Post-Ulrich HR Structures

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ant Hesketh on June 17, 2008 at 3:58am

I agree Alessandra (and Paul)

The role of management does need to be redefined, which will require overcoming the functional narcissism currently pervading HR. As for measurement, I would agree with you - see Fleetwood & Hesketh (2008) Explaining The Performance of HR (Cambridge University Press), due out later this year, or an article published in the journal, Organization, in 2006. It's not about turning to post-structural nonsense, but nor is it about a simple deductive reading off of metrics. Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts, if you see what I mean .... !

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Alessandra Capezio on June 17, 2008 at 4:26am

Hi Ant,

Yes! I look forward to reading it, and i'm sure it has some important implications for research. Does a greater emphasis on process and factors that constrain the efficiency of HR processes pose additional challenges to notions of evidenced-based HR management?

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Cam Caldwell on October 28, 2008 at 9:18am

Ant:

Can you send me a PDF or Microsoft Word file of your article? I would also appreciate a citation for the article from Organization.

Cam Caldwell
ccaldwell@mcneese.edu

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Kearns on June 18, 2008 at 11:53am

Hi Alessandra
Personally, I am much more interested in how organisations construct their strategic approach to managing people for maximum value than I am in looking at measuring the contribution of HR to organisational effectiveness. That is partly because most of the evidence I see with my own eyes tells me 'HR' only reacts to strategic business decisons taken outside the HR function anyway - this inevitably means their contribution to value creation is minimal to non-existent (e.g. Microsoft primarily makes profits from a strategic decision to maintain its monopoly wherever possible, not through its people management - there is even a case to be made that Microsoft gets very little value out of people management - look at its very poor innovation record). Maybe the new paradigm just has an old-fashioned HR team doing all the transactional stuff and a totally different team designing and constructing a human capital driven organisation?

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Jon Ingham on June 22, 2008 at 4:43am

Hi Ant,

As you know, my own perspective is that while more operational HR activities may continue to move out of the employing organisations into service providers, the strategic aspects are only going to become more important and central to organisational management.

I am more positive than other commenters about HR's existing role and capability to be successful in this strategic role. Yes, there are plenty of HR people around who still haven't got it, but there are also many who have and are already making critical, strategic contributions to their organisations.

I think this is largely independent of HR's own organisational arrangement - whether they use business partners, shared services, outsourcing providers etc all depend upon a range of factors, and the right structure can enable more strategic focus. But organisations with more traditional / different HR structures can be strategic too (ie some have created another level within the HR function, others contribute from the existing structure).

So I expect to see continuing variation in how different HR functions structure themselves to meet this strategic agenda.

In terms of metrics, what I think this means is that HR function benchmarks are increasingly irrelevant, and organisations need to create sets of measures which reflect their own strategies, structures and broader contexts.

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Kearns on June 23, 2008 at 3:53am

Hi Jon

I'd be very interested to hear more about the "many... who are already making critical, strategic contributions."

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Vijay Edward Pereira on June 24, 2008 at 6:36am

Hi Ant and Paul,
What is your take on HR best practise versus HR best fit in the current scenario? Also don't you think Paul's hybrid model would depend on the relevant organisations placement in different areas of the life cycle (i.e. either start up, growth, maturation or decline)? And the influence of culture too..

Vijay

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Paul Kearns on June 24, 2008 at 6:43am

Hi Vijay,

Here's my answer

Attachments:

• MANUSCRIPT HR STRATEGY Maturity scale extract.doc, 93 KB

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Cam Caldwell on October 19, 2008 at 1:05am

I think Pfeffer addresses your questions quite well in several of his writings. HR that is out-sourced is highly unlikely to be responsive and in touch with key business partners. Unless HR integrates its role with the strategic effectiveness of the organization -- going "beyond HR" of past eras (Boudreau & Ramstad, 2007) -- it is unworthy of becoming a player in the creation of long-term wealth. Returning to an HR police role or a custodian of HR services role is a disaster for organizations and an admission of ineptness for HR professionals. . . or so says Pfeffer and other enlightened HR experts.

The HR role of the future must be as an analyst of organizational needs; an integrator of systems, policies, and structures; an advocate of long-term profitability; and a creator of high trust and high performance organizational systems. To achieve that role, HR professionals must become ethical stewards and transformative leaders -- integrating the best thinking of Level 5, charismatic, principle-centered, covenantal, transformational, and servant leadership models.

Cam Caldwell, PhD & SPHR
McNeese State University

▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ant Hesketh on October 21, 2008 at 12:29am

HI Cam –
Your suggestion that HR is less likely to be responsive to an organization’s strategic requirements really struck a chord with me. In my experience, those organizations who seek to understand their costs, think long and hard about the capabilities they require, how many people they need in which role, and where, and above all else, how to define the services they require to match the needs of the business, and how they will know that they are receiving/achieving them, are very rarely internally based HR systems. It’s rare for me to disagree with Pfeffer, whom I admire greatly, but this might be one such occasion!

Outsourcing is not strategic, and in many cases nor is HR. Both are often ‘nested’ within wider strategies and business models. I’m not sure this equates to a HR along the covenantal or servant leadership lines you suggest, but HR certainly needs to understand better its place in the world. Most organizations spend 40-60 percent of their opex on people: their talent, and less than 2 percent on their HR systems. There is a view that better line managers and their better understanding of people strategies, is the way forward (here I would agree with Paul Kearns). I would always prefer the writings of Moss Kanter on this subject to those of Boudreau and Ramstad, who appear more concerned to surmount their ‘wall of measurement’ to save HR than to enable the business to achieve its strategic aims (although the latter part of their new book does push in this direction). Moss Kanter’s view is that the HR function is on borrowed time, and that people strategy will not be done by HR professionals with the attributes you list, but by people who understand how to fuse business strategy and people in commercially savvy ways. I’m inclined to agree.

For me at least, outsourcing is simply a way of thinking through what services an organization requires, how much it will cost and whether it wants to own such services or not. All this begins and ends with what an organization is seeking to achieve in a wider, strategic business sense.

An organization which contracts well with a third party provider can achieve many things, which is contingent on knowing what it is, and contracting for what you want to achieve. An organization that throws its mess over a wall in the hope somebody else will fix it will probably fit well with Pfeffer’s critique. My take on Pfeffer has been that he’s always had one overriding sentiment: good management begets good people, and vice versa. It’s less about copying what people do – and listing endless capabilities HR people need to have – and much more about learning from how smart organizations think. Again, I’m inclined to agree. My argument on the above can be found in: Hesketh, A. (2008) ‘Should It Stay Or Should It Go? Examining the Shared Services or Outsourcing Decision’, Strategic Outsourcing, Vol. 1, Number 2, pp. 154-172. A summary is attached.

Attachments:

• Hesketh BPO Flyer.pdf, 1.1 MB

▶ Reply to This

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page