organisation performance (Graetz, Rimmer, Lawrence and Smith, 2006).However, in many situations, HRM is not recognised to be part of a strategic role for organisation transformation. Due to the fact that HR activities are not viewed as value adding to organisations and both internal and external customers (Touche cited in Stone, 2005), and HRM is often neglected in organisational change. This could be because HRM held administrative roles in the Personnel Management (PM) era (Hallier, 1993). With such, many companies outsource components of their HR activities (Stone, 2005).Conversely, when organisations are going through transformation, there will be a change in strategies and this requires the coordination of HRM functions (Cornelius, 2001).Therefore, HR's responsibility is to get involved in developing and implementing organisational change, and act as a function between organisation's human capital and strategic direction (HRfocus, 2003). With that, HRM's policy, systems and practices can be exploited to facilitate change. This reinforces and illustrates the influential force of HRM.Consistent with this, it is shown that with specific HRM's policies and practices aligned with organisation strategies, desired organisational change can be realised (Graetz, Rimmer, Lawrence and Smith, 2006). Different notions of such functions have emerg...
