Frontiers for Strategic Human

Resource Planning and

Management

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

As American corporations look for systems and methods to address

challenging economic problems, they are in danger of importing overly
elaborate formal planning systems in both the core business and human
resource domains.
I have termed this the "roast pig" problem after a classic essay by
Gharles Lamb, a 19th century British writer, whose "A Dissertation on
Roast Pork" was a parable explaining how humanity developed the in-
novation of cooked food. He described a primitive time in Ghina where
people ate their food raw, with no meat. One day a father left his house
with his son guarding it, but the son accidentally set the house afire.
Now some of the animals had been wandering in and out of the house,
and the family pig was caught in the fire. The father came back, poked
around in the ruins, and happened to stick his finger into the burnt pig.
Of course, it was hot, so he put his fingers into his mouth to cool them
and it was delicious. Hence, they had discovered cooking. From that
day on, every time a villager wanted roast pig, he burned down his house.
The moral of the story is: if you don't understand why the pig gets cooked,
you are doomed to waste an awful lot of houses.
Many companies have the tendency to do just that: rather than consider
the underlying goals or principles, which are often very simple, they
prefer to repeat exactly an elaborate system that somebody else used
and that happened to produce a roast pig. Therefore, instead of proposing
still another variant on a planning system, I will sti-ess here the underlying
issues human resource professionals need to address, for which any
number of systems, models, tools, and techniques can be useful. In fact,
the last twenty years in America have been a time of enormous inven-
tiveness for sodal and organizational technology. The task before us now
is not to invent more tools, but to learn how to use some of those we
have.

Human Resource Management, Spring/Summer 1983, Vol. 22, Numbers 1/2, Pp. 9-21
C) 1983 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 0090-4848/83/010009-13$04.00
 I suggest that there are seven frontiers for strategic human resource
management covering the issues that are important for the future.

I. INCREASING ORGANIZATIONAL FLEXIBILITY

The first frontier is increasing organizational flexibility. The need is il-

lustrated by a new unit of time measurement, invented by Barry Stein,
called the MTBS—the mean time between surprises. The problem for
American organizations is that the mean time between surprises is rapidly
becoming less than or equal to the mean time to make decisions. And
at that point whatever planning cycle is underway is not fast enough to
catch up with all of the surprises or practical issues or changes the or-
ganization may have to face. So instead, organizations need sources of
flexibility.
Most of the ways in which organizations gained flexibility in the past
are no longer useful in today's political and social environment. Because
of changes in society, there are constraints on organizations. In this era,
we do not easily permit "robber barons" to make a quick killing and
then exit, pulling assets out of an organization. There may be no more
unfriendly takeovers because, increasingly, people in Washington and
elsewhere may not want to use the tax system to support actions that
do not create productive resources. There may be no more easy plant
closings, because of new requirements through community, state, and
national legislation. Furthermore, employment cycles, like cycles of layoffs
and hiring in the auto industry, have high costs both in driving up wages
and in creating abominable labor relations. And organizations may not
want to or be able to bear those kinds of costs, so that kind of flexibility
may be less and less available to them. So some of the traditional ways
companies used to smooth out business cycles may be obsolete. And
the flexibility to grow without thought to the consequences is also less
available. In a sense, American industry has traditionally used people
as a form of "wealth" for managers. Particularly in the rich fifties and
sixties, staff and other corporate functions proliferated to a level of fatness
that we can no longer support.
With a need for leaner organizations and more flexibility in a turbulent
environment, leaders need to use other ways to smooth out fluctuations
in business cycles and prepare for possible changes. The kinds of options
we may increasingly need to consider in the future all require new human
resource approaches. Subcontracting, for example: It has been said that
some of our foreign competitors rely much more heavily on subcontracting
than on hiring more people and bringing them inside as a form of wealth,
bloating their staffs. Or companies setting employees up in their own
businesses, as some already are, turning support functions such as man-
agement education into profit centers—as Control Data does with a
number of support services. And there will be a whole variety of strategies

10 / Human Resource Management, Spring/Summer 1983

for creating leaner shop floor organizations that are flexible and add or
subtract pieces as circumstances change. Needless to say, one develops
a different kind of relationship with a "subcontractor" or "independent
business person" than with an "employee."
In the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth, before the scientific
management and associated labor relations practices that have created
so many problems for smokestack industries developed, labor was largely
hired on a subcontract basis from a formal labor contractor who brought
in his own team to work in the plant. Today, in factories with semi-
autonomous work teams, some professionals are increasingly moving
those teams toward use of some sort of subcontract analogy, even though
still under an overall employment relationship.
The need for a flexible organization includes flexible roles for employees,
changing the way one thinks about such human resource issues as spe-
cialization of functions and team building. There could be, for example,
more redundancy and overlap among employees—in the sense that
everybody has a backup job so that when things slow down in one area
they can easily do something else. There could be more cross-training
at high levels, more cross-over between functions. Trying to develop a
more adaptive work force, along with the proliferation of knowledge
intensive industries already have, suggests an increased emphasis on
training, more emphasis on multiple skills, and more emphasis on com-
pensation that encourages pay for skills, for task mastery, etc.
Finally, information distribution has to be more flexible or companies
cannot use those other strategies. They will need more wddely distributed
information and shorter communication loops everywhere in the system.

II. CONTINUING INNOVATION

Frontier two is the need for continuing innovation on the part of all or-
ganizations in order to compete effectively in international marketplaces.
Human resource professionals have to look at how both individual be-
havior (creativity and enterprise) and organizational policies and practices
can stimulate innovation.
My own investigation for The Change Masters distinguished the char-
acteristics of high innovation companies, those that were continually
innovating in every domain—marketing, human resources, or financial
systems—not just product innovation. They had what I call an "inte-
grative" structure and culture as opposed to a "segmentalist" one that
stifles innovation. In a segmented structure and segmentalist culture,
each unit or level or function operates rather independently according
to its own constraints with only a few specified points of contact with
other units. When new problems are encountered, they are immediately
factored into a set of subproblems and assigned to specialists to handle
as other segments, in isolation. But the ideal of rational decision-making

Kanter: Frontiers of Strategic HRM / 11

—local rationality and bounded searches—will no longer work. Seg-
mentalism prevents change. Segmentalist companies admit—indeed brag
about—making decisions based on pre-existing categories that have been
developed in the past: in effect, letting the past drive the future.
In contrast, the characteristic of an integrative organization is that
problems are aggregated into larger wholes, and there are many points
of contact between departments, levels, and functions. Integrative or-
ganizations attempt to combine disciplines and seek multiple perspectives
on issues. And they produce more innovation.
The high innovation companies in my research encourage innovation
in a variety of integrative ways. First, their job definitions and job as-
signments are broad and sometimes ambiguous (particularly at middle
levels, but not lower down—every system needs foot soldiers with slightly
more routinized jobs). This helps get people involved beyond a narrow
segmented task. So the effort that some companies are now going through
to tighten their job descriptions may not get them what they want; indeed,
it may be counterproductive.
Innovative organizations also tend to have structures with a great deal
of local autonomy combined with interdependence among the internal
parts. Local units can act on a variety of issues without higher level
approval; but within them, parts must collaborate because of the built-
in interdependence. A matrix organization is not a requirement to promote
interdependence, although that is certainly one organizational form as-
sociated wdth innovation, because it helps force people to confront multiple
sources of information from various viewpoints and disciplines that they
have to pull together, before they can act. And that incentive for broader
perspectives supports innovation. By definition, innovation cuts across
the categories that already exist in the organization. If a problem could
already be handled by one specialist, it would not be a candidate for
innovation. If it were already embedded in existing budgets or roles, it
would not be innovation. So these kinds of integrative arrangements
simulate innovation.
Innovation is also fostered by a culture that I characterize as a culture
of pride rather than a culture of inferiority: one in which all the messages
and signals from the system say to people that they are important and
are valued. In fact, in some high innovation companies there is a culture
that borders on "arrogance" by telling people that they are special, terrific,
and unusual to have been selected by that wonderful company In con-
trast, in non-innovating companies, people are regularly reminded that
they are not a valued resource, that they are replaceable, and that they
have nothing special to contribute. For example, in such companies, major
new assignments and opportunities go to an outsider—turning over ex-
ecutives at the top, hiring consultants for trivia, and bringing in outsiders
everytime there is a change mandate. The basic message, though it claims
to be encouraging people to change, is punitive: "You turkeys could not
possible help us move to what we ought to be doing."

12 / Human Resource Management, Spring/Summer 1983

 The reward system in these innovative companies is also distinctive;
it is what I call "investment-oriented" rather than "pay-off-oriented."
In addition to the usual compensation and benefits package, they have
other ways of making it possible, and interesting, for people to engage
in exciting activities. An entrepreneurial manager at Data General calls
this reward system "pinball": success means an instant chance to do it
again. The reward is in getting to work on an innovation, a challenge.
In short, high innovation companies pay less attention to giving things
to people after they ve finished, and more to giving them the resources
that make it possible to do it in the first place. But of course, they are
also much more likely to have lots of ways of rewarding people at the
other end.
Innovative and integrative organizations are also more empowering.
Information flows much more openly, interaction is encouraged, and
resources tend to be much more decentralized. That is, some budgetary
sign-offs are local or there are alternatives for gathering resources of all
sorts if a person gets turned dov^m by his/her boss. There are other places
to go to gain support for a project.
In part, that means political support. The things that tend to create a
climate for more political support for innovative projects include: mobility
across functions (because that serves network forming purposes, and
people have a variety of relationships across functions); heavy use of
teams and team mechanisms; job security (for some job, not just this
one job), which helps remind people that they will be encountering the
same people later in their careers, an incentive for reducing political con-
flict of the win-lose variety Because of these mechanisms, people are
much more likely to be mutually supportive. Finally, there is more access
across such a system. Protocol does not demand that people go up and
down channels, but can move across the organization, visit or contact
anybody at any level, and are free of the need to use only preordained
channels.
These are some of the things that tend to encourage, support, and
develop innovation and organizational flexibility. At all organizational
levels in all sorts of functions, the systematic encouragement of coor-
dinated innovation is an exciting frontier area involving new systems.
How do we briefly characterize organizations that stimulate innovation
and are flexible and adaptive organizations that do not have to burn
down houses to roast the pig? They contain the potential for multiple
interconnections. They can flexibly regroup to meet new needs. When
you look at an innovating company's organization chart, it looks at first
just like everybody else s, but when you watch the living organization
group and regroup in a variety of ways in a variety of circumstances, it
becomes clear that there are many more possible connections than are
ever shown on the organization chart. In fact, companies could draw
charts that show their councils, teams, and task forces as circles around
the traditional reporting lines usually on the organization chart.

Kanter: Frontiers of Strategic HRM / 13

 The analogy is to a popular magician s trick using "magic rings." The
magician displays five rings that are quite separate and unbroken and
asks a member of the audience to inspect them to testify that the rings
are unbroken and seamless. There appears to be no way that these rings
could be connected. But when the magician gets them back, he simply
shakes his wrist, and the rings are suddenly interlocked. He shakes them
again and they interlock into a different configuration. So with the in-
novative organization. The potential is there, when the need arises, to
make any kind of necessary connection, to bring together any kind of
group or team needed to solve the problem. And with that sort of or-
ganization, people do not have to burn down the whole house to eat;
they simply mobilize a new pig-cooking team with the right skills to
build and put out a small contained fire.

III. MANAGING CULTURE AND STRATEGY CHANGE

A third frontier area, as organizations face more surprises and change

requirements, is how to manage culture and strategy change (rather than
simply talking about its importance). A model of how change really occurs
(as opposed to official stories about it) can help guide deliberate strategic
change. Human resource professionals need such a model.
In my review of productive change in companies for The Change Masters,
I noted that there is an important history of events that took place before
the "official" change effort started. That prehistory may consist of grass-
roots innovations—slight departures from tradition—that build a solid
foundation for the later strategic change. For example, innovators on
the periphery may be trying something just a little bit different and helping
the company experiment with a solution where it is safe. And that ex-
perience can be built into a strategic decision later because it is what
gives the organization an acceptable option for dealing with a new chal-
lenge or crisis or galvanizing event.
Grassroots innovations occur occasionally in every system. Even the
most innovation-stifling companies I studied have some innovations out
there somewhere. They might have partly been the result of bootlegging
funds for a pet project, and nobody noticed them. Or people misun-
derstood the rules, or deliberately broke them. A surprising number of
innovations—including important product breakthroughs—have occurred
because rules were broken. So grassroots innovations are always im-
portant. The question is whether they are random accidents, or whether
appropriate entrepreneurship and experimentation that departs from
tradition is deliberately encouraged. In an integrative environment, as
I've indicated, more of these kinds of innovations and innovative people
emerge.
The second force for change involves the galvanizing effect of events
or crises, either internal or external. An integrative organization will tend

14 / Human Resource Management, Spring/Summer 1983

to "see" more potential crises; that is, use those events to deliberately
galvanize action. One relevant comparison to Japanese organizations:
when American managers go to Japanese companies, they are often struck
by how "crisis-prone" Japanese managers seem. As an observer reported,
the Japanese may look at a piece of data that shows that ten years out
something will affect their market, and they mobilize for remedial action
now.
Companies that are young themselves and that have a high proportion
of relatively young managers—in short, people who have not weathered
similar crises with old methods and have not "seen everything"—are
also "crisis prone." And thus they manage change earlier. They have
no precedent that says in effect "we have lived through this before, and
that pressure will go away" and so respond to challenges faster. They
literally "see" more potential crises or galvanizing events. They mobilize
people around them to respond.
This early management of change is supported by circumstances in
which information is distributed much more widely and more people
are on the organization s boundary or surface. This helps to identify
more chaUenges and become aware of them earlier. Then, to cycle back
to the first force, more grassroots innovations puts more options for so-
lutions close at hand.
Next in the change-management sequence comes the strategic decision:
the decision to commit the organization. Integrative environments also
have an edge here because the coalitions needed to make decisions already
exist. As strategic decisions are made, they need to reflect the influence
of all the people affected by them. Organizations wanting to manage
culture or strategy change effectively need the right kinds of leadership
coalitions.
Fourth, companies need to have prime movers pushing. Somebody
with power has to keep pushing the consequences of the decision, ex-
horting people to live up to the expectations generated by it. This is
conventionally called "leadership"—a category too often neglected by
HR professionals concerned instead with systems. Systems do not change
without prime movers championing the new direction.
Finally, there need to be action vehicles through which others can
express the change as it impacts them. And how do they do it? Whatever
they cire supposed to do, how do they take steps, how do they get in-
volved in it? There has to be some way that people below the level of
decision makers can get involved in it, and it only becomes real to them
because they are doing something active with respect to it. Whatever
they do is part of the change itself and helps it happen.
And then, of course, the whole process cycles back, because just when
a company begins to succeed in institutionalizing the action vehicles to
operationalize a strategy, another innovator out in the field may start to
depart from that tradition, perhaps laying the groundwork for still another
solution to the next challenge that occurs.

Kanter: Frontiers of Strategic HRM / 15

 Managing this whole process—a task which will increasingly engage
top HR professionals—can be done deliberately at some level, but it also
has to leave room for organizational accidents, for the unplanned as well
as the planned side of the process, for the support of creative conditions
where the grassroots innovations occur.

IV. TACTICAL PLANNING

Frontier four is the need for tactical (or response) planning. The human
resource function must ask itself whether it is getting into strategic plan-
ning in a major way at just the point at which everybody else is getting
out of it—when top management may be less concerned with ever more
elaborate plans and data sources and more concerned with rapid action.
Tactical or response planning is the kind of planning that can and
should be done to support—or change—overall strategy. Karl Weick
once wrrote that organization should be a verb or an adverb or a participle,
but never a noun. It should never be a thing; it should rather be seen
as a continually unfolding process. The problem is, as is commonly
known, that the process not only does not unfold according to plan, but
is often not managed down through the organization. There can be a
strategy change at the top, but people in the middle may have no idea
that it occurred or what it means for them and their activities. To avoid
this planning shortfall companies need tactical (or response) planning.
This kind of planning guides the adjustment of all parts of the orga-
nization to environmental pressures or strategic changes, and the man-
agement of these responses by various departments or functions can
represent a new frontier for the human resource function.
In the enchantment with strategic and longer range planning, the on-
going need for the short-run adaptation inside the organization should
not be forgotten. There are a number of initiatives the HR staff could
take to support this—for example, departmental appraisals or activities
assessments yearly, comparable to individual appraisals. Perhaps every
department could have a set of forms to help them conceive new programs
based on a look at the appropriateness of their current activities, in terms
of what happened to the organization in the past year as well as what
is about to happen. Every department should consider a redesign of
their own internal structure periodically—a change in tactics as strategies
change.
Furthermore, the HR function should take the lead in helping every
department with an assessment of its activities and its reporting rela-
tionships. The field of organization design tends to address only the
broadest strokes; for example, whether a product, function or matrix
design works for the whole organization but does not help with the
minidecisions about organizational design in, for example, the marketing
organization or the shop floor production organization.

16 / Human Resource Management, Spring/Summer 1983

 There are other ways HR can contribute to effective responsive plan-
ning. Shortening communication loops would help useful information
about what is happening in other places get to the people in the field
who could use it. Interfunctional cooperation is another domain. Not
only does innovation take place at the cracks, or in the interconnections,
or through new kinds of relationships that have not yet been built into
the structure, but I have also found that the most significant problems
in organizations turn out to be interfunctional rather than purely internal
to one function or department. It is very difficult to handle those problems
by traditional mechanisms because the connections usually do not exist
to solve them. Often the managers I work with will look to their human
resource people for help, but they are sometimes not willing or able to
help on some of these interfunctional issues. So this issue remains on
the frontier.

V SHIFT FROM "PRODUCT" TO "USE" ORIENTATION

Frontier five is a shift in emphasis in human resources from a "product" to

a "use" orientation. Human resources are often discussed as though they
were comparable to any asset, like pieces of machinery Ideal HR systems
have a plan for the "purchase" or acquisition of one, some means to
assign it somewhere, then to maintain it, to tune it up from time to time
with a training program, then eventually to dispose of it when it gets a
little rusty, and finally to replace it. Much of this conventional wisdom
about the complete HR system is based on thinking about the qualities
of the thing or person, not how it is going to be put to use. But consider
now a recommended shift in emphasis in business strategies: from a
concern with product qualities or features to a concern with customer
and market use and benefits—from a "product" to a "market" orientation.
Despite this shift in core business thinking, the HR field is still dominated
by a focus on the qualities of the "product."
There are six factors determining whether people contribute, and how
much, to an organization, as shown in the "contribution wheel" in Figure
1. Consider the top half of the "contribution wheel," which covers the
individual-level components that enter into people's performance in an
organization: their physical capacity, health, strength, and pep; their
mental capacity or the ability to do the job in terms of task skills, knowl-
edge, and experience; and their motivation, commitment, and drive. There
are numerous human resource systems, often elaborate systems, to de-
velop the quality of that person-product so that it is ready to do the job.
There are selection, training, career development, career opportunities,
compensation, and benefits systems, all of which are geared to managing
the human product just like that piece of machinery or any other real
asset.
Now examine the other side of the contribution wheel. This half rep-

Kanter: Frontiers of Strategic HRM / 17

 SUGGEST HR FOCUS ON:
SELECTION
TRAINING
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
COMPENSATION i BENEFITS

QUALITIES OF THE "HUMAN RESOURCE"

_1.
Standards,
Expectotions./ OPPORTUNITIES FOR ITS UTILIZATION
Plons

SUGGESTS HR FOCUS ON:

"WORKER INFORMATION SYSTEMS?"
"VENTURE CAPITAL" FUNDS?
SPECIAL TEAM ASSIGNMENTS?
INVOLVEMENT IN STRATEGIC PLANNING?
INTERDEPARTMENTAL TEAMWORK?
ORGANIZATIONAL PROBLEM-SOLVING?

Figure 1. Components of organizational contribution: the "Contribution

Wheel."

resents what it takes for the organization to be able to put the person-
resource to work: tools that enable contribution; channels for contribution;
and standards about what people should be contributing. The HR field
needs to balance a focus on the top half—thinking about the product
itself—with more emphasis on the bottom half—thinking about what
it takes to put it to use. This would suggest another, less conventional,
set of tasks for the HR function: e.g., on "worker information systems"
that provide information tools throughout the organization, augmenting
management information systems. This might constitute a breakthrough
partnership aimed at getting all the necessary tools for contribution into
the hands of employees. Or, with respect to channels for contribution,
HR could work with still another corporate staff group to create venture
capital funds inside the organization for people with ideas for innovations,
as 3M and Levi Strauss do. This can occur in any domain. In one case
with which I was involved, a productivity/QWL project resulted in a
committee to support proposals for new contributions; and the project
was itself funded by the corporate R&D council, which over time had
extended the boundaries of projects it would fund to include organi-
zational experiments.
In short, more attention to how to put human resources to work and
how to use them well is a frontier that lies beyond simply developing
the quality of those pieces of machinery.

The last two frontiers concern the human resource function itself.

18 / Human Resource Management, Spring/Summer 1983

 VL THE BROADER HUMAN RESOURCE ENVIRONMENT

Frontier six is to influence the broader human resource environment, to go

beyond the narrow organizational arena to consider public policy. Some
progressive companies carry out environmental scans to gain insight into
external trends that must be taken into account. But while extremely
valuable, this is still a passive and reactive orientation. Whey don't HR
professionals try to shape parts of that environment, and act to help
bring about the changes they know are necessary? For example, where
is the human resource lobby in Washington?
Human resource professionals, particularly those with a longer-term
prespective, have a stake in a number of public issues. They should be
pushing for such societal goods as strong public education, to produce
literate high school graduates and people not only with a college degree,
but actually well educated. Wang Laboratories started its own degree-
granting institute to train computer scientists and engineers because the
company felt this was not being done adequately elsewhere. Will com-
panies have to take over education in the absence of a strong public
sector? General Motors sold off its college because their priority was not
managing a college but making and selling cars; were they wrong?
Surely human resource professionals, perhaps companies in general,
have a major stake in a strong public sector. But because most companies'
views of their proper relationship to the government are dominated by
just a few functions, primarily financial ones worried about taxation or
trying to make sure that regulation is in the company's favor, there is
no corporate lobby for the kinds of public sector initiatives needed to
benefit companies in the long run.
Crime is another potential issue with costs to companies. Must com-
panies simply increase their security forces because this is not being
handled adequately by the community? When does that become self-
defeating—a guarded enclave in a hostile territory? Is that a desirable
result? What about the quality of municipal services? That affects a com-
pany's ability to attract a work force. What about the possibility of tax
credits for human resource investments like those for job creation? What
about broad retraining to prepare engineers or production workers who
otherwise would be laid off for another kind of job? Perhaps some of
that should be publicly supported, because it is in the public interest.
The funding of behavioral and social science research is another domain
for an HR lobby. HR professionals benefit from the research of academics,
but many academics will not be able to keep on generating ideas and
providing intellectual capital much longer if govemment funding declines
further. They will have to turn to corporations for more support.
There is—or should be—a distinctive human resource perspective and
values with respect to society, and they should be supported and man-
ifested. Financial considerations are not the only corporate value, es-

Kanter: Frontiers of Strategic HRM / 19

pecially if long-run success is the issue. In order to gain credibility as
businesspeople. Human Resource professionals often seem to measure
everything they do against financial performance. But does that contribute
to shaping the kind of world we want to live in, the kinds of workplaces
we want to foster, and the behavior of people we want to help train and
develop to staff our organizations? Human resource executives might
want to approach their lobbyists in Washington to make sure they are
fighting for things on the human resource agenda, long-term value-ori-
ented considerations. If society does not make progress on those, the
rest may not be worth much.

VII. STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR THE HR FUNCTION

Finally, the human resource function has to carry out its own strategic
planning. Managing the function can be viewed as running a minibusiness,
and this analogy suggests different images.
For example, as a "business" the function might perform an analysis
of the "competition." Who else in the company is doing what the HR
department really should be doing? Perhaps the domains of productivity,
quality, or even employee involvement are being handled by staff from
marketing or manufacturing and not from human resources.
A "market" analysis is a second possibility The human resource func-
tion should recognize that it has multiple constituencies, not just one
(the CEO and other top executives). (One strategy for gaining credibility
with the CEO is what I call "marrying up"—getting into the "family"
by marrying the strategic planner, who is closely related to the CEO.)
Indeed, because of the many constituencies the human resource function
serves, respect from top management often comes by satisfying the needs
of all the users of HR services in the organization. The HR "markets"
include more than employees way down the line, too. Government re-
lations and management information systems represent two other areas
that could use an HR input.
The market analysis analogy suggests periodic review of HR functions
and activities, with an eye toward divesting, merging, and diversifying
to bring in more business. And there are other options as well for man-
aging HR as a "business"—e.g., to create networks within the orga-
nization, encourage and sponsor fan clubs, form alumni associations of
HRD program graduates, organize volunteer auxiliaries full of people
available for special assignments because they have some relevant ex-
periences or skills. Thus, the HR function can be seen as though it were
a minibusiness in its own micro-environment within the company, with
its own agenda of tasks.
In short, strategic planning for the human resource function implies
more than developing HR strategies for the rest of the organization to
use as part of the business plan (although clearly this should not be

20 / Human Resource Management, Spring/Summer 1983

neglected). It adds a focus on internal department planning for how HR
function activities should be adjusted or readjusted—who else should
be involved in its activities, how should it be aligned, with whom should
it be working, and on what issues.

Those, in a large nutshell, are seven frontiers that I envision and a

few suggestions about how the HR field might start thinking about them.
But frontiers are, by definition, designed to be pushed back, so I expect
even these to change rapidly.
I started with the "roast pig problem," and it is also an appropriate
place to end, because there is a second moral to the story: // you want
to continue eating roast pork, you have to go whole hog. Piecemeal programs
and one-shot efforts that do not consider the entire context will not solve
corporate problems of today or tomorrow. That is the ultimate meaning
of being strategic about human resource management.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is Professor of Organization and Management in the

School of Management, and Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She is
also Chairman of the Board of Goodmeasure, Inc., a Cambridge, Massachusetts,
management consulting firm. Formerly on the faculties ofBrandeis and Harvard
Universities, she was a Fellow and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School
from 1976-1978 and was a Visiting Professor at the Sloan School of Management
at M.LT (1979-1980). She specializes in helping organizations ensure the effective
utilization of their people, encompassing productivity improvement programs
and strategic planning for human resource functions, as well as consultation
with top management.
Author of the award-winning Men and Women of the Corporation, she
has pioneered in the study of the impact of organizational structure on group
and individual behavior, commitment and motivation, male-female interaction
and the status of women, and organizational effectiveness and the quality of work
life. Her new book, to be published by Simoti and Schuster in September 1983,
The Change Masters: Innovation for Productivity in the American Mode,
IS based on extensive research on how companies can stimulate innovation to
ensure success in a changing economic and social environment.

References
Kanter, Rosabeth Moss. The Change Masters: How People and Companies Succeed
through Innovation in the New Corporate Era, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.
Weick, Karl. The Social Psychology of Organizing, Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley,
1976.

Kanter: Frontiers of Strategic HRM / 21