ABSTRACT
At the end of the first chapter we raised the question of the significance of the corporate agenda for the HR function. Given the central theme of this book has been about the key role of people management in creating difference through corporate reputations and brands and maintaining legitimacy through CSR and good governance, we have sought to provide our HR readers with a good grounding in these fields and some practical frameworks and tools to help them contribute to these key strategic drivers of organizational performance. However, the tensions between corporate and local agendas – what we might call the universal paradox in management – presents HR with difficult challenges but significant opportunities (see Box 10.1). These challenges and opportunities posed by reputation management and 338corporate branding, as well as the related issues of CSR and corporate governance are, we believe, among the most important the profession is likely to face, not least because they incorporate most of the issues identified by some of the leading academic thinkers on the future of HR who also have an impact on practice (Pfeffer, 1998; Sparrow et al., 2004; Huselid et al., 2005; Ulrich and Brockbank, 2005).
