Human resources and strategic planning Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Human resources and strategic planning - Essay Example Human resource management constitutes an area of management that has embraced strategy management as dynamics continue to characterize business function and people in the organization. Today, convectional human resource practices can no longer be the basis to respond to the needs of market demands in the modern world and this has forced many organizations to remain adept in identifying the best management practices. As organizations look for the best practices of management, it is always advisable that, organizations should identify and adopt human resources practices that fit with the organization’s competitive business strategies (Savage 2010). This will ensure the practices are not outside the goals of the business in the market hence greater success is likely to be achieved. Many organizations adopt two basic human resource strategies. They include universalistic approach and contingency approach (Savage, 2010). Universalistic approach is concerned in identifying the best practices that can be used by diverse organizations (Savage, 2010). On the other hand, contingency approach is concerned with identifying practices that match and align human resource practices with competitive business strategies (Savage, 2010). Adopting any of these two strategies depend on varied factors that each unique organization has, therefore, it is always important for an organization to carry out thorough business and environmental scanning to know the position of the business before deciding to adopt any of the strategies. Human Resource Practices Human resource has been identified to play key role to an organization especially where an organization is attempting to asserts in the market and achieve competitive edge. Strategic human resource management has emerged as an area of human resource management that looks at Functionability of business from an innovative perspective. According to this new field, organizations are not insulated from looking for the best and appro priate strategies that can help them achieve established goals and objectives in the business environment. At the same time, strategic decisions are seen to give an organization an upper hand in determining the level of participation in the dynamic business environment (Allani, Arcand, and Bayad, 2003). Therefore, by innovating best practices to apply in the business or organization, the management may just be motivated by desire to have the best policies and practices in place that accelerate and enhance the performance of the organization as compared to its competitors. Two empirical approaches have emerged to explain the strategic decision-making in an organization as far as human resource management is concerned. The approaches consent that an organization cannot be effective and properly functional if it does not identify the best practices of managing people (Allani, Arcand, and Bayad, 2003). In addition, for human resource management to be effective, they should be seen to in crease performance for the organization. Universalistic approach is the first approach perfect human resource management practices can be identified. This approach postulates that, there are human resource practices that are better than others are, and all organizations have the responsibility of adopting the identified best practices. Accordingly, the approach establishes that there is a universal relationship between an individual identified practice and the performance of the organization that adopt the practice (Armstrong, 2012). Contingency approach, which is another approach widely used, hold slight contradiction position when compared with universalistic approach. The contingency approach posits that organization cannot divorce from the particulate aspects in the organization if it has to achieve the best strategy of management (Armstrong, 2012).