Modes of Strategic Human Resource Management

The prescriptive and descriptive management defines strategic management as a cycle that involves multifarious activities dependent upon each other. The strategic human resource management process can be disintegrated into five essential stages: mission and objectives, environmental assessment, strategic formulation, strategic implementation and strategic evaluation. All five stages interact with each other at different levels.

At the corporate level, strategic human resource management involves activities centred towards appraising the objectives of the organization and strategic evaluation. Firstly, the top level managers assess their positions vis-à-vis the current mission and objectives of the organization. The mission broadly signifies the values and aim of the organization, while objectives direct the employees towards a rewarding performance.

Environmental assessment gives an insight of the internal environment of an organization – its strengths and weaknesses, and its external environment – its opportunities and threats. The critical factors with a direct influence over the future of an organization include strategic factors and they could be recapitulated into SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats).

In case of strategic formulation, top level managers assess the relationship between strategic factors and composing strategic choices that serve as a guiding tool for the managers to meet the objectives of the organization. Strategies may be formulated at corporate, business as well as various other functional levels. Strategic choices made, involves questions such as who has the decision-making power and why such decisions were taken.

A strategic choice also defines strategic management as a political system in which both decisions and actions taken on issues are advocated by senior level of managers who have the authority to take decisions in the interest of the organization. It is the strategic choice on making organizational decisions that makes the strategy formulation, more intensive and concrete, and provides vital insights into the management of employment relationship.

Strategy implementation is referred to a particular activity that primarily centers on the techniques used for executing the strategies. Such activities deals with the organizational structure, leadership style, the control systems and the human resource management. Many notable management consultants and academicians are of the firm belief that leadership is a crucial, yet intricate element of the process of strategic implementation.

Strategy evaluation refers to an activity that depicts the limit to which the actual performance and change is in sync with the desired performance and change.

Thus, we see the strategic management model determines five key activities that culminated into a rational and linear process. Most importantly, a normative model indicates the procedure of strategic management in place of what is actually performed by top managers.

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