Differening approaches to strategic human resource management

Strategic human resource management (SHRM) has emerged as a significant issue in tandem with the increasing attention being given by the companies to strategy. Faced with an accelerating turbulence in its environment, the response of the corporation has been to attempt to build up a sound internal configuration that includes human resource management (HRM) systems. The key to providing an effective response is to have an HRM system attuned to strategic requirements. The philosophical and academic bases for SHRM, proposed during the past three decades, have followed differing paths. This article attempts to bring together the differing approaches to SHRM and presents a consolidation and evaluation of these viewpoints. The differing views are consolidated under four groups wherein SHRM is seen to be either strategy-focussed, decisionfocussed, content-focussed, or implementation-focussed. A discussion highlights the problem of semantics and pinpoints the controversies and contradictions implicit in the different viewpoints. This article underscores the emerging area of agreement viz. the increasing emphasis on the strategic nature of HRM and considering human resource as a strategic resource to be used to create and sustain a competitive edge for organisations.