This article was downloaded by: [130.132.123.28]
On: 29 December 2014, At: 11:49
Publisher: Routledge
Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954
Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T
3JH, UK
The International Journal of
Human Resource Management
Publication details, including instructions for
authors and subscription information:
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rijh20
Human resource management:
an agenda for the 1990s
a
Chris Hendry & Andrew Pettigrew
b
a
Senior Research Fellow , Centre for Corporate
Strategy and Change, University of Warwick , UK
b
Director , Centre for Corporate Strategy and
Change, University of Warwick , UK
Published online: 28 Jul 2006.
To cite this article: Chris Hendry & Andrew Pettigrew (1990) Human resource
management: an agenda for the 1990s, The International Journal of Human
Resource Management, 1:1, 17-43, DOI: 10.1080/09585199000000038
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585199000000038
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all
the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our
platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors
make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy,
completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions
and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of
the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis.
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be
independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and
Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings,
demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever
or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in
relation to or arising out of the use of the Content.
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study
purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution,
reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form
to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can
be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
Human resource management: an agenda
for the 1990s
Chris Hendry and Andrew Pettigre w
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Introduction
In keeping with an inaugural issue, we seek in this paper to do four things:
to trace the origins of human resource management (HRM); to provide an
explication and critique of it as a conceptual model; to outline the
perspective which characterizes our own research programme at Warwick
University, and in the process identify a range of themes and issues which
the study of HRM ought to address; and finally, given the centrality of the
strategic concept to HRM, to argue for an adequate treatment of strategy.
In conclusion, we suggest a number of ways forward for research in the
1990s.
Origins and history
The stress on 'human resources' as an organizational asset goes back at
least to Drucker (1954). This was elaborated in the theory of 'human
capital' by Schultz (1963) who was concerned to describe the benefits of
education as a 'production good' enhancing the economic resources of
society, and by others like Becker (1964) who argued for the benefits to
economic growth of a well-trained workforce. While labour market
segmentation theory developed in reaction (stressing institutional processes
in labour market formation), human asset accounting in the 1970s applied
the capital theory to quantifying investments in people by the organization
(Flamholtz, 1974). This was embraced by some (for example, Likert, 1967)
as a way of encouraging humane employment policies, less geared to the
short-term (although others saw in it the rule of accountants).
In the 1970s, the language of 'human resources' was creeping into the
vocabulary of British academics, with its ambivalence between utilitarianinstrumentalism and developmental-humanism, leading John'Morris to
make a pointed distinction between 'human resources' and 'resourceful
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Chris Hendry atld Andrew Pettigrew
humans': 'resourceful managers are in contrast to the stable but readily
manipulated "human resources" who appear so frequently in textbooks of
personnel planning and control' (Morris, 1974: 110). This kind of contrast
underpinned Legge's (1978) 'conformist' and 'deviant' innovators in
personnel management, the former allied to the language and values of the
accountant.
When human resource management emerged in the 1980s in North
America as an alternative programme to personnel management, it carried
forward these conflicting tendencies - on the one hand, a situationalcontingency perspective that proposed ways to maximize the contribution
of people t o the organization; on the other, a programme which raised
questions about the values and assumptions of man&ement.
T h e immediate spur, to what on the face of it looked like the values of
'organization development' and the 'quality of working life' movement
warmed up, was the crisis in American management brought o n by its
perceived failure in the face of Japanese competition. This was seen at its
most vivid over the automobile industry (Abernathy, Clark, and Kantrow,
1981). T h e drive t o restore competitiveness there embraced technology,
working methods, organization, and attitudes, directed not only at costs
(though improved 'process yield'), but crucially at quality and other
intangibles such as delivery. It was for reasons such as this that
organizational culture came t o be at the forefront of the drive t o change
traditional American organizations. as in the turnaround at Ford (Banas,
1988). Penetration of its domestic markets. recession, and the impact of
microprocessor technology were seen as creating 'a unique and fleeting
window of opportunity . . . that makes novel patterns of organisation
viable and perhaps mandatory' (Pava, 1985). This is what marks out the
emergence of H R M around 1980 and distinguishes it from OD, QWL, and
what French (1974) termed a 'personnel-minded concept of management',
with which its values (and systems principles) have otherwise much in
common.
Like those movements. however, it also expressed a mission -academics
and management gurus, with one foot in the consultancy and one foot in
the academic world, putting themselves at the service of industry to bring
about the turnaround. H R M was thus in a real sense heavily normative
from the outset: it provided a diagnosis and proposed solutions. In
addition, the two books which came out of Harvard in 1984-5 (Beer,
Spector, Lawrence, Mills, Walton, 1984; and Walton and Lawrence, 1985)
were normative in the sense of laying down a manifesto and theoretical
framework for the teaching of what the authors called their 'groundbreaking'
programme in H R M for the Harvard MBA.
T h e values of 'commitment' (Walton and Lawrence, 1985), 'mutuality'
(Beer er a l . , 1984). 'consensualism' and 'communitarianism' (Lodge, 1985)
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
propounded in these works, like Theory X-Theory Y before them, need to
be read therefore as indictments of what American industry largely was
not. The sickness of American firms was that they did not create the
allegiance and commitment to objectives which the organizational excellence
literature proclaimed as virtues. They were not 'Type Z', nor 'Type J'
(embodying Japanese values): they were 'Type A' (for 'American', or
'achievement' values), characterized by short-term employment, rapid
evaluation and promotion, specialized career paths, explicit (bureaucratic)
control, individual decision making, individual responsibility, and segmented
concerns (Ouchi, 1981). Thus, Fombrun (1983), drawing on Pascale and
Athos (1981), underpinned his argument for HRM as follows:
human resource systems in American organisations have tended to drive
a short-run orientation in business strategy through a philosophy that
largely stresses bottom-line performance. Japanese organisations emphasise loyalty as the dominant value in the human resource cycle and
encourage it through a set of sub-systems that are tied to long-run
concerns.
(1983: 200)
To come closer to the specific concerns of HRM, most firms' employment
policies were lacking in long-term strategy built upon a coherent
philosophy, being 'less reflective of a coherent set of management attitudes
and values than . . . of the economic environment in which that
organisation operates' (Beer er a l . , 1985: 101). The behaviour of American
firms in the 1980-2 recession, seemingly making larger than necessary
redundancies, confirmed observers in this view (Perry, 1985).
By contrast, HRM arrived in the UK around 1985186 without this broad
underlying critique of strategic behaviour, cultural values, and human
resource practices. Such concerted effort as there was was more concerned
with monitoring the retreat of trade unionism. When the language of HRM
started to penetrate in the UK, it presented itself as a more or less fully
formed set of values and prescriptions. The reaction it invited was
therefore one of questioning whether the 'HRM phenomenon' was visible
too in the UK (combined with the relative aversion of British business
academics to be at the head of such a movement).
The climate HRM entered, however, did contain a number of not
dissimilar elements. There were first, of course, the restructuring effects on
British industry of recession, loss of competitiveness, and introduction of
new technology. Alongside this was the political climate of Thatcherism, a
new legitimacy for entrepreneurialism, and anti-union legislation which
encouraged firms to introduce new labour practices and to re-order their
collective bargaining arrangements. On the other hand, there were the
Chris Herzdry and Andrew Petrigrew
impacts of specific remedies, through the 'quality' movement for example,
and of the 'excellence' message from Peters and Waterman (1982) and
their look-alikes (Goldsmith and Clutterbuck, 1984; Martin and Nicholls,
1987), along with more systematic studies benefiting from increased access
among British academics to case studies of corporate change (Grinyer,
Mayes, and McKiernan, 1988). These combined with high profile examples
of organizational turnaround, in companies like British Airways and
Jaguar, to encourage thinking about new ways of managing.
Giving this mixture a further twist, and coinciding with the critique of
US business, was the often-repeated criticism of the lack of a strategic
in introducing new technology
approach towards employment issues
(Rothwell, 1985; Burnes and Weekes, 1988), in establishing forms of
flexible working (Atkinson, 1984), in industrial relations management
(Thurley and Wood, 1983; Gospel and Littler, 1983), and in personnel
management generally (Tyson, 1983). Thus, in terms reminiscent of those
used by Beer and colleagues at Harvard, Atkinson queried whether British
firms had 'manpower strategies' or just 'manpower tactics', gover-ed by
'empiricism and pragmatism', and 'subordinate to business needs . . .
[without] any independent rationale'. The publication in the mid-1980s of a
series of damning reports on the state of training and management
development in Britain (Hayes, Anderson, and Fonda, 1984; Coopers and
Lybrand Associates, 1985; Handy. 1987; Constable and McCormick, 1987)
placed the issue of short-termism centre stage, while marking also a
significant shift in the policy agenda from industrial relations issues to one
at the heart of HRM, concerned with developing skills and capabilities.
Meanwhile, monitoring of the changing industrial relations scene, in
terms of decision-making structures and working practices, contributed to
a feeling that personnel management, in its general and functional sense,
was undergoing change and was open to a fundamental reorientation
(Daniel and Millward, 1983; Millward and Stevens, 1986; Marginson et a l . ,
1988; Torrington, Mackay, and Hall, 1985). The precise direction of what
was happening in practice remained unclear. although the more apocalyptic
scenarios of 'macho management' and 'the fall of personnel management'
seemed unsupported (Legge, 1988). Tyson (1985) identified the emergence
of a 'business manager model' in which personnel specialists were beginning to integrate their activities closely with top management and the long
term strategies of the organization, although Fowler (1987) saw merely a
reinforcing of traditional elements of personnel management.
What HRM did at this point was to provide a label to wrap around some
of the observable changes, while providing a focus for challenging
deficiencies - in attitudes, scope, coherence, and direction - of existing
personnel management. The next section reviews the elements of the
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
'-
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
HRM model, and how it has stood up in practice to more critical scrutiny in
the second half of the 1980s.
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
HRM: model and critique
HRM, as it emerged from North America, was not a unified theoretical
frame. The two key texts - Strategic Human Resource Management edited
by Charles Fombrun, Noel Tichy and Mary Anne Devanna (1984), and
Human Resources Management: A General Manager's Perspective by
Michael Beer and colleagues (1985) at Harvard - represent two very
different emphases, the former locating itself much .more centrally in the
strategic management literature, the latter in the human relations
tradition. Various associations adhere to each of these, in terms of the
'situational-contingency' versus 'developmental-humanist' standpoints
referred to earlier, and whether one puts the emphasis on 'human resource
management' or on 'human resource management'. The British (and
European) response to HRM is consequently coloured by whichever one is
reacting to. Legitimate criticisms can be made of each, and we explore
these below.
In what was apparently the first published review to appear in the UK,
the 'strategic' theme in HRM was seen'to comprise four elements:
(1) the use of planning;
(2) a coherent approach to the design and management of personnel
systems based on an employment policy and manpower strategy, and
often underpinned by a 'philosophy';
(3) matching HRM activities and policies to some explicit business
strategy;
(4) seeing the people of the organisation as a 'strategic resource' for
achieving 'competitive advantage'.
(Hendry and Pettigrew, 1986)
Clearly, the use of planning and people as a strategic resource may both be
subsumed to items (2) and (3). Formal manpower planning could provide
the backbone to systematic personnel management (or HRM). Consequently, there was a front-end interest in establishing the degree and
scope of human resource planning among American firms, as a touchstone
for HRM (Rowland and Summers, 1981; Mills, 1985). The idea of people
as a strategic resource for competitive advantage, at various points in the
'value-chain', meanwhile gained theoretical support from Porter (1985),
interpreted by MacMillan and Schuler (1985), and practical support from
the examples of General Electric, and the many firms like IBM who relied
Chris Hendry and Andrew Pettigrew
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
on the acquisition by customers of skills specific to their own products as an
entry barrier against competitors.
The minimal, or core, specification for HRM, however, was coherence
of personnel practices one with another, and their adaptedness to the
organization's strategy (whether commercial or the delivery of public
services). This built on Chandler's (1962) thesis that firms that fail to adapt
their structures to new strategies will be plagued with inefficiencies.
Galbraith and Nathanson (1978) extended this to argue that HRM systems
need also to match, and Fombrun, Tichy, and Devanna (1984: 37) turned
this into the classic statement of HRM;
just as firms will be faced with inefficiencies when they try to implement
new strategies with outmoded structures, so they will also face problems
of implementation when they attempt to effect new strategies with
inappropriate HR systems. The critical managerial task is to align the
formal structure and the HR systems so that they drive the strategic
objectives of the organisation.
The key HR systems and processes bearing upon performance for
Fombrun and colleagues were selection, appraisal, (training and) development, and rewards, and these could be aligned in specific ways to channel
behaviour and create an appropriate organizational culture (or 'dominant
value'):
Figure 1 The human resource cycle
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Discussion of specific processes in Fombrun et al. (1984) (by Devanna on
appraisal, and by Lawler on rewards, for example) showed sensitivity to
the interaction of these on one another in the creation of the all-important
organizational culture. To that extent. 'culture' was the crucial intervening
variable. However, the contingency frame readily led to prescriptive
theorizing, especially when linked to typologies of strategy, 'culture' itself
tended to be treated as a manipulable variable, and people tended to get
excised from the equation.
This could not be said of the Harvard authors (Beer et al., 1984). The
impact of managers on organizational climate (culture) and the relationship between management and other employees was at the heart of their
conception:
Human resource management involves all management decisions and
actions that affect the nature of the relationship between the
organisation and its employees - its human resources. General
management make important decisions daily that affect this relationship.
(1984: 1)
The design and operation of any single HRM lever and its precise
alignment with strategic objectives was thus of less consequence than the
gestalt in which it worked. For example:
compensation should be used less frequently as a leading policy area in
HRM and should be thought of rather as a policy designed to support
policies in the other HRM areas. . . . Pay typically needs to be less tightly
tied to specific results or behaviour. (1984: 147)
Their framework was also broader in several important respects. Where
Fombrun and colleagues focused on management and professional groups
and the 'new labour force', Beer and colleagues dwelt on the adversarial
relations between management and blue-collar/white-collar employees,
and the potential for 'mutual' relations. They conceived of HRM as a series
of policy choices, comprising human resource flows (selection, appraisal,
development, and outflows), reward systems, work systems, and, crucially,
employee influence. And they located this in a societal and political
context of stakeholder interests, as well as of situational factors.
Completing this was a specification of criteria for measuring the short-term
effectiveness of human resource practices - commitment and competence
of employees, congruence of employee goals with those of the organization
(and vice versa), and cost effectiveness - and a reminder that all.such
policies had longer-term consequences for society, the organization, and
the individual.
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Chris Hendry urzd Atzdrew Petrigrew
Their version of HRM thus presented a constant reminder of the value
choices that had to be made, and posed management philosophy as a
counter to the situational contingencies of technical, social, and economic
factors which they saw tending to determine employment policy in a
reactive fashion. It thus met Guest's (1987) requirement that a testable
theory of HRM should specify aims and outcomes, even though these were
somewhat vague (Evans, 1986). Where it has been clearly vulnerable to
critique is in the unitary, integrative implications of 'mutuality', 'high
commitment work systems', and 'consensualism', and the association of
these values with individualist personnel strategies designed to undermine
collectivism in the workplace (Guest. 1987; Legge, 1989). To put this
bugbear in perspective, there is thus a continuing task to monitor the actual
extent, intent, and outcome of policies which could be interpreted as
promoting these values and undermining collectivism. On the evidence
HRM in this sense has not made much headway in the U K (Guest. 1989).
This is to interpret HRM, though, from an industrial relations
perspective, in which HRM and 1R are diametrically and permanently
opposed. There is another way of looking at the whole question, and that is
simply in terms of consistency in employment decisions. Lawrence (1985),
for example, characterized five different employment systems to be found
across American industry, of which the 'commitment' system was but one,
each growing 'from specific technical. social, and economic preconditions,
and each having certain human and economic consequences' (p. 16). The
task is then to describe and elucidate observable employment systems in
relation to.such factors, along with others such as firni strategy. structure.
and any explicit management philosophy. Questions such as inconsistency
in elements of employment practice arising from management behaviour,
and implicit strategies, can also be addressed. The place for observer
value-judgements comes after.
The general standpoint of the Harvard authors incidentally was that a
combination of systems (elsewhere characterized after Ouchi (1981) as
bureaucratic, market, and clan approaches (Beer et ul., 1984: Ch. 7) was
the best guarantee against possible abuses inherent in each alone, and that
particular combinations could support the goals of efficiency, innovative.
ness, and reliability, as appropriate to organizations' commercial or service
strategies.
There are two ways one can therefore approach the field of HRM (a) through an 'a priori' definition of what constitutes it as a special variant
of personnel management, in which case one is likely to be evaluating
selected manifestations against the touchstone of a particular discipline or
ideology; or (b) treating it as a range of things affecting the employment
and contribution of people, against the criteria of coherence and
appropriateness (a less rigid term than 'fit'), and monitoring changes
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
therein. HRM is then a perspective on personnel management, not personnel
management itself. It is hard to envisage making a useful contribution to
the second at this stage without an in-depth case study approach.
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
The research programme at the Centre for Corporate'Strategy and
Change, University of Warwick
In our own research we have followed the second route. In a series of
studies since 1985, we have concentrated on building in-depth cases of
business and human resource change. The first concerned such change in
ten large corporations, in the retailing. .retail banking and financial
services, computer supply, and manufacturing sectors. Reports on individual
companies and sectors, and on emerging themes have appeared in various
places and a final report and book will be published shortly. The second
study involved twenty firms, half drawn from a subset of the oiiginal ten,
the other contributed by Coopers and Lybrand (consultants) working in
association with us. This study focused more particularly on the issue of
skill supply and the role of vocational education and training (VET) within
this. The Training Agency has recently published the final report on this
under the title, Training in Britain: Employers' Perspectives on Human
Resources (Pettigrew, Hendry, and Sparrow, 1989). The third study,
currently in progress, is concentrating on small and medium size
enterprises (SMEs), and involves twenty-four case studies. A preliminary
review of the literature and of issues relating to training and HRM will also
shortly be published (Pettigrew, Arthur, and Hendry, 1990).
In all of this work, we have been governed in our collection of data by a
framework which takes account not only of HRM practices and business
strategy as they have evolved over a period of time -usually 15-20 years in
some detail. But it takes account, too, of the external and internal context
in which this has taken place. and is sensitive to the processes by which
such change has been brought about, including the interactions among the
context and content of change (Pettigrew, 1985; Hendry and Pettigrew,
1987). Figure 2 sets out the framework.
This model adopts the more-inclusive Harvard framework for describing
the range of HRM activity. It also enables one to describe the 'preconditions'
governing a firm's employment system, along with the consequences of the
latter. Reviewing these for convenience under the headings Economic,
Technical, and Socio-Political (rather than simply 'social'), and subsuming
structure and strategy to the Economic, we can produce a specification for
what an analysis of HRM in the firm should cover. It also suggests some of
the specific problems, issues, and themes that research might address. The
Chris Hendry and Andrew Pettigrew
Outer context
Socio-economic
Technical
Political-legal
Competitive
r---I
I
I
I
I
I
Inner context
I
I
I
Culture
Structure
PoliticsILeadership
Task-technology
Business outputs
1
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
I
I
I
I
I
I
?T'?
v
Business strategy
content
Objectives
Product-market
strategy & tactics
---A
I
I
I
1
l
I
I
II
i
l
I
I
I
l
I
I
IL---
v
HUM context
Role
Definition
Organization
HR outputs
3
l
I
I I I
HRM Content
'
HR flows
Work systems
Reward systems
Employee relations
'
Figure 2 Strategic change and human resource management
terms used here relate to a trading business, but with slight modification
they apply also to public services.
The Economic covers:
ownership and control,
organization size and structure,
an organization's growth path (or stage in the life cycle), and
- the structure of the industry and its markets.
-
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
These are interrelated. The growth path and industry structure define the
competitive conditions the firm faces and its profitability. Along with the
form of ownership, these will influence its objectives and its strategy. But
strategy will also be influenced by size and structure.
The large diversified firm will make judgements among business units
perhaps operating in different markets, with different prospects, and at
different stages in their own life cycle. The corporation may exercise
portfolio management, and its strategy will probably take account of the
degree of relatedness or integration between units. It will manage these
according to a preferred 'strategic style' (Goold and Campbell, 1987),
expressed through its planning and control systems. Such considerations
will be reflected in the way businesses are grouped, how the whole is
structured, and indeed the permanence of any single business unit within
the corporation. These considerations of strategy and structure in the
diversified firm have a direct bearing on the existence of a corporate
internal labour market (Hendry, 1990a). This can .have significant
consequences for the corporation's capacity for innovation, synergistic
growth, and flexibility (objectives which are not necessarily compatible
with one another).
At the other end of the spectrum, small and medium size enterprises
(including subsidiaries of larger firms) can lack strategic clout. The industry
structure, with its supply chain relationships, is therefore important. The
shift in some sectors (automotive and aerospace) towards favoured
suppliers and greater reliance on single sourcing - that is, away from raw
price competition to an emphasis on quality, design, and reliability promises greater security and has direct implications for skill levels, and
the capacities and organization of the smaller firm. Conversely, contracting
out - to promote flexibility and achieve cost reductions - suggests greater
insecurity for some employees (although the 'privatized' service may
flourish) (Atkinson, 1984). Both kinds of development fuel the debate on
labour market segmentation (see, for example, Peck, 1989).
The Technical refers to the technology in use and available, and the
configuration of tasks in the way technology is adopted. Tracing the impact
of changing technology on skill requirements and the way these are met, on
work organization and practices, and how such changes are managed in
employee/industrial relations terms, is obviously a central interest. The
extent of technical change, frequently combining with product-market
change, has unsettled skill definitions in many organizations across a wide
spectrum of jobs (Rothwell, 1984; Senker, 1984). Our own cases provide
many instances of this, and of the complex and interrelated changes in
personnel practice to facilitate these adjustments (Hendry and Pettigrew,
1988; Sparrow and Pettigrew, 1988a, 1988b; Hendry, Pettigrew, and
Sparrow, 1988). This has had the effect of focusing skill and skill supply as
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Chris Herzdry and Andrew Pettigrew
issues to an unparallelled extent. The result is that skill could become a
core concept in personnel management in a way that it has not been in the
past. Its derivation from the strategy of the organization, the way it
compels holistic thinking about the sources of skill supply. and the criterion
of competence implicit, equally mark out skill as an organizing concept for
HRM.
Frequently underestimated in tracing such change, however, is the way
manpower, training, and job design policies over a period of time
determine the skill structure of an organization and the scope for adopting
and benefitting from new technology (Hendry, 1990b). Example after
example from our researches confirm how important is the 'inheritance' of
skills and capabilities and hence the decisive role of previous recruitment
and training policies on what firms attempt and how they go about it
(Hendry. 1 9 9 0 ~Windolf,
;
1986). Management philosophy and style. and
the history of industrial relations, are similarly important preconditions.
Such factors can easily form self-fulfilling cycles, and then it becomes a
question of how severe is competitive pressure and how favourable are
other external conditions to radical change.
The same considerations apply to what firms attempt and how they
implement strategies generally (Hendry and Pettigrew, 1987). Other
studies confirm the impact of training policies and skill levels in this
respect. The NIESR comparisons of matched plants in UK and German
metal-working and kitchen furniture manufacturer, for instance, indicated
that lower levels of skill in the U K firms influenced a policy of
concentrating production on the cheaper, mass-produced end of the
market (Daly, Hitchens, and Wagner, 1985; Steedman and Wagner, 1987).
This raises the question of the Socio-Politicalcontext in which strategic
activity takes place. Of critical interest here are the national education and
training systems which support in-firm training.
It is hard to demur from the view, expressed by Keep (1989), that
training and development is the touchstone of any 'tight' definition of
HRM, and that 'development' rather than 'flexibility', is its core criterion.
The two represent the contrasting meanings of 'human resources' - people
as a cost to be minimized. and people as an investment. 'Flexibility' evokes
issues which traditionally concern industrial relations (although it is
ambiguous in this respect, relating also to the potential to innovate
(Kanter, 1984)). Training and human resource development (HRD), on
the other hand, are sustained by attention to activities like recruitment and
selection, appraisal, career planning. Moreover, effective change in
training and HRD involves thinking in broad HRM terms and creating a
wide set of pressure points for change through the HRM system (Hendry,
Pettigrew, and Sparrow, 1989).
With this in mind, the apparently poor record of British firms on
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
training, Keep argues, augurs ill for HRM in the UK. The barriers he cites
to firms training more make a compelling case, but closer inspection
suggests we lack conclusive evidence for some of these views. It is often
said, for example, that lack of education and training among British
managers makes them unsympathetic to other employees receiving
training. Contact with managers, however, equally suggests there are many
who would like to see others get the opportunities earlier in their careers
that they did not have. The real factor may rather be that promotion
practices can implicitly discount formal training (Crockett and Elias, 1984).
In one of the firms we studied there was clear evidence that an era of
growth had enabled people to be promoted without qualifications - 'to go
up with the lift' - and this relayed the message that it was not necessary to
undertake formal study to get on (Pettigrew, Sparrow and Hendry, 1988).
This is not untypical of fast-growth companies, and people in these will
often say it is the pace of growth which makes it difficult to undertake
training. In this company, in any case, it was management development
only which suffered: it sustained high levels of training in the clerical
routines on which its service depended.
This also raises the question, just what is good development practice? It
is too easy to equate formal training with learning. Most managers, and
directors (Mumford, 1987). value job experience far more highly in their
own development. As a director of one fast-growing set of businesses said:
I believe management development is quintessential. It is the key. But I
believe the key to management development does not lie in central
programmes or even sector programmes, or anything to do with that. It
lies in the quality of the managing directors of the individual businesses.
And when I look to the future I can identify quite clearly that the future
depends on a cadre of quite a small number of people - these strategic
business managers - and their managing directors. I'm probably talking
about twenty people, and the rest of it will probably look after itself.
There was a strong tendency among our firms to go for more frequent, but
shorter courses, more closely geared to opportunities for practising what
was taught. Moreover, the figures often quoted for training in Britain (IFF
Research Ltd, 1985) are extremely unreliable. The evidence of our VET
research was that 'reported expenditure varies enormously, and both
understates the true costs which can be attributed to recorded training and
the activities which can be construed as training.' (Pettigrew, Hendry, and
Sparrow, 1989: 71).
To produce a more realistic figure, the large survey study.(Deloitte
Haskins & SellsIIFF, 1989) included estimates for the opportunity costs
represented by trainees' salaries and a total for on-the-job training. The
.
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Chris Hendry and Andrew Pettigrew
latter, invariably not included in companies' own figures, almost doubled
the national total. Notwithstanding this 'inflation' of the total, it showed
employers were spending more in 1986187 compared with 1984. In ternis of
national training systems, however, the true focus of comparison is total
system spending (at £33bn, for employers, government and individuals),
and the way the breakdown among these, and between on-the-job and offthe-job, compares between countries and the way these might be changing.
Given the importance of on-the-job training. research into SMEs will
throw useful light on how on-the-job training and development occurs, in
an environment which is less favourable to formal training, and how it can
be orchestrated more effectively.
There has been increasing attention to how systems compare, in the light
of comparisons of national economic performance and evidence from
particular sectors and firms like that above (Hayes et al., 1984; Handy,
1987). The embeddedness of such systems in the economic and political
conditions of the past, and contemporary attitudes towards training and
education, which are likewise deeply rooted in the culture, are recognised
as obstacles to indiscriminate copying of other countries' methods
(Warner, 1987).
Faced with the evidence from the NEDOIMSC study by Hayes et. a[.
(1984) that companies in the USA were more active in providing, and
employces more active in seeking, education and training, the VET studies
commissioned by the Training Commission in 1987 (published as Training
in Britain, HMSO, 1989) sought to throw more light on (a) how employers
reach decisions on training. (b) how employers and providers of training
interact at a local level, and (c) individual adults' experience of and
attitudes towards training. Recent initiatives in the UK, such as the
Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs), modelled on the German
Chambers of Craft Industries, and the general tenor of government policy
through the 1980s, involve a fundamental effort to draw British industry
into taking greater responsibility for training and to mould the UK system
towards vocationalism. This involves recasting a culture and systems that
are a century old.
Behind this is the question of the political economy in which employment
systems and H R D function. Streeck (1989) argues that 'market failure in
skill formation is endemic and inevitable'. Firms' own accounting systems
and the evaluation criteria of banks and the City (Moorhouse, 1989) are
held to induce a short-termism towards investment in skills. An open
labour market renders skills a 'collective good', so that the individual
employer is uncertain about being able to recover the costs incurred in
developing them.
This suggests a nest of issues to address. How does the balance between
public and private sectors and regulation of the private compare between
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
countries, and how does that affect training and HRM? How, in particular,
is this affecting the response to current demographic changes? How can
local and regional community structures affect firms' organization,
priorities, and employment systems, as in the 'industrial districts' of central
and north-east Italy (Goodman, Bamford, and Saynor, 1989)? Are there
national models of HRM, a European model, or even a fully international
model? (Has there indeed ever been a European model of personnel
management?) How transferable is corporate culture within the multinational firm? This last has become a subject of keen interest as HRM has
become an established theme in the USA (Laurent, 1986; Schneider, 1988).
The issues discussed under the heading of the Socio-Political locate
HRM within a framework which is essential for any international
comparison of HRM.
The contextual factors and themes discussed under the Economic,
Technical, and Socio-Political are not intended to be exclusive. The
industrial relations system, for example, also interacts with both the
national training system and obviously with in-company policies. The aim
has been to point out some of the key ramifications in each area and the
interactions between them. One critical feature of this linkage, however,
has yet to be discussed. Our model is also a processual one and our interest
is in organizational change.
The impact of these factors on the HR system of the firm - on
recruitment and selection, on appraisal, on career planning, on the training
and development of people, on pay, on employee relations, on work
organization - is mediated, at times by the personnel/HR function, at times
by line managers. The precise role of the personnel function in this is
influenced by its record of successes and failures, its orientation, its vision
and capacity to enact a 'strategic' HRM, and its organization (Lundberg,
1985; Tyson and Fell, 1986; Sisson and Scullion, 1985). Similarly, business
strategy evolves in response to success and failure, and is the work of
people acting in rational-analytical, political, and emotional ways through
organizational structures. Insofar as HRM is responsive to business
strategy, it is perforce 'emergent' (Mintzberg, 1978). The criteria of
coherence and appropriateness are therefore only ever provisionally
attained.
This is an argument against a prescriptive, rational approach to HRM,
which 'draws off' HRM systems from strategic models. Since this kind of
thing has been popular and since strategy is central to HRM, we turn
finally to the question of strategy, with its implications for the content and
conduct of HRM.
Chris Hendry and Andrew Peltigrew
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
An adequate theory of strategy
Both HRM and business strategy theory have been characterized by a
tendency to borrow from one another superficially (Lengnick-Hall and
Lengnick-Hall, 1988). Ironically, when HRM theorists have borrowed
strategy concepts it has often been without regard to the actual behaviour
of firms.
Three particular frames of reference have been adopted: (1) the lifecycle model, with its stages of start-up, growth, maturity and decline
(Hofer and Schendel, 1978). by, for example, Fombrun and Tichy (1983),
and Schuler (1989); (2) portfolio models for evaluating the growth
prospects and investment requirements across a number of businesses
within a diversified corporation (Hedley, 1977), by Szilagyi and Schweger
(1985); and (3), derived from Porter (1980, 1985), generic strategies, for
achieving competitive advantage under different industry conditions, by,
again, Schuler (1989).
Allied to the exposition of strategic concepts has been specification of
the organizational context - first, of organizational levels and the grouping
of businesses within these (Lorange and Murphy, 1984); and, latterly, of
the strategic 'style' favoured by top management and of the growth path
they have pushed the organization along (Goold and Campbell, 1987)
which makes possible particular groupings of businesses. These bring a
reality to the HRM analysis since they more directly involve stages in and
blocks to the strategic process, and employment structures.
These concepts have been used to identify specific requirements for
management behaviour and employee resourcing, and the different
priorities for personnelIHR managers arising, through what Schuler (1989)
calls the 'imperative for specific HRM practices for organisational
effectiveness'. The aim has been a problem- and market-oriented approach
towards the moulding of human resource strategy (Baird, Meshoulam, and
Degive, 1983).
The usefulness of these frameworks as 'sensitizing' devices, however,
has frequently succumbed to prescriptive theorizing and the armchair
exercise of matching strategy to HR practices - a game easy to indulge in
since there was little empirical backing for these formulations in the first
half of the 1980s (Golden and Ramanujam, 1985).
In fact, there are problems in themselves with each of the strategic
frames adopted, and with the assumption of matching to which they are
put. The scope for revitalizing an industry or firm by means of new
technologies (Abernathy et al., 1981). and putting it on a different growth
path undercuts the life cycle model. Thus, 'there are now no longer mature
Human resource management: an agendu for the 1990s
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
industries; rather there are mature ways of doing business' (Porter and
Miller, 1985).
A similar criticism applies to the assessment of prospects for a business
using the most familiar of the portfolio models, the Boston Consulting
Group's market growthlshare matrix. The difficulty in projecting the
impact of activities to increase market share means that the characterization
of businesses may simply become a self-fulfilling prophecy (Wensley,
1982). Such portfolio schema have consequently been criticized for stifling
organizational renewal rather than encouraging it (Chakravarthy, 1984;
Porter, 1987), and for their damaging effects on the broader economy:
[Product portfolio management], which was originally conceived as a
device for determining priorities for an investment portfolio, has been
perverted into a device for killing certain businesses and boosting others,
purely in order to maximize the corporation's financial results.
(Ohmae, 1982: 142)
The problem with the generic strategy framework, whether specified as
cost leadership, differentiation, and focus, or operationalized as cost
reduction, quality enhancement, and innovation (Miller, 1986), is a
general one that can be levelled at all three - that it neglects the actual
processes of strategy formation. We will return to this.
Clearly, there are characteristic problems to be addressed as a firm goes
through start-up, growth, or if it hits the skids; and there are desirable role
behaviours for innovating, for example, and HRM practices to encourage
these. The ability to match people to such strategic contingencies is
essentially one of scope - to be able to specify the person, when situations
and objectives may be complex; to interchange them at will, when
employees may outlast business strategies; and the desirability of stability
in HRM practices. The situational-contingency ideal has been expressed in
relation to the portfolio model, for instance, as follows: 'The portfolio mix
of human resources is managed to complement the portfolio mix of
products; as the needs change, the people must change' (Baird et al.,
1983).
Managerial personalities, skills, and styles should be selected to be
congruent with the requirements of different situations, and their
behaviour channelled by an appropriate pay system. However, this
assumes a rigidity of personality and a stereotyping of managers that is
untenable, as well as an unrealistic precision in selection processes (Kerr,
1982; Chakravarthy, 1984). The onus, they argue, should be more on
training, job rotation, and rewards to develop a manager's administrative
repertoire. More of the articles appearing in the journal, Human Resource
Management, in the second half of the 1980s have consequently been
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Chris Hendry und Andrew Pettigrew
concerned to explore the limits of such matching and the tactics which
contribute most, grounded in empirical research rather than intuition (for
example, Mirvis, 1985; Gupta. 1986).
Thus, matching human resource policies to strategy frameworks is now
an empirical issue. It may be true, for example, that 'portfolio planning
tends to drive out, or at least drive down, questions of style and noneconomic issues and positively encourage different approaches to employee
relations in different segments of the business' (Purcell, 1989: 76, after
Schuler and Jackson, 1987). But we have gone past the stage when it is
sufficient just to lay out the implications for managing businesses in this
way. The issue is how far firms adhere to portfolio precepts in their
planning and how far they push its inlplications in differentiating their
human resource policies. More broadly, what is the strategy process?
Numerous writers have testified to the importance of incremental
processes of strategy-making and strategic change - in actual fact (Quinn,
1980; Pascale and Athos, 1981; Van Cauwenbergh and Cool, 1982; Cool
and Lengnick-Hall, 1985) and as an ideal (Gluck, Kaufman, and Walleck,
1980). This is characterized by participation and interaction between levels
in the organization (Kanter and Buck, 1985; Rosenberg and Schewe,
1985), in a way which unites strategic and operational processes (Wissema,
Brand, and Van der Pol, 1981; Whipp, Rosenfeld, and Pettigrew, 1989) as
well as cutting across functional boundaries. The complexity of the modern
corporation, with multiple levels between business units and corporate
head office, makes such interaction all the more important. Planning in
such organizations is consequently a multi-level, multi-stage process
(Vancil and Lorange, 1975; Gluck et ul., 1980; Chaffee, 1985). 'Strategic
management', however, is more than planning capabilities; it is also (as
McKinsey view it) a system of corporate values (Wissema et ul., 1981;
Peters and Waterman, 1982; Hamel, Prahalad, and MacKenzie, 1985).
Culture helps to 'organize' behaviour organization-wide. Structure, culture,
and strategy as a result form a set of 'mutual dependencies that evolve with
the passage of time' (Lenz, 1981).
Although a somewhat circular line of reasoning, it is important to have
these observations in mind when thinking about HRM for the following
reasons:
(1) as an antidote to treating strategy as a ready-formed output
(Mintzberg, 1978; Pettigrew. 1985), to which HRM can be moulded;
(2) to be aware that structure (and culture, and HRM) change can
precede strategy (Galbraith and Nathanson, 1978; Hall and Salas,
1980) - our case studies, for example, provide many instances of the
complexity and variability of the strategy-structure-culture-HRM
link:
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
(3) to recognize therefore that HRM need not be simply reactive to
strategy, but can contribute to it through the development of culture.
as well as to the frames of reference of those managers who make
strategy (Gunz and Whitley, 1985):
(4) to be aware that strategic and HRM change often adhere to long
time-scales, and therefore the process of HRM change is of as much
interest and significance as its content; and
(5) to acknowledge the limits of human resource planning (Nkomo,
1987), that it is dependent on the extent of rationality in the strategic
planning process (Mills, 1985), and that it too depends on line
management participation and acceptance to be effective (Greer,
Jackson, and Fiorito, 1989).
Concerns expressed from time to time about corporate planners being
ignored and marginalized, or having a deleterious effect on entrepreneurialism, because they are too rational (Lenz and Lyles, 1985; Pinnell, 1986)
should be a warning against treating the design of HRM systems in an
overly rational way.
There are indications that HR planning is moving on from manpower
forecasting information to becoming a more integral part of corporate and
business unit planning processes, in an interatice manner. Corporate
directors in decentralized firms in a number of our case studies have begun
to require business unit and divisional managements to give explicit
attention to human resource issues and to highlight the HR implications of
the strategies they submit. The shift from a system of central administrative
controls to managing at arms-length through the setting of performance
targets (Purcell, 1989) seems to support more strategic attention to HRM
at divisional and business unit level, just as it is intended to push down
responsibility for business decisions generally. Treatments of HRM need
to be more sensitive to developments in corporate practice of this kind. and
to discriminate between those practices which sustain HRM and those
which negate it. Better descriptions of structures and strategy-making in
complex organization (Hill and Pickering, 1986; Goold and Campbell,
1987) and of frameworks for understanding them are an essential
underpinning for analysing HRM.
Conclusion
Our objective in this paper has been to lay out a perspective on HRM and
to identify key themes for enquiry arising from this. We see HRM as a
perspective on employment systems, characterized by their closer alignment with business strategy. We demur from the view that it is not the
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Chris Herldry and Andrew Pettigrew
adoption of a strategic view that distinguishes HRM, but the distinctive
strategic direction pursued (Guest, 1987). The difficulty with the latter is
specifying what this direction should be or is. Certain of the objectives
Guest perceives HRM to embody, such as 'flexibility', can signify quite
different things and cover quite opposite employment practices. A similar
problem arises with 'integration'. Although individual and group approaches
to selection and appraisal are a source of some controversy (see, for
example, Deming, 1986), each at times are adduced as evidence of
integrational purposes by employers.
The problem is that these are qualitative objectives of the HRM system.
Analysis and evaluation are on surer ground when they relate HRM
practices to an organization's business strategy(ies), although, as we have
argued, this should carefully discriminate actual strategies, preserving their
ambiguity and emergent nature.
There is another, more compelling, reason, for doing so, which supports
the view that the strategic character of HRM is indeed distinctive. The
conduct and systems of personnel management, exemplified by industrial
relations management in the recent past. have had as their primary
objective the maintenance of organizational stability. While this may have
been appropriate to an era of relative stability in mass-markets and to
organizations dominated by large production functions, the shrinking of
employment located in these and the need to meet rapid and continuing
change in markets shift the emphasis away from formality, and the
imperatives of juridification (Storey, 1989) and arbitration (Littler, 1987),
as the focus of employment management. This does indeed require a
difference of emphasis and skills among personnel professionals (Kochan
and Cappelli, 1984) and is why top management has seemingly begun to
take an active interest in HRM.
There are a number of themes of very direct interest to the economic
adaptability of firms in these circumstances, that furnish an agenda for
research.
First, there is taking a problem-centred approach to the interaction of
strategy and structure, with employment practices. The kind of issue we
have in mind here is the requirement for particular kinds of internal labour
market to support, for example, innovation. For small and medium size
enterprises, there are issues about the dynamics of regional labour
markets, and how the linkages and alliances between large and small firms,
and among SMEs themselves, may affect HRM practice. The human
resource implications of managing alliances are. indeed, an issue for large
firms themselves (Pucik, 1988), especially, and increasingly, across
international boundaries.
Second, there are the impacts of technical change and how these are
managed - in particular, the processes of skill formation and the
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Human resource munugemerzr: an agenda for the 1990s
mechanisms through which the knowledge bases of firms change. On these
depend a firm's adaptability. How these processes compare between those
industries where knowledge and skills are at a premium and scarce, and
other, older industries where skill levels, their rate of change, and scarcity
are less, is an important policy question, as is, of course, the way the
national education and training system relates to each.
In this connection, research into the factors which facilitate, inhibit, and
stabilize HRM change, among firms of different size, in different sectors,
age, and even localities, would be of direct interest to policy makers. Our
VET findings and the model derived from case study research (Pettigrew et
al., 1989: 92ff.) would benefit from multivariate, quantitative application
to more precisely defined settings of this kind.
Fourthly, there is the way employment practices help to structure
strategic choices themselves. One way of approaching this is through
research into competitiveness. Do high-performing firms give greater or
lesser attention to HRM than lower-performing ones? And in what do
these differences consist? Pettigrew and Whipp (1990) provide some
insight into the role of HRM in this respect, while Siehl and Martin (1990)
explore the link between culture, competitiveness, and business performance.
Finally, research which is focused on narrower issues, such as the
recruitment and retention strategies of firms, can provide a lead into and
support to these broader questions. Of particular interest would be how
firms sense and articulate such problems, and their reasons for adopting
particular packages of 'hard' and 'soft' benefits to retain key employees.
This addresses very precisely firms' perceptions of employees as costs or
investments.
Whatever the scope of research, however, it will always need to be both
contextually and processually sensitive to the range of considerations we
endeavoured to set out through Figure 2. Indeed, this conception of
strategic change and human resource management underpins our agenda
for the 1990s; and the directions that an international approach to HRM
might profitably take in the next ten years.
C. Hendry, Senior Research Fellow
A . Pertigrew, Director
Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change
University of Warwick
UK
References
Abernathy. W.. Clark, K.B. and Kantrow. A.M. (1981) 'The Ncw Industrial Competition',
Hurvurd Bu.sitless Review. October, pp. 69-77,
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Chris Hendry and Andrew Pettigrew
Atkinson, J. (1984) 'Manpower Strategies for Flexible Organisations'. Pc~rso~rrrel
Mu~rugemen/.August. pp. 28-31,
Baird. L.. Mcshoulam. I . and Degive. G. (1983) 'Meshing Human Resources Planning with
Stratcgic Business Planning: A Model Approach'. Per.sonrre1. Sept-Oct. pp. 14-25.
Banas. P.A. (1988) 'Employee Involvement: a Sustained LahorIManagement Initiative at the
Ford Motor Company'. I n Campbell. J.P.. Camphell, R.J. and Associatcs (cds).
Prodttc/ivi/y irr Orgunisa/io~r.s.San Francisco: Josscy-Bass.
Beckcr. G.S. (1964) Hurnorr Ctrpirul. New York: Columbia University Press.
Beer. M.. Spector. B.. Lawrence. P.R.. Mills. Q.N. and Walton. R.E. (1984) Mtr~rrrgi~rg
Human A.S.SCI.S.
New York: Free Press.
Burncs. B. and Weckes. B. ( 1988) 'Planning Profit from Advanced Manufacturing
~,III.
pp. 50-3.
Technology'. Per.sonne1 M N I I I ~ ~ C I ? I December.
Chaffee, E.E. (1985) 'Three Models of Strategy'. Actr(kt,ry ~/'Mu~rcrgernerr~
R e t ~ i e ~10(
j . 1 ):
89-98,
Chakravarthy. B.S. (1984) 'Strategic Self-Kcnewnl: A Planning Framework for Today'.
Academy of mu nag ern en^ Review. 9(3): 536-47.
Chandler, A.D. (1962) S~raregycr~rdS/rrtc/rire. Cambridge. Mass.: M I T Press.
Constable. J. and McCormick. R. ( 1987) T l ~ M
e a k i ~ r xof Brilislr Mrr~rtrgers.London: British
Institute of Management.
Cool, K.O. and Lengnick-Hall. C.J. (1985) 'SomeThoughts on the Transferability of the
Japanesc Managcment Style', Orgur~i.surior~
S~rrdies.6(1): 1-22.
lo Cornl~1uccrrc.v.London: MSC.
Coopers and Lybrand Associates ( 1985) A Clrcrllc~~rge
Crockett. G . and Ellas. P. (1984) 'British Managers: A Study oi their Education. Training.
xxii ( I ) : 34-40.
Mobility and Earnings'. Briristr Jorrrrrtrl ofl~rdu.srritrlRc,lrr~ior~s.
Daly. A , . Hitchens. D . M . and Wagner. K. (1985) 'Productivity. Machinery and Skills in a
Sample o f British and German Manufacturing Plants'. Nuriorrrrl In.s/irrire Ecor~onricReview.
February.
Daniel. W. W. and Millward. N . ( 1983) Workpltrc~I~rdrr.srritrlRe1a~iorr.sirr Brirtrirr. London:
Heinemann.
Deloitte Haskins & Sclls/lFF Research L t d ( 1989) Truirrirrg irr Briruirr: 6trl)loyc~rsAcrit~iric,~.
London: HMSO.
Deming. W.E. (1986) Orr~ofrlrcCrisis. Camhridge: Camhridge University Press.
Druckcr. P.F. (1954) The PrtrcriceofMnrrtrgcnr~r~~.
New York: Harper.
Evans. P . A . L . (1986) 'The Strategic Outcomes o f Human Rcsourcc Managerncnt'. H I I I ~ N I I
Re.source Ma~ragernerr~,
25 ( 1): 149-67.
Flamholtz. E. (1974) 'Human Resource Accounting: A Review of'l'heory and Research'.
Jourrrul of Munrrgerne~r~
S~udies.I I: 44-6 I.
Fombrun. C.J. (1983) 'Strategic Management: Integrating the Human Resource Systems into
Strategic Planning'. ~ d v a n & si ~ rS~rtrtegicMn~rtrg~~nc~rrr.
vol 2. Greenwich. Conn.: J A I
Press.
Fombrun. C.J. andTichy. N.M. (1983) 'Strategic Planning and Human Kesourccs
irr Srrcrregic P l a ~ l ~ r i ~ r g
Management: at Rainbow's End'. I n Lamb. R. (ed.) Rece~rrArh~tr~rces
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Fombrun. C.J.. Tichy, N.M. and Devanna, M . A . (1984) Slrcrregic Hrtrncr~rRt~.sotrrce
Marrugeme~l/.New York: John Wiley.
Fowler. A . (1987) 'When Chief Executives Discovcr I-IRM'. Pcr.son~relM o r r u g e ~ ~ ~ t ~ ~ ~ r .
January, p. 3.
French. W. (1974) Tlre Per.so~rr~c~l
Mn~roge~nerrr
Process. I-toughton-Miflin.
Galbraith, J .R. and Nathanson. D . A . (1978) Srru/c~gyIrnplenrerrrc~/io,r:Tlrc, Role, of S~rrrcrure
a t ~ dProce.~.~.
St Paul, Minn.: West Putilishing.
Gluck, F.W., Kaufman, S.P. and Wallcck. A.S. (1980) 'Strategic Managemcnt for
Competitive Advantage', Horvurd Rusi~ce.s.sRcvie~v,July-August, pp. 154-61.
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
Golden. K.A. and Ramanujam. V. (198.5) 'Between a Dream and a Nightmare: On the
Integration of the Human Resource Management and Strategic Planning Processes'.
Hutnart Resource Mancigetnetrr. 24(4): 429-52.
Goldsmith. W. and Cluttcrhuck. D . (1084) The Wittrritrg Streuk. London: Wcidcnfcld &
Nicolson.
Goodman, E. and Bamford. J.. with Saynor. P. (eds) (1989) Small Firms utrd Itrdus~riul
Districts it1 Italy. London: Routledge.
Goold, M. and Campbell. A . (1987) Strctregies utrd S/ylr.s: Tlte Role of //re Cetrrre it1 Mutrugit~g
Diver.sified Corporcrtions. Oxford: Blackwell.
crttd ltrd~tsrrictlRrlcttiotts: At1
Gospel. H. and Littlcr. C.R. (1983) Mor1crgerir11Strutc~~yie.s
Hisroricalund Compururivc~Study. London: Hcincmann.
Greer. C.R.. Jackson. D.L. and Florito. J. (1989) 'Adapting Human Resourcc Planning in a
Changing Business Environment'. Hrrtnctrr Re.source Mutrnget?retrt. 28(1): 105-23.
Grinyer. P.. Maycs. D . and McKiernnn. P. (1988) Sltctrpbeirders. Oxford: Blackwell.
Guest. D.E. (1987) 'Human Resource Management and lndustrial Relations'. Jourt~ulof
Marrcigemer~tStudies. 24 (5): 503-2 1.
Guest. D.E. (1989) 'HRM: Implications for Industrial Rclations'. in Storey. J. (cd.) New
Pers/)ectives on Hlctrran Resource Mancrgemort. London: Routledge.
Gunz. H. and Whitley. R. (1985) 'Managerial Cultures and Industrial Strategies in British
Firms', Orgat1isutiott Studies. 6(3): 247-73.
Gupta. A.K. (1986) 'Matching Managers to Stratcgies: Point and Counterpoint'. Huntarr
Resource Matrugemenr. 25(2): 215-34.
Hall, D.J. and Saias. M.A. (1980) 'Strategy Follows Structure!'. Srrcrregic Manugemetir
Jourttul, 1: 149-63.
Hamel, G.. Prahalad. C.K. and MacKenzic. I.(1985) 'Managing Strategic Change at ICL:
Challenges for Practice and Theory'. Symposium on International Human Resource
Management. INSEAD, Septemhcr.
ci Rc,port otr Mutrugetnc.r~tEduccttiot1. Traitritrg
Handy. C. (1987) The Mukittg of Mcrtrccgc~r.~:
and Development in the United St~i/e.s.West Cermutry, Frutrce, Jal>rrir,rotd the UK. London:
NEDOIMSC.
Hayes. C.. Anderson. A. and Fonda, N. ( 1984) Cottipereticr~utirlConiperi~ioir:Trcritritrg crtrd
Education in rhe Federal Reprtblic ofGermutry, the Utrited Srcltes, nirrl Jctputr. London:
NEDOIMSC.
Hedley, B. (1977) 'Strategy and the Business Portfolio', Long Runge Plurrnitrg, II (I):
12-24.
Hendry, C. (1990a) 'The Corporate Management of Human Resources under Conditions of
Decentralisation', Brirish Journal of Mutlugeme11t. I (I).
Hendry, C. (1990b) 'New Technology. New Careers: the Impact of Company Employment
Policy'. New Tc~cltnology.Work and Etnploymettr. 5( 1): 3 1-43.
Hcndry, C. (1990~)'Manufi~cturingChange at Bclma Joints'. In Leggc, K.. Clcgg. C. and
Kemp, N. (cds). Case Studies in ltrfortnutiotr Tecl~nology.Oxford: Blackwell.
Hendry, C. and Pettigrew, A.M. (1986) 'The Practice of Strategic Human Resource
Management', Persotrnel Review. 15(5): 3-8.
Hendry, C. and Pettigrew. A.M. (1987) 'Bankingon H R M to Respond tochange'. Personnel
Matragernenr November. pp. 29-32.
Hendry, C. and Pettigrew. A.M. (1988) 'Multiskilling in the Round', Persont~elMuttugemet~t,
April, pp. 36-43.
Hendry, C., Pettigrew. A.M. and Sparrow, P. (1988) 'Changing Patternsof Human Rcsource
Management', Per.sotlne1 Managmlettr. November, pp. 37-41.
Hendry. C., Pcttigrew, A.M. and Sparrow. P. (1989) 'Linking Strategic Change. Competitive
Performance and Human Resource Management: Results of a U K Empirical Study'. In
Mansfield, R. (cd.) Frontiers of Mutrc~getnetrt.London: Routlcdge.
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Chris Hendry and A t ~ d r e wPeftigre~v
Hill. C.W.L. and Pickering. J.F. (1986) 'Divisionalisation, Decentr;~lisationand Performance
Sruclie.~.23 (1 I): 26-50.
of Large United Kingdom Compi~nies'.Jo~irrrriloj'Manugt~tnet~r
H M S O ( 1989) Trciirrirrg ill Briroitr. London: HMSO.
Hofcr, C.W. and Schendel, D . (1978) Srrcrregy Fortrr~iluriorl:Atrc~lyriculCorrcrl~r.~.
St Paul.
Minn.: West Publishing.
I F F Research L t d (1985) Adrrlr Truitrirr~irr Brircrirr. Sheffield: MSC.
Kanter. R.M. (1984) The Clrarrgc~Mo.src,rs. London: Allen cYr Unwin.
Kanter. R.M. and Buck. J.D. (1985) 'Rcorganising Part of kloncywcll: From Strategy to
Structure'. Organisarior~Dytrcimics. Wintcr. pp. 4-25.
Keep. E. (1989) 'Corporate Training Strategies: the Vital Component?'. I n Storey. J. (cd. )
New Perspectives or1 Hlonrirr Re.source Matl(ig~,tnrtrt.London: Routledgc.
Kerr. J. (1982) 'Assigning Managers on the Basis of the Life Cycle'. Jourrlctl of'Bu.sitrc,.ss
Srroregy. 2 (4): 58-65.
Kochan. T . A . and Capelli. P. (1984) 'The Transformation o f the Industrial Rel;~tionsand
Personnel Function'. I n Ostcrman. P. (ed.) Irrrer~rrrlLohor Mnrker.~.Mass.: MIT Press.
Laurent. A . (1986) 'The Cross-Cultural Puzzle of International Human Resource
25( 1): 9 1-102.
Management'. Hltrnarl Resoltrce Mcirriigc~rrrerr~.
Lawrence. P.R. (1985) 'The History of Human Resource Mi~nagcmcntin American
Ch(11letrge.s.
Industry'. I n Walton. R.E. and Lawrence. P.R. (cds) H R M Tret~(l.scir~d
Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
o r ~Prohlettr-Sohlirrg.
,
New York: McGri~w-Hill.
Lcggc. K . (1978) Power. I r ~ t r o i ~ ~ r i(irrd
Legge. K . (1988) 'Personnel Management in Recession end Recovery', Pcrsortrrel Rei~ierr~,
17(2): 2-70.
Legge. K . (1989) 'Human Resourcc Management: a Cri1ic;ll Analysis'. I n Storey. J. ( 4 . )
New Perspecrivc.~on Hlttncitr Re.soirrc.e M(irru~errretrr.London: Routledge.
Lengnick-Hall, C.A. and Lengnick-Hall. M . L . (19x8) 'Strategic Human Resources
Managcment: a review o f the literature and a proposed typology'. Accrd~tnyo/'Mritraget~rerrl
Review, 13 (3): 454-70.
Lcnz. R.T. (1981) '"Determinants" of Organisational Performance: an Interdisciplinary
Review'. Straregic Marrugrr~ir~rrr
Jorrrr~cil.2 (2): 13 1-54.
Lenz. R.T. and Lylcs. M . A . (1985) 'Par;~lysishy Analysis: Is Your Planning System
Becoming Too Rational?'. Lorrg Rutrgc, Plritrtritrg. IS(4): 64-72.
Likcrt. R. ( 1967) Tlre Hut,rutr Orgrrrrivciriotr.New York: McGrnw-Hill.
Littler, C.R. (1987) 'The Social and Economic Relations o f Work: Editorial Introduction'.
Lahour and Itrdusrry. I( I ) : 1-7.
Lodge, G.C. (1985) 'Ideological Implications of Changes in Human Resourcc Management'.
I n Walton, R.E.. and Lawrence. P.R. (cds) H R M Tretrrlsatrd Clrallerrges. Boston: Harvard
Business School Press.
Lorange, P. and Murphy, D. (1984) 'Bringing Human Resources Into Strategic Planning:
Systems Design Considerations'. I n Fombrun, C.J. er ril. Srraregic H~rrrrrirrRr.sorirce
Munagemenr. New York: John Wiley.
Lundberg, C.C. (1985) 'Toward a Contextu;il Model o f Human Resource Str;~tegy:Lessons
from the Reynolds Corporation'. Hrrttrcirl Resoirrc~cMotlrigrtrretlr, 24(1): 91- 112.
MacMillan. I.C. and Schuler. R.S. (1985) 'Gaining a Competitive Edge through Human
Resources'. Persotrtrel. 62 (4): 24-9.
Marginson. P., Edwards. P.K.. Martin. R.. Purcell.J. and Sisson. K. (1988) Beyotrdrlre
Workplmce: Muttagirrg Irrdri.s~rialRr1ariorr.s irr tlrc Mrtlri-E.s~crhli,sl~r?~~~~~~
Err~erl,rise.Oxford:
Blackwcll.
Martin, P.and Nicholls, J. (1987) Crenritrg a C.'otrrtt~irieclWorkforce. London: IPM.
Miller, D. ( 1986) 'Configurations o f Strategy and Structure: Towards a Synthesis'. S l r ~ / ~ , ~ i c
Matrrrgemetri Jo~trrrul,7 : 233-49.
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
Mills. D.O. (1985) 'Planning with People in Mind'. Hcrrvurd Business Review. July-August.
pp. 97- 105.
Millward. N. and Stcvcns. M. (1986) Bri/i.sIr Workpluce Irrdustriul Re/uliorrs 1980-1984.
Aldershot: Cower.
Mintzberg, H. (1978) 'Patterns in Strategy Formation'. Mutrugemenr Science, 24(9): 934-48.
Mirvis, P.H. (1985) 'Formulating and Implementing Human Resource Strategy: A Model of
How to D o it. and How it's Done'. Humurr Rrsourcc Munugemerrt, 24(4): 385-412.
Moorhouse, H.F. (1989) 'No Mcan City? The Financial Sector and the Dcclinc of
Manufacturing in Britain', Work. Employrner~tund Society, 3(1): 105- 18.
Morris. J. (1974) 'Developing Resourceful Managers'. In Taylor. B:and Lippitt, G.L. (eds)
Munugemenr Develol~rnenturrd Truirring Hur~dbook.New York: McGraw-Hill.
Mumford, A. (1987) 'Myths and Realities in Developing Directors', Personnel Munugemenr.
February. pp. 29-33.
.
Nkomo, S.M. ( 1987) 'Human Rcsource Planning and Organisation Performance: An
Exploratory An;tlysis'. Srrcrtgic Mcorcigemerrr Journul. 8: 387-92.
Ohniac, K. (1982) Tlre MitldofrheSrrcrregisr. New York: McGmw-Hill.
Ouchi, W. (1981) Theory Z. Reading. Mass.: Addison-Wesley:
Pascale. R.T. and Athos. A.G: ( 1981) Tire Art of Juprrtrese Munugernerrt. Ncw York: Simon
and Schuster.
Pava, C. (1985) 'Managing New Information Technology: Design o r Dcfault?'. In Walton.
R.E. and Lawrcnce. P.R. (eds) H R M Trerrrls utrd Chullerrges. Boston: Harvard Busincss
School Press.
Peck. J.A. (1989) 'Li~bourMarket Segmentation Theory'. Luhourcrrrd Indusrry, 2(1): 11944.
Perry, L.T. (1985) 'Cutbacks. Layoffs, and Other Obscenities: Making Human Resource
Decisions', Business Horizorrs. July-August. pp. 68-75.
Petcrs,T.H. and Waterman, R . (1982) 111Search of Excellerrce. Harper & Row.
Pettigrew. A.M. (1985) Tlre Awcrkerrirlg Gicort: &n~irrliiry cind C t ~ u r r girr~ I C I . Oxford:
Blackwell.
Pettigrew. A , , Arthur. M. and Hendry, C. (1990) Truitritrgurld Hrrmun ~ e s o u r c e
Managetnenr in Small ro Medium Size Er~/erpri.se.s:A Criricol Review of the Lirercrrure urtd a
Model for F~trrherReseurch. London: HMSO..
Pettigrcw. A,. I-lcndry, C. and Sparrow, P. (1989) Truining in Britain: Employers'
Perspecrives on Hurnun Resources. London: HMSO.
Pettigrew, A.M.. Sparrow. P. and Hendry, C . (1988) 'The Forces that Trigger Training'.
Persorrr~elMunugetnorr. Decembcr. pp. 28-32.
Pettigrew, A.M. and Whipp, R. (1990) Munugitrg Clicrrrge for Competitivc~S~tccess.
Oxford:
Blackwell.
Pinnell, B. (1986) 'Keeping Corporltte Planning Relevant - A Key Task for The Planning
Department', Lotlg Rurrge Plurrrritrg, 19(1): 45-51.
Porter, M.E. (1980) Competitive Strategy. New York: Frce Press.
Porter, M.E. (1985) CompetitiveAdvun/uge. New York: Frec Press.
Portcr, M.E. (1987) 'From Competitive Advantage to Corporate Strategy'. Harvrrrd t3usines.s
Review. May-Junc.
Porter. M.E. and Miller, V.E. (1985) 'How lnformation Gives You Competitive Advantage'.
Hurvurd Business Review, July-August. pp. 149-60.
Pucik, V. (1988) 'Strategic Alliances. Organisational Learning. and Competitive Advantitge:
The HRM Agenda', Humurl Resource Munugemenr, 27(1): 77-93.
Purcell. J. (1989) 'The Impact of Corporate Strategy on Human Resource Managcmcnt'. In
011 Hrrnrutr Reso~rrceMirnrrgemer~/.London:
Storey. J. (ed) New Persl~ec~ivc'~
Routledge.
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Chris Hendry and Andrew Pettigrew
Quinn. J.B. (1980) Slruregies for Cliange: Lo~iccrlIticrc~~tietiralist~i.
Homewood, Illinois:
Irwin.
Rosenberg, L.J. and Schewc. C.D. (1985) 'Strategic Planning: Fulfilling the Promise'.
Business Horizorts. July-August, pp. 54-62.
Rothwell. S.G. (1984) 'Company Employment Policies and Ncw Technology in
Manufacturing and Service Sectors'. I n Warner. M . (ed.) Microprocessors. Manpower and
Socierv. London: Gower.
Rothwell. S.G. (1985) 'Company Employment Policies and New Technology', lndus~riul
Relurions Journal. 16(3): 43-5 I.
Rowland. K.M. and Summers, S.L. (1981) 'Human Resource Planning: a second look'.
Per.sonne1 Adminisrraror, Deccmbcr, pp. 73-80,
Schncider. S.C. (1988) 'National vs Corporate Culture: Implications for Human Rcsource
27(2): 231-46.
Managcmcnt', Human Resource Mu~~ugemenr.
Schulcr, R.S. ( 1989) 'Strategic Human Resource Managcrnent and Industrial Relations',
H I I ~ I U Rc~luriotrs.
II
42(2): 1.57-84.
Schultz. T.W. (1963) The Economic Vul~teof Edrrcurion. Columhia Univcrsity Press.
Senker. P. (1984) 'Engineering Skills in the Robot Age'. I n Marstrand. P. (ed.) New
Teclrrrology and the-~urure Work and Skills. London: Frances Pinter.
Siehl. C. and Martin. J. (1990) 'Organisational Culture: A Key to Financial Pcrformancc'?'. I n
Schneidcr. B. (ed.) Orgu~ii.su/ioncrlCulrrire utrd Climare. San Francisco: Josscy-Bass.
Sisson. K . and Scullion. H . (1985) 'Putting the Corporate Personnel Department in its
Place'. Personnel Managerncn/. Dcccmher. pp. 36-0.
Sparrow. P.R. and Pettigrew. A . M . (I98Xa) 'How Halfords Put its H R M intoTop Gear'.
Persotrrrel Marrugemen/ Junc. pp. 30-4.
Sparrow. P.R. and Pettigrew. A . M . (198Xb) 'Stratcgic Human Rcsourcc Management i n the
U K Computer Supply Industry' Jounrtilof Occ.rcpurioncrl I'syc/rology. 61 ( I ): 25-42.
Steedman. H. and Wagner. K . (1987) ' A Second Look at Productivity. Machincry and Skills
Ecorzomic Review. November.
i n Britain and Germany'. Nu~iotrulIrrs~i/rrri~
0 1 1 H I U ~ N Resource
II
Marretgertrc~rr~.
London:
Storey. J. (ed.) (1989) New Per,s~~ecrives
Routledge.
Streeck. W. (1989) 'Skills and the Limitsof nco-Liberalism: The Enterprise of the Future as a
Place of Learning'. Work. Employtnerrr cirrcl Socii~ry.3 ( 1 ): 89- 104.
Szilagyi, A . D . and Schweger. D . M . ( 1985) 'Matching Managers to Strategies: A Review and
Review, 9(4): 626-37.
a Suggested Framework', Academy of Mat~ugerne~~r
Thurley. K . and Wood. S. (cds) (1983) 1ndri.srrirrlRc~1cition.surid Munugemetrr Straregv.
Cambridge University Prcss.
Torrington. D.. Mackay. I.and Hall. L . (1985) 'The Changing Nature of Personnel
Management', Employee Relu/iorr.s, 7 (5): 10- 16.
Tyson. S. (1983) 'Personnel Management in its Orgi~nisationalContext'. I n Thurley. K . and
s~rrt/egy.Cambridge Univcrsity Prcss.
Wood, S. (eds) Indu.srriu1re1u1ion.sund ~~rutrcrgemc~nr
Tyson. S. (1985) 'Is this the vcry model o f a modern personnel manager?'. Per.sor~rrel
Managemenr. April.
Tyson, S. and Fell, A . (1986) Evulrr~tritrg/Ire Persotrwc,l Fritrcriotr. London: Hutchinson.
Van Cauwcnbcrgh. A . and Cool. K. (1082) 'Strategic Managcmcnt in ;I New Framework'.
Srrcrregic Matrugenrenr Joirrrrul. 3 (3): 245-64.
Vancil. R.F. and Lortinge. P. (1975) 'Strategic Planning in Diversified Companies'. Hrrn~ard
Business Review. January-February. pp. 81-90,
Walton, R.E. and Lawrence, P.R. (eds) (1985) H R M Trends rr~rtlCliollenges. Boston:
Harvard Business School Press.
Warner. M . (1987) 'Industrialization. Manngcmcnt Education and Training Systems: A
Comparative Analysis'. Jotrnrcrl oj'Munogetnenr Sr~rdies.24( 1): 91- 1 12.
if
Human resource management: an agenda for the 1990s
Downloaded by [] at 11:49 29 December 2014
Wensley, R. (1982) 'PIMS and BCG: New Horizons or a False Dawn?'. Strategic Management
Journal, 3 (2): 147-58.
Whipp. R., Rosenfeld. R. and Pcttigrcw. A. (1989) 'Managing Strategic and Operational
Change: Lessons for the 1990s'. Long Range Planning, 1 18(6): 92-9.
Windolf. P. (1986) 'Rccruitment, Selection, and Internal Labour Markets in Britain and
Germany', Organisation Studies. 7 ( 3 ) : 235-54.
Wissema. J.G., Brand. A.F. and Van der Pol, H.W. (1981) 'The incorporation of
Management Development in Strategic Management', Strategic Management Journal. 2(4):
361-77.