Personal Blogs

Author

Article

Year

Read

Ford

The road to maturity: process management and integration of Strategic Human Resources processes

2012

25-Jul-12

Key words

Human resources, improvement, quality management, structure, integration

Summarizing comments

Ford’s article is rather surprising, as it presents process thinking as a new concept within strategic HR management. Anno 2012, and with an appreciation of capability management etc within quality management, I did expect that this interest had been bidirectional.

Ford provides a nice definition for integration as a state of association among organizational processes that promotes unified, harmonious effort towards the effective achievement of organizational goals. I intend to deliberate on this definition and what it could mean to me.

Ford recognizes that Strategic HR Management is focusing on best HR practices to enhance performance. The article list 7 basic HR processes driving excellent performance (employment security, selective hiring, self-managed teams, performance based compensation, extensive training, reduction of status differences and information sharing). However it recognizes that practice-based implementation does not provide the strategic impact as implementation of a practice is insufficiently embedded within the organizational infrastructure; It may lack an evolutionary path to learn and to adapt in a best-fit. An easy to implement practice with the accepted impact could just as easy be imitated by the competitor and not give any strategic advantage at all.

Ford argues to view SHRM through a process perspective, where the notion of linkae between processes is central. Within the relations between processes is culture and its interrelated evolution makes it hard to imitate and fosters integration and encourages collaboration. Not only between HR processes, but certainly also with for instance operational processes

Ford then looks into the coordination dimension of integration, as a skillful and balanced movement of different parts at the same time, facilitation collaborative efforts to progress towards effective outcomes. Processes and process integration benefits here through higher transparency on responsibilities and information flow and encouraged management review.

Ford refers to a Malcolm Baldrige model, which I have never heard of. Maybe it is specifically targeting HR processes. Baldrige refers to integration as the harmonization of plans, processes, information, resource dicisions, results and analysis to support key organizationwide goals. Integration is achieved when individual components of a performance management system operate as an interconnected unit. Baldrige indentifies 4 different process maturity levels (based on level of integration, repeatability and improvement.

Ford’s article reports on research done to measure maturity of SHRM systems based upon the Baldrige criteria. The study itself is of less interest tp me. I like the introduction, particularly as I appreciate the angle starting from HR towards performance, instead of having performance as the prime focus and human resources as awkward and unpredictable necessities.

I am not certain how this article fits in shaping my ideas around my project. Nevertheless it has been fun to step outside my normal Technology Management box.

Actions

Due date

Status

1. Skim read article and summarize the content and my insights

25-Jul-12

Done

2. Deliberate on the definition on Integration