Article critiquing

A New Mandate for Human Resources

Submitted by:
Murary Prasad Roy Roll no: 12325

Background The article A new mandate for human resources is written by Dave Ulrich, who is a professor at university of Michigans School of Business in Ann Arbor. In this article, he focuses on the shifting role of HR department from traditional HR activities such as staffing, training, appraisal, compensation, towards the outcomes. The author states that HR must not be defined by what it does but what it delivers to the organization to achieve excellence and gain competitive advantages. The author further puts that, it is the primary role of CEO and every line managers to transform HR role by giving them more strategic role. Every organization, regardless of industry size, or location faces critical business challenges like Globalization, Profitability through growth, Technology change, issue of intellectual capital and continuous change. So, the HR should play the leadership and central role in order to meet the competitive challenge and to convert all the strategy into actions. The organizational excellence can be achieved in following ways: HR must become the partner with senior and line managers by impelling and guiding in strategic execution. HR must become an administrative expert by delivering administrative efficiency and ensuring that costs are reduced while quality is maintained. HR must become a champion for employees by vigorously representing their concerns to senior level management and at the same time working to increase the employee contribution. HR must become an agent of continuous transformation.

Issues In the coming future the role of HR is going to be critical to the company as it would determine the organizational excellence. The organization will face further challenges in future and if the new role of HR is defined, then only the organization would be able to meet such challenges. It is the duty of all the level of management in order to take step in defining the role of management

Arguments/assumptions One of the basic arguments that the author puts is the traditional role of HR, which been prescribed to them in the past. He further assumes that the present role of HR is often ineffective, incompetent and costly because their role is confined and narrowed by CEO and senior level management. In order to make HR role more efficient, he states that HR must be strategic partner, an administrative expert, employees champion and a change agent. Thus, by assigning too much roles to HR, the author makes the article more theoretical and talks more about transformation of roles of HR, and does not give any new means by which traditional work of HR could be improved. It might be possible that if the author had established new ways to address the problem of all the traditional HR activities, then HR role would practicable and the organization would be able to achieve excellence without applying the authors four vague ways. Also, the author does not clearly states that in which type of business, this theory is

applicable. The author further emphasizes upon the integration of HR into companys real work, but however while practicing this in real world, the HR may deviate from their primary work. This again prescribes unclear role to HR. Also, in developing countries like Nepal, where HR is very sensitive department, the company may not believe in such ideology. He also assumes that in the near future the excellence of the organization would be determined by organizational capabilities such as speed, responsiveness, agility, learning capacity, and employ competence instead of cost, technology, distribution, manufacturing and product features. The author also assumes that in coming days the critical business challenges would be met by the competitive challenges like globalization, profitability through growth, technology, intellectual capital and continuous change. Therefore, it is possible that the new mandate for human resources would be successful in the future.

Methodology The author reveals that the reputation of HR is being faded day by day. It is then followed by addressing the issues by revealing that in coming days all the organizations, regardless of their size would face five critical challenges like globalization, profitability through growth, technology, intellectual capacity and continuous change and these factors would determine their competitiveness in the market. Then the author requires that, to achieve organizational excellence, it is mandatory for all the organization to develop organizational capabilities such as speed, responsiveness, agility, learning capacity and employee competence. He has used his work experience and human resource management knowledge to state the present issues and future challenges of HR department and then he has created theoretical framework with real examples to solve the present issue and meet the future challenges. He has stated four ways for the organizational excellence, which emphasize that HR must become a strategic partner, act as an administrative expert, and become a champion for employees and an agent of continuous transformation. This methodology seems to be appropriate for all the industries (big or small) as all of them share more or less same HR functions.

Conceptual contribution The article provides useful information regarding the contribution of HR for achieving the organizational excellence. The article imprisons the not only the past but also the present and the future areas of HR. It suggests that in the coming future there would be many business challenges and the company would require HR to select the following four ways to achieve organizational excellence. Strategic alliance with senior and line managers Become and administrative expert Become a champion of the employee Become an agent of continuous change

The article also suggests that managers to change the thinking towards the HR professional. The managers must focus on outcomes that create value rather than activities. Similarly, deliverables must be defined to HR and HR must be held accountable for the results.

Conclusion The HR department can significantly contribute towards the organizational excellence if the role of HR is transformed with the help of CEO and other line managers. The newly transformed mechanism must be in terms of both behavior and outputs. The change must enrich the organizations value to customers, investors and employees. The activities of HR must not be disconnected from the real work of the organization rather, it should be integrated. While being the partner in the Strategy execution, the HR must be held responsible for defining organizational architecture, must be accountable for conducting an organizational audit, and must take stock of its own work and set clear priorities. The author has stated that company will have to face critical business challenges like globalization, profitability through growth, technology and continuous change in order to survive in the competitive business world. Thus, the author signifies the role of HR in the near future and how crucial their role would be in shaping the success of the company. This article also says that HR must bring significant changes in their behavior and thinking. For this the senior level management must focus on outcomes rather than activities and reward the HR professionals for excellent performance. Likewise the company must also invest in innovative HR practices and must upgrade HR professional because they will be delivering the real value. HR must measure their effectiveness in terms of business competitiveness and must lead cultural transformation. Senior managers who recognize the economic value associated with the HR department must invest more on HR functions.

Further study The field of HR is dynamic in nature and so this theory may not be valid in such situation and further study may be required. Also, the HR department is very sensitive and hence every organization may not wish to use all the theory, so, further study may be required in order to make the theory more relevant and practicable. Though the function of all the organization is same but it would be better if new theory is established according to the type and nature of the organization. So, in coming days every organization would look for its own theory and this would make it easy for the organization to apply such theory into practice.