What is the process of identifying and executing the organizations strategic plan by matching the companys capabilities with the demands of its environment?

Chapter 3: Strategic Human Resource Management & the HR Scorecard

Part 1: HR's Strategic Challenges

Strategic plan

• A company's plan for how it will match its internal strengths and weaknesses with external opportunities and threats in order to maintain a competitive advantage.

Three basic challenges

• The need to support corporate productivity and performance improvement efforts.

• Employees play an expanded role in employers' performance improvement efforts.

• HR must be more involved in designing�not just executing�the company's strategic plan.

The Strategic Management Process

Strategic management

• The process of identifying and executing the organization's mission by matching its capabilities with the demands of its environment.

Strategy

• A strategy is a course of action.

• The company's long-tem plan for how it will balance its internal strengths and weaknesses with its external opportunities and threats to maintain a competitive advantage.

Business Mission and Its Vision

Vision

• A general statement of its intended direction that evokes emotional feelings in organization members.

Mission

• Spells out who the company is, what it does, and where it's headed.

Strategic management tasks

• Step 1: Define the Business and Its Mission

• Step 2: Perform External and Internal Audits

• Step 3: Translate the Mission into Strategic Goals

• Step 4: Formulate a Strategy to Achieve the
  Strategic Goals

• Step 5: Implement the Strategy

• Step 6: Evaluate Performance

Q: What is a �SWOT� analysis? What is it used for? (see page 74)

Types of Strategic Planning

Corporate-level strategy

• Identifies the portfolio of businesses that, in total, comprise the company and the ways in which these businesses relate to each other.

Diversification strategy implies that the firm will expand by adding new product lines.

Vertical integration strategy means the firm expands by, perhaps, producing its own raw materials, or selling its products direct.

Consolidation strategy reduces the company's size

Geographic expansion strategy takes the company abroad.

Business-level/competitive strategy

• Identifies how to build and strengthen the business's long-term competitive position in the marketplace.

Cost leadership: the enterprise aims to become the low-cost leader in an industry.

Differentiation: a firm seeks to be unique in its industry along dimensions that are widely valued by buyers.

Focus: a firm seeks to carve out a market niche, and compete by providing a product or service customers can get in no other way.

Functional strategies

• Identify the basic courses of action that each department will pursue in order to help the business attain its competitive goals.

Achieving Strategic Fit

Michael Porter

• Emphasizes the �fit� point of view that all of the firm's activities must be tailored to or fit its strategy, by ensuring that the firm's functional strategies support its corporate and competitive strategies.

Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad

• Argue for �stretch� in leveraging resources�supplementing what you have and doing more with what you have�can be more important than just fitting the strategic plan to current resources.

HR and Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantage

• Any factors that allow an organization to differentiate its product or service from those of its competitors to increase market share. (Ex. Ebay's software)

• Superior human resources are an important source of competitive advantage

Strategic Human Resource Management

Strategic Human Resource Management

• The linking of HRM with strategic goals and objectives in order to improve business performance and develop organizational cultures that foster innovation and flexibility.

• Formulating and executing HR systems�HR policies and activities�that produce the employee competencies and behaviors the company needs to achieve its strategic aims.

Part 2: HR's Strategic Roles

HR professionals should be part of the firm's strategic planning executive team ( U. of Michigan study)

• Identify the human issues that are vital to business strategy.

• Help establish and execute strategy.

• Provide alternative insights.

• Are centrally involved in creating responsive and market-driven organizations.

• Conceptualize and execute organizational change.

HR's Strategy Execution Role

The HR department's strategies, policies, and activities must make sense in terms of the company's corporate and competitive strategies, and they must support those strategies.

HR's Strategy Formulation Role

HR helps top management formulate strategy in a variety of ways by.

• Supplying competitive intelligence that may be useful in the strategic planning process.

• Supplying information regarding the company's internal human strengths and weaknesses.

• Build a persuasive case that shows how�in specific and measurable terms�the firm's HR activities can and do contribute to creating value for the company.

Part 3: Creating a Strategy-oriented HR System (p. 83)

Components of the HR process

• HR professionals who have strategic and other skills

• HR policies and activities that comprise the HR system itself

• Employee behaviors and competencies that the company's strategy requires.

The High-Performance Work System (p. 84)

High-performance work system (HPWS) practices.

• High-involvement employee practices (such as job enrichment and team-based organizations),

• High commitment work practices (such as improved employee development, communications, and disciplinary practices)

• Flexible work assignments.

• Other practices include those that foster skilled workforces and expanded opportunities to use those skills.

Part 4: The HR Scorecard Approach (p. 87)

HR scorecard

• Measures the HR function's effectiveness and efficiency in producing employee behaviors needed to achieve the company's strategic goals.

Creating an HR scorecard

• Must know what the company's strategy is.

• Must understand the causal links between HR activities, employee behaviors, organizational outcomes, and the organization's performance.

• Must have metrics to measure all the activities and results involved.

Strategic HR Relationships

The HR Scorecard Approach to Formulating HR Policies,Activities, and Strategies

Using the HR Scorecard Approach

• Step 1:   Define the Business Strategy

• Step 2:   Outline the Company's Value Chain

• Step 3:   Identify the Strategically Required Organizational Outcomes

• Step 4:   Identify the Required Workforce Competencies and Behaviors

• Step 5:   Identify the Strategically Relevant HR System Policies and Activities

• Step 6:   Design the HR Scorecard Measurement System

• Step 7:   Periodically Evaluate the Measurement System

Outlining the Company's Value Chain

Value chain analysis

• A tool for identifying, isolating, visualizing, and analyzing the firm's most important activities and strategic costs.

• Identifying the primary and crucial activities that create value for customers and the related support activities.

Each activity is part of the process of designing, producing, marketing, and delivering the company's product or service.

• Shows the chain of essential activities.

• Prompts future questions.

What is the process of strategic management in your organization?

What is the process for strategic planning?

What is a course of action that the company can pursue to achieve its strategic aims?

Which of the following company strategies identifies how do you build and strengthen the business's long term competitive position in the marketplace?