Critically Exploring

Introduction

HR roles have been explored and reinvented by proponents of Human Resource Management in the past two decades (Caldwell and Storey 2007). Under the highly competitive environments nowadays, a great many prestigious firms encourage their Human Resource (HR) departments to play many roles in the organisation. The more roles they play well, the more likely they will improve the organisation's productivity and advance the quality of work life in the organisation effectively (Schuler, 1994).

In this article, the many Human Resource strategies are divided simply into two types to help to analyze the roles of HR professional plays in contemporary organisations, they are, business-driven HR strategy and value-driven HR strategy. Four company cases from different countries are presented to make explore the HR roles and to make comparisons under the two strategies. The main point is to discuss the difference between business-driven HR and value-driven HR, and how they are related to HR roles.

Critically review the models and theories in exploring the roles of HR professional and HR strategies

In Ulrich's (1997) theory, he argued that HR professionals should be act as a 'business partner', or, to put it in another way, the role as advocators of competitiveness in delivering value. There are four main roles in Ulrich's model: strategic partner, administrative expert, change agent and employee champion. The question is, does Ulrich's model solve the issue of 'role ambiguity' and 'role conflict' (Cardwell, 2003)? It turns out to be the business partnering that is conceived by Ulrich has failed to work in practice. Ulrich claims that many companies have not applied their roles correctly and the HR professionals who implemented this new strategy have not been given enough training. He also indicates that there must have communication breakdown between the business and HR department. Just like Storey (2007) puts it, this business partner strategy made HR directors to have growing aspiration to gain a seat in the boardroom. The problem is, Ulrich has taught HR professionals a lot about how to implement their functions and their jobs when they are in the boardroom, but has failed to tell them how to get into it in the first place (By Ceridian News, 2010).

Furthermore, Ulrich's model may not suitable for every organisation. Different types of organisations or companies have different goals, thus, their HR functions and strategies are various. Companies may choose flexile-specialization structure or soft-hard HR strategy (Keenoy, 1997). Taking soft-hard strategy as an example, Storey (1987) claims that 'Hard' HR focuses on job efficiency and productivity, employees' performance and managing the 'headcount resource'. While 'Soft' HR gives employees enough 'liberty' at work. The communication between HR directors and the employees is smooth and harmonious. Employees are motivated and willing to work spontaneously rather than be pushed to. Soft-hard HR strategy has perfectly indicated the Theory X and Theory Y model invented by Douglas McGregor (1960). However, the soft-hard structure has, as many other structures like loose-tight structures and rhetoric-reality structures, created an 'intrinsic ambiguity'. For example, an employee can be both flexible and specialized at the same time, and an HR strategy can be both soft and hard at the same time. The point is, it seems possible to reach both characters within one process. So completely separate the strategy and make it into two extremes may be unrealistic and impractical (Keenoy, 1997).

The role of HR professional depends on HR strategies in an organisation. So the HR professionals under the different HR strategies play various roles. Dividing HR strategies into two aspects, business-driven HR and value-driven HR, seems a practical way to discuss the many roles of HR professionals.

Business-driven HR

Business-driven HR strategy requires more focus on operational issues to bring excellent HR practices and effective implementation (Caldwell and Storey 2007). The role of HR professional under this strategy is likely to be highly supportive and flexible.

An example can be found in Sony Corporation in Japan. Sony Corporation has its parent company which is located in Tokyo, and four subsidiary companies that operate independently under it. Not long ago, one of the subsidiary company, Sony Electronics came up with an idea of replacing the existing HR policy since it cannot reflect rapidly enough with employees' demands. For instant, if the staffs needed to implement a new process to meet changing business conditions, the HR department would spend three-to-six months to exploit the code and arrange the new process. When all the preparation work has finally done, the business had already shifted to a new direction. It also would be difficult to quickly change processes to adjust the new regulations due to the inflexible platform. Other sister companies were struggling with the same issue too. Hence all the four companies had reached an agreement that allows them to share a 'tenant of Workday' that can contain nearly 8500 employees. The Workday policy allows employees to explore new job opportunities at a sister Sony company. This can definitely help to exchange the human capital among these companies, and make HR partners and managers to cooperate more closely. In the past, transferring employees needed to go through a complex hiring process which created more work for HR department. Now with the help of the new HR policy in Sony, employees do not need to learn a new HR system, thus saving the time for them to adjust so that they can be more productive (Kaptain, 2012). Mounting human capital exchange may provoke employees to develop their specific skills or innovative thoughts, in this way, to build a strong internal labour market (Bratton and Gold, 1999). While on the other side of the coin, there are some drawbacks of this HR policy. Since the HR strategy is highly flexible, it is easy to lose its core competitiveness since it is too easy for the employees to 'job-hopping' to another company. Moreover, it is hard for employees to build a team spirit and sense of responsibility due to the high employee turnover.

There is another example of a famous organisation that is born in the United States, the Starbucks Corporation. Starbucks has always claimed that they perform a value-driven HR strategy and the HR professionals will help to create value and shape the company culture (Noe et al. 2012). Nevertheless, after analyzing its HR policies and practices, it seems perform a business-driven HR strategy more than