Background of HRM = Before we go to Warwick

HRM is a body of knowledge and an assortment of practices to do with the

organization of work and the management of employment relations.
The mainstream literature identifies three major subdomains of knowledge: micro,
strategic and international.
The largest subdomain refers to micro HRM (MHRM), which is concerned with
managing individual employees and small work groups. It covers areas such as HR
planning, job design, recruitment and selection, performance management, training
and development, and rewards. These HR sub functions cover a myriad of evidencebased practices, training techniques and payment systems, for instance, many of them
informed by psychology-oriented studies of work /
The second domain is strategic HRM (SHRM), which concerns itself with the
processes of linking HR strategies with business strategies and measures the effects
on organizational performance.
The third domain is international HRM (IHRM), which focuses on the management of
people in companies operating in more than one country.
Drawing on the work of Squires (2001), these three major sub domains help us
address three basic questions:
What do HRM professionals do?
What affects what they do?
How do they do what they do?
To help us answer the first question, the key MHRM subf unctions of HR policies,
programmes and practices that have been designed in response to organizational goals
and contingencies, and have been managed to achieve those goals. Each function
contains alternatives from which managers can choose. How the HR function is
organized and how much power it has relative to that of other management functions
is affected by both external and internal factors unique to the establishment.
SHRM underscores the need for the HR strategy to be integrated with other
management functions, and highlights the responsibility of line management to foster
the high commitment and motivation associated with high-performing work systems.
SHRM is also concerned with managing sustainability, including, for example,
establishing a low carbon work system and organization, communicating this vision,
setting clear expectations for creating a sustainable workplace, and developing the
capability to reorganize people and reallocate other resources to achieve the vision. As
part of the integrative process, all managers are expected to better comprehend the
strategic nature of best or better HR practices, to execute them more skilfully, and at
the same time to intervene to affect the mental models, attitudes and behaviours
needed, for instance, to build a high performing sustainable culture.
what affects what managers and HR professional do? The HR activities that managers
perform vary from one workplace to another depending upon the contingencies
affecting the organization. These contingencies can be divided into three broad

categories: external context, strategy and organization. The external category

reinforces the notion that organizations and society are part of the same set of
processes that organizations are embedded within a particular market society that
encompasses the economic and cultural aspects. The external variables frame the
context for formulating competitive strategies . The internal organizational
contingencies include size, work, structure and technology . Global as well as local
factors can affect what managers do.
For those managers in companies that cross national boundaries, micro HR policies
and practices relating to global and local recruitment and selection, training and
development, rewards and the management of expatriates will be affected by a
particular countrys institutional structure and cultural setting. These micro HR
functions, when integrated with different macro contexts and overall strategy
considerations, define the sub domain of IHRM
The third of our three basic questions how do managers and HR professionals do
what they do? requires us to discuss the means or skills by which managers
accomplish their HRM goals. Managers and HR specialists use technical, cognitive
and interpersonal such as mentoring and coaching processes and skills to
accomplish their managerial work. Managing people is complex, and individual
managers vary in terms of their capacity or inclination to use established processes
and skills. These processes and skills therefore concern human relationships and go
some way to explaining different management styles and the distinction between a
manager and a leader.
The micro, strategic and international domains, the contingencies influencing
domestic and international HR policies and practices, and managerial skills are
combined are given by different models.
The HRM models give the following
Provides an analytical framework for studying the above features of HRM
Legitimates certain practices of HRM ( means legalises or standardises)
Provide description of HRM by establishing variables and their relationships
to be researched
Is a heuristic device (heuristic, is any approach to problem solving, learning, or
discovery that employs a practical methodology not guaranteed to be optimal or
perfect, but sufficient for the immediate goals)

One of which is Warwick Model explained below

The Warwick model emanated from the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change at
the University of Warwick, UK, and with two particular researchers: Hendry and
Pettigrew (1990). The Warwick framework extends the Harvard model by drawing on
its analytical aspects.
The model takes account of business strategy and HR practices, the external and
internal context in which these activities take place and the processes by which such
changes take place, including interactions between changes in both context and
content.
The strength of the model is that it identifies and classifies important environmental
influences on HRM. It maps the connections between the outer (wider environment)

and the inner (organizational) contexts, and explores how HRM adapts to changes in
context.
The implication is that those organizations achieving an alignment between the
external and internal contexts will experience superior performance.
A weakness of the model is that the process whereby internal HR practices are linked
to business output or performance is not developed.

The five elements of the model are as follows:

1 Outer context socioeconomic, technical, political-legal,competitive
2 Inner context culture, structure, leadership, task-technology, business outputs
3 Business strategy content objectives, product market, strategy and tactics
4 HRM context role, definition, organization, HR outputs
5 HRM content HR flows, work systems, reward systems, employee relations.

Strengths

Weaknesses...

Maps the connection between

inner and outer contexts

Internal HR practices links with

business outputs and
performance are not developed
Emergent strategy can be
anarchical

Adapts to changes in context

Emergent business strategy
Organisational learning
Alignment of internal and
external contexts for success