ABSTRACT
Strategic human resource management (HRM), which came to the fore in the liberal market economies in the 1980s, places primacy on the impact of the human resource and its management on strategic outcomes. It reflects what Collings and Wood refer to in the opening chapter as the use of the term HRM to indicate a ‘more strategic role’ for people management than it had under a regime of personnel management; the fulfilment of which is oriented to ‘the agenda of shareholder value’. Other stakeholders’ interests, including employees, are at best secondary or are to be reconciled with those of the shareholders. A contrasting, stakeholder approach sees strategic HRM as more a process of managing human resources in the light of competing pressures and in which management reconciles competing tensions where possible or makes appropriate trade-offs where necessary.
