Why is it important for Human Resource management to transform from Research Paper

Why is it important for Human Resource management to transform from being primarily administrative and operational to becoming more of a strategic partner - Research Paper Example Hence, many organizations strive to incorporate business strategy into HRM thereby giving it a strategic importance and perspective, especially from industrial relations and organizational behavior facets. This study focuses on understanding the evolution of HR function from basic administrative aspect to strategic integration as explained in literature and based on a specific organization’s adoption and contribution of strategic HRM before concluding with key findings. Personnel management has moved from mere care-taking function to strategic partner during last few decades, although this trend started post World War II according to the CIPD factsheet (2014). Throughout literature, the most probable triggering factor to this transformation has been associated with Hawthorne’s experiments leading to a new perspective of understanding related to human relations, which were reinforced by various other studies as shown in Table 2.1 (Armstrong, 2012). Strategic integration of HR function has been the next step that intensified its role in helping organizations gain a competitive advantage (Ulrich, 1997). Ulrich (1997) highlighted the key roles and responsibilities of HR department thereby underpinning HR department’s role in managing human resources, company infrastructure, and managing change and transformation as well as managing performance of employees and thereby the organization (pls see fig 2.2). Specifically, Ulrich (1997) has ide ntified that the HRM function in most of the successful organizations transformed from administrative function to more complex activities such as, strategic partner, employee advocate, change agent and administrative expert. Noe et al., (2007) point out many factors that could have triggered this transformation of HRM to strategic role such as challenges of sustainability and competition, changing expectations of customers, changes in markets, changes in economies etc. Owing to the factors highlighted by Noe et al.,