Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Edward E. Lawler III is the Director for the Center for Effective Organizations and a Distinguished Professor of Business at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. He is the author or co-author of over 300 articles and 30 books. Susan A. Mohrman is senior research scientist at the Center for Effective Organizations at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California.

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Creating a Strategic Human Resources Organization

Stanford University Press

Contents

Tables and Figures..........................................viiPreface.....................................................xiThe Authors.................................................xiiiIntroduction................................................1The Study and Sample........................................121 Role of HR................................................212 HR Organizational Approaches..............................273 HR Activities.............................................324 Talent Strategies.........................................365 Shared Services...........................................446 Outsourcing...............................................497 Use of IT.................................................558 eHR Systems...............................................649 Effectiveness of eHR Systems..............................6910 HR Skills................................................7711 Effectiveness of the HR Organization.....................8412 Determinants of HR Effectiveness.........................8913 HR as a Strategic Partner................................100Conclusion..................................................105Future Directions...........................................114References..................................................120Appendix....................................................125

Chapter One

Role of HR

Respondents were asked to estimate the percentage of time that the HR function currently spends carrying out a number of roles versus how much time it spent five to seven years ago. Table 1.1 shows that our respondents report a significant change. According to them, the HR staff is spending less time on record keeping and auditing functions and more time on developing new systems and practices and on being a strategic business partner. We found no significant change in providing services (helping with the implementation and administration of HR practices). Overall, our respondents report significant movement toward HR becoming a strategic partner and doing higher value-added activities. However, before we conclude that this has actually occurred, let's look at the results from 1995 and 1998.

The data from 1995 and 1998 are almost identical to the data we collected in 2001 for the same question (see Tables 1.2 and 1.3). This finding makes two interesting points. First, it means that between 1995 and 2001 there has not been much change in how HR executives see the HR function spending its time. Second, it raises serious questions about the validity of our respondents' reports about how things were five to seven years earlier. One might expect that the 2001 estimates of how things were five to seven years earlier would be somewhat in line with how respondents said things were in our 1995 study, but they are not. Instead, the 1995 results are the same as the results for 2001! This finding suggests that the HR executives who responded in 2001, as well as those who responded in 1995 and 1998, may have perceived more change in their role than has actually taken place.

What should we believe, retrospective reports of the way things were or data from the past about the way things were? The answer is obvious: individuals are much better at reporting how things are now than they are at reporting on how things were years ago. In short, they probably are guilty of a bit of wishful thinking when they compare their present situation to the past, because they want to see themselves as being more of a strategic partner now than they were in the recent past.

We found the same time allocation results for companies of all structures: single integrated businesses, multiple related businesses, and groups or sectors of businesses. We also found no relationship between organization size and time allocation. This is a bit surprising; we expected that strategic business partnering might be higher in companies that have multiple businesses because they often face complex HR issues involving how the corporate staff and business units relate to each other.

The results concerning the relationship of strategic focuses and change initiatives to the HR role are shown in Table 1.4. Business strategies focusing on quality and speed are negatively related to providing services and positively related to strategic business partnering. This result is not surprising because achieving quality and speed requires supportive HR systems and strategies and a focus on nontraditional HR issues such as work and organization design. We might expect that knowledge strategies would be related to strategic business partnering, but this relationship does not quite reach statistical significance.

The results concerning the relationship between the change initiatives and the HR role show three significant relationships. As we might expect, the more an organization tries to build competency and knowledge management capabilities, the more focus the HR organization has on business partnering. Spending time on providing services shows a negative relationship to employee competency and knowledge management, indicating that when knowledge management is the focus, HR spends less time on services and more time on business partnering. This follows directly from the fact that effective competency and knowledge management are dependent on successfully positioning an organization's human resources relative to its business strategy. Hence, it also follows that the HR organization would be more involved in business partnering when an organization is particularly focused on building its knowledge and intellectual capital.

The involvement of the HR function in business strategy can take a variety of forms. Table 1.5 shows that in 2001 virtually all HR functions report that they are involved in business strategy. When compared to 1998, an increase exists in the percentage of people who report that HR is involved as a full partner, but the difference is not statistically significant. Thus, the data suggest but do not establish that the HR function is becoming more of a strategic partner.

Involvement in strategy is highest in corporations that are in several sectors. One possible explanation is that, in several-sector business organizations, HR is in a position to add value by influencing strategy at both the corporate and sector levels. Large companies are more likely to have an HR function that is a business partner. This result is not surprising given that the HR issues in large companies are often more complex, and the HR function is more likely to be staffed with individuals who have a great deal of experience.

Table 1.6 shows the relationship between the strategic focus of organizations and the role HR plays in strategy. The results show a very consistent pattern. Regardless of whether growth, focus on the core business, quality and speed, or knowledge and information is the area of focus, more focus on strategy seems to exist when HR is a full partner rather than a minor one. This is particularly true with both the focus on quality and speed and the focus on knowledge and information. Thus, HR is particularly likely to be a strategic partner when the business strategy focus is one in which HR systems are critical.

Table 1.7...