Robin Kramar

Beyond strategic human resource management: is sustainable human resource management the next approach?

Strategic human resource management (SHRM) emerged as a dominant approach to human resource management (HRM) policy during the past 30 years. However, during the last decade, a new approach to HRM has evolved. This approach has been labelled sustainable human resource management (sustainable HRM). It is an approach that seeks to link HRM and sustainability. The term sustainability is fraught with semantic difficulties, as is conceptualising its relationship to HRM. Consequently, sustainable HRM is viewed in a variety of ways. This paper examines the major features of SHRM, some of the meanings given to sustainability and the relationship between sustainability and HRM. It then outlines the major characteristics of sustainable HRM. Although there are a diversity of views about sustainable HRM, this approach has a number of features which differentiate it from SHRM. It acknowledges organisational outcomes, which are broader than financial outcomes. All the writings emphasise the importance of human and social outcomes. In addition, it explicitly identifies the negative as well as the positive effects of HRM on a variety of stakeholders; it pays further attention to the processes associated with the implementation of HRM policies and acknowledges the tensions in reconciling competing organisational requirements. Such an approach takes an explicit moral position about the desired outcomes of organisational practices in the short term and the long term. Sustainable HRM can be understood in terms of a number of complimentary frameworks.

Emerging HRM skills in Australia

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a study which explores trends in the role (what is done) of human resources (HR) in general and the role of line managers in managing people. The study developed from claims for the transformation of the HR role. It aims to explore trends in the role and new competencies which are being developed.Design/methodology/approach – The authors carried out qualitative, semi‐structured interviews of 53 HR professionals across a range of industries and organisational sizes.Findings – The findings indicate that managers expect HR will increasingly encompass responsibilities for developing human capital as a strategic imperative of business, as well as the traditional operational executor/functional expert roles.Research limitations/implications – While the paper identifies competencies expected in the HR role at present, as well as emerging competencies required by both HR and line managers, it invites a more generalizable study in the future.Practical implication...

Strategic human resource management in the Asia Pacific region: similarities and differences?

This paper examines human resource management (HRM) policies within five countries in the Asia Pacific region – Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Philippines and Taiwan. We examine whether HRM in these countries is similar to the idealised model of strategic HRM, largely developed in the United States of America (USA), or whether HRM in this region has its own characteristics. We also investigate whether there are broad similarities or differences between the HRM policies of these countries. Drawing on data from the Cranet survey of comparative HRM, we found that HR practice within these five countries was indeed similar to strategic HRM, but that there were also important differences, both between Asia Pacific HRM and the general model of strategic HRM and between HRM in the five countries.