Developed by Beer and colleagues in 1984

Harvard Business School generated one of

the most influential models of HRM
 Key features:

Inter-related nature of components

Need for argument

Need to balance interests that transcend

organization
Model composed of these basic components:

1. Situational Factor
2. Stakeholder interests
3. HRM policy choices
4. HR outcomes
5. LR policy outcomes
1. Situational Factors:
Societal values, workforce characteristics
said to impact upon choice of HR strategy

2. Stakeholder interests:
Stakeholder interests oblige managers to seek
trade-offs
3. HRM policy choices:
HRM is the outcome of situated choice-
making – this absent from Michigan
model

4. HR outcomes:
These assumed to be high commitment
and productivity - it is assumed that
policy will/ should tap under-utilized
resources
5. LR policy outcomes:

 Individual well-being
 Organization Effectiveness
 Societal well-being

6. Feedback loop connecting outputs to

organization and stakeholders
Strengths
 
 Managers portrayed as situated choice-
making actors

 Importance of stakeholders in wider

society acknowledged

 Some acknowledgement of bargained

nature of workplace relations
Weaknesses
 
• Commitment to bargaining is weak – assumed
stakeholders readily incorporated into one
(perhaps narrow) organizational agenda
 
• Model is prescriptive – assumes certain
outcomes…which actual experience disputes
 
• Lists feedback and linkages between elements of
model but does not offer a coherent theoretical
understanding of nature of these relationships