Evolution of Strategic HRM as Seen Through Two Founding Books: A 30th Anniversary Perspective on Development of the Field

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21720
• Date: 01 May 2015
• Published date: 01 May 2015
• Author: Bruce E. Kaufman

Human Resource Management, May–June 2015, Vol. 54, No. 3. Pp. 389–407

© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI:10.1002/hrm.21720

Correspondence to: Bruce E. Kaufman, Department of Economics, Georgia State University, P.O. Box 3992,

AtlantaGA 30302-3992, Phone: 404-413-0152, E-mail: bkaufman@gsu.edu

EVOLUTION OF STRATEGIC

HRM ASSEEN THROUGH TWO

FOUNDING BOOKS: A 30TH

ANNIVERSARY PERSPECTIVE

ONDEVELOPMENT OF THE FIELD

BRUCE E. KAUFMAN

Two pioneering books published in 1984 arguably launched the fi eld of strategic

human resource management (SHRM). The fi rst is Strategic Human Resource

Management by Fombrun, Tichy, and Devanna; the second is Managing Human

Assets by Beer, Spector, Lawrence, Mills, and Walton. This article provides a 30th

anniversary review of the two books, partly to honor their pioneering contribu-

tions but also to use them as a lens for examining how the fi eld has subse-

quently evolved and developed. Two recently published SHRM books are used

as a benchmark for this analysis. The review identifi es areas of SHRM constancy

and change, major theoretical and empirical innovations, and newly developed

research questions and directions, largely in an American context. Diagrammatic

models of SHRM are synthesized and compared from the four books; also, nine

specifi c dimensions of evolution in the fi eld are highlighted with discussion of

advances and shortcomings. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Keywords: strategic HRM, management history, human capital, resource-based

view, employee relations, organizational development

Most accounts of the development of

the field of strategic human resource

management (SHRM) locate its ori-

gin in the early mid-1980s but do

not cite a more specific date. A good

case can be made, however, that SHRM’s birth

year is 1984, thus making 2014 the field’s 30th

anniversary. The birth marker is publication of

two pioneering books that were, at the time, field

defining in terms of label and content. Thefirst

book is Strategic Human Resource Management by

Charles Fombrun, Noel Tichy, and Mary Anne

Devanna (1984) and the second is Managing

Human Assets by Michael Beer, Bert Spector, Paul

Lawrence, D. Quinn Mills, and Richard Walton

(1984).

In this article, I provide a brief synopsis of both

books and then use them as a lens for examining

the subsequent development of the SHRM field.

Because the literature is now huge and diverse,

two new books centered on strategic HRM, by

Cascio and Boudreau (2012) and Paauwe, Guest,

390 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, MAY–JUNE 2015

Human Resource Management DOI: 10.1002/hrm

In the 1970s, Beer

and Walton helped

design and implement

several of the pioneer

high-commitment

work systems.

part, from the writers’ extensive consulting work

and field experience. In the 1970s, for example,

Beer and Walton helped design and implement

several of the pioneer high-commitment work

systems.

The core of Strategic Human Resource

Management is the first three chapters, particularly

chapter 3, “A Framework for Strategic Human

Resource Management.” FTD tell readers, “The

critical managerial task is to align the formal struc-

ture and human resource systems so that they

drive the strategic objectives of the organization”

(p. 37). Strategy in their treatment is thus an inte-

grated plan of action to accomplish the mission

of the enterprise (p. 34). This idea is illustrated

in the book’s Figure 3.1, where managers of the

firm face three external forces—economic, politi-

cal, and cultural—and work out an integrated

combination of organizational structure, busi-

ness strategy, and HR system to achieve organiza-

tional effectiveness. The HR system is conceived

of as a “structure of control” (p. 1) composed of

four basic parts: selection, rewards, development,

and appraisal. Figure3.2 in the book shows that

the task of HR strategy is to align and integrate

these four components to maximize the end goal,

labeled Performance. These two diagrams are

combined by this reviewer and shown in panel (a)

of Figure 1.

Managing Human Assets is a joint work of

five co-authors, all affiliated at the time with the

Harvard Business School. The authors explain in

the preface that the book grew out of a several-

year project to design a new integrative-style HRM

course for the Harvard MBA program. The book

was accompanied by a number of other related

publications by one or several of the authors.

Examples include the textbook Human Resource

Management: A General Manager’s Perspective (Beer,

Spector, Lawrence, Mills, & Walton, 1985); an

edited research volume, HRM Trends and Challenges

(Walton & Lawrence, 1985); a chapter entitled

“Human Resource Management: The Integration

of Industrial Relations and Organizational

Development” (Beer & Spector, 1984); and

Walton’s (1985) influential Harvard Business

Review article “From Control to Commitment in

the Workplace.” The title of the Beer and Spector

paper highlights two features that flow from their

general management perspective; first, an integra-

tive organization-wide view of people manage-

ment so the subject is not narrowly confined to

the HR department and traditional personnel/

HR topics, and, second, emphasis on the cen-

trality to HRM of employer-employee relations

(aka industrial relations [IR]) and organizational

development [OD].

and Wright (2013), are utilized as a benchmark of

the current-day field.

In the spirit of a book review, this article pro-

vides a factual account of the main story with

accompanying interpretation and evaluation.

The selection of two books for extended review

30 years after publication is a deserved honor for

the two sets of authors. The main contribution

of this article, however, comes from the insights

it provides for understanding the past and pres-

ent of SHRM and useful research directions going

forward. Models of HRM are presented from the

four books and used to identify themes and con-

cepts that have endured over the three decades,

areas of change and innovation, and issues and

shortcomings needing more attention. Nine

specific dimensions of evolution in the field are

highlighted.

The Two Books

Consult any recent book or review article on

strategic human resource management (e.g.,

Boxall& Purcell, 2011; Jackson, Schuler, & Jiang,

2014; Lengnick-Hall, Lengnick-Hall,

Andrade, & Drake, 2009; Lepak &

Shaw, 2008) and certain themes

stand out. Among them are, first,

taking a strategic approach to design-

ing and operating a company’s

employment system, and second,

shifting the focus from employees as

hired hands and short-run expense

to minimize to human capital assets

and longer-run value to maximize.

The book titles by Fombrun, Tichy,

and Devanna (hereafter FTD),

Strategic Human Resource Management, and Beer,

Spector, Lawrence, Mills, and Walton (hereafter

BSLMW), Managing Human Assets, directly speak

to these themes, and did so in 1984 for the first

time.

Content Overview

Both Strategic Human Resource Management and

Managing Human Assets are written as schol-

arly informed books for a general management

audience. Illustratively, BSLMW state in the first

sentence of the preface, “This is a book for man-

agers” (p. vii); and FTD include in their edited

volume a mix of academic and practitioner

authors. A strong point of both books is that the

authors develop new theoretical ideas and frame-

works that attract widespread academic attention

yet also distill from them readily understandable

and actionable implications for practitioners.

The ability of both books to successfully bridge

the practitioner-academic interface comes, in