Research Proposal Strategic Hrm free essay sample

â€Å"Perspectives on Human resource strategy: A key role contributing to organization performance in Cambodian Context† By Chit Uys Stevexo July 21, 2011 The strategic management of an organizations human resource has been recognized as one of the keys to business success. This particular strategy generally involved the optimization of the employees potentials mainly through training and performance assessment. This organizational strategy has been integrated in several businesses mainly to improve profitability, establish stronger customer relations as well as achieve considerable business expansion.Strategic human resource management has indeed been applied to fulfill various important business goals and plans. Both national and international companies have been developing and applying various means on how to strategically manage one of their essential assets. Cambodia is a developing country in ASEAN. Many efforts have been tried to integrate this country into global market, such as government policies to become member of ASEANA and its Free Trade Area and to become member of World Trade Organization. We will write a custom essay sample on Research Proposal: Strategic Hrm or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Local companies have been able to expand successfully in different sectors through their dedication to quality production as well as effective management and marketing practices. In order to progress further, companies still aim to continue on producing quality brands and products, meeting the needs of its shareholders and operating towards optimum performance. Cambodian companies realize that their achievement to operate both local and global is attributable to its workforce.Thus, those companies have been employing different strategies in order to strategically improve its human resources towards continuous local and global success. Companies are increasingly facing tough competition as most countries becoming member of economic integration, such as World Trade Organization, ASEAN Free Trade Area, American Free Trade Area, and the European Union. The economic integration enables firms to expand their operation to abroad which is a threat to local companies. To survive, local companies strive through ways based on the nature of their specific industry.One of the ways that most companies in the world used which contribute to the success is selecting appropriate strategy fitting their environment and deploying its functional strategies that support business and corporate strategy. The most important thing that managers need to take into consideration is the scanning of environment to identify changes that may affect their businesses and choose a strategy in response to the change of the environment. To implement selected business strategy, manager of each function within a firm must carefully consider its functional strategy that support for the achievement of business strategy.By doing well on each function, they can gain and maintain business competitive position in their marketplace. Strategic management consists of the analysis, decisions, and actions an organization undertakes in order to create and sustain competitive advantages (De ss, Lumpkin Taylor 2005). Thomas and David (2002) stated that Strategic management is that set of managerial decisions and actions that determines the long-run performance of a corporation. It includes environmental scanning (both internal and external), strategic formulation, strategic implementation, and evaluation and control.Strategic management involves setting of organizational directions (vision and mission), external and internal environmental scanning, setting strategic goals, selecting appropriate strategy, implementing strategy, and evaluating and controlling. According Thomas and David (2002), company must scan the external environment to identify possible opportunities and threats and its internal environment for strengths and weaknesses before it begins to formulate strategy. Environmental scanning is the monitoring, evaluating, and disseminating of information from external and internal environment to key people within the corporation.Strategy formulation is often referred to as strategic planning or long-range planning and is concerned with developing a corporation’s mission, objectives, strategies, and policies. It begins with situation analysis : the process of finding a strategic fit between external opportunities and internal strengths while working around external threats and internal Weaknesses. This analysis results in the identification of a corporation’s distinctive competencies and the identification of opportunities that the firm is not currently able to take advantage of due to a lack of appropriate resources (Thomas David 2002). A good business strategy, one which is likely to succeed, is informed by people factors. One of the driving factors behind the evaluation and reporting of human capital data is the need for better information to feed into the business strategy formulation process (CIPD, 2011). In order to have an effective competitive strategy, the company must have one or more competitive advantage. Competitive advantage can take many forms. It can be technology, product features, brand name and the like. One of the keys to build competitive advantage in today competitive world and most companies admire is human resource management.To manage human resource that build competitive advantage only is aligned to company strategy as strategy is selected based on the environment and trend. Hence, to achieve selected strategy, human resource of that company must have necessary skills, knowledge and ability supporting the achievement of strategic goals and business strategy. In today world, human resource management plays important role in activating business strategy into action through the development of human resource strategy.When a business strategy is selected, human resource management plays important role in translating selected business strategy in knowledge, skills, and behavior requirements for implementing the selected strategy. Human resource management then considers what practices and policies that support the acquisition of needed knowledge, skills, behavior needed. Failure to do good work on this part, is one reason for business failure because ones can implement a strategy only they have the right human resource, that have the right knowledge, skills, and behavior that support its selected strategy.In addition, human resource management is now consider ed to play important role in strategic formulation. Top management scans environment to determine strategic factors affecting company and intend to select a strategy that is best suited to the environment. Human resource part provides information on human resource availability with required skills, knowledge, and behavior for implementing the selected strategy. Without input from human resource part, top management may not know whether its selected strategy is fitted to its available resource.Human resource management is part of key function that enables selected business strategy if it does well on this part. More companies are increasingly building their competitive advantage through their human resource management. To build unique human resource assets, human resource manager needs to understand their corporate strategy and business strategy and turns those strategies into human resource management strategy enabling corporate and business strategies. People are now the value asset in majority of organization.The knowledge, skills and abilities have to be deployed and used to the maximum effect if the organization is to create value for their customers. The intangible value of an organization which lies in the people it employs is gaining recognition by investors, and it is generally now accepted that this concept has implications for long-term sustained performance of organizations. CIPD (2011) stressed that it is too simplistic to say that strategic human resource management stems from the business strategy. The two must be mutually informative.The way in which people are managed, motivated and deployed, and the availability of skills and knowledge will shape the business strategy. It is now more common to find business strategies which are inextricably linked with and incorporated into strategic HRM, defining the management of all resources within the organization. Therefore, individual HR strategies are shaped by the business strategy. So if the business strategy is about improving customer service or differentiating products from their competitors, this may be translated into training plans or performance improvement plans. Translating business strategy into human resource strategy is the most important step of strategic human resource management. Companies need resource, human resource, matching its strategy to implement the selected business strategy. The process of translating business strategy into human resource strategies is the key in identifying what skills, knowledge, and ability for implementation of business strategy. When skills, knowledge and ability are identified, company can build its competitive advantage by focusing on its human resource training and development to acquire those skills, knowledge, and ability matching business strategy.Therefore, the process of translating business strategy into human resource strategy is important and is one of the best ways to build core competencies and competitive advantage. Sinha (2011) stated that strategic human resource management can be defined as the linking of human resources with strategic goals and objectives in order to improve business p erformance and develop organizational culture that foster innovation, flexibility and competitive advantage.In an organization, SHRM means accepting and involving the HR function as a strategic partner in the formulation and implementation of the companys strategies through HR activities such as recruiting, selecting, training and rewarding personnel. Strategic human resource management can be regarded as a general approach to the strategic management of human resources in accordance with the intentions of the organization on the future direction it wants to take.It is concerned with longer-term people issues and macro-concerns about structure, quality, culture, values, commitment and matching resources to future need (CIPD, 2011). By defining and understanding the business strategy of an organization, human resource strategy can be set through the identification of knowledge, skills and ability needed to activate business strategy. Therefore, translating business strategy into human resource strategy is the core to successful implementation of business strategy. References and bibliography: 1. CIPD, strategic human resource management, URL: