ABSTRACT
Strategic HRM draws attention to the contribution of HRM to the performance of organizations; in other words, what is the added value of HRM for organizations? Therefore, we need to make sure that we shed some clear light on the issue of whether strategy matters (either at corporate or business level) and in what sense it matters to (the effectiveness of) HRM. In this chapter, we start out with an introduction about strategy and different strategy approaches that have been used. Then, we will explain the link between strategy and HRM and introduce the concept of ‘strategic fit’. As existing approaches to strategic fit have been highly criticized, we will present an alternative approach in this chapter, taking into account implementation and dynamics besides traditional approaches focused on processes and content of strategy and HRM. This chapter concludes with a step towards a synthesis of strategic HRM research by presenting two recent conceptual frameworks (Jackson et al. 2014; Paauwe and Farndale 2017), taking into account the different perspectives and interests of a variety of stakeholders involved in strategic HRM.
