Integrating Relational Perspectives into Strategic Human Resource Management: Three Papers on Strategic Relational Human Resource Management
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This thesis highlights the importance of integrating a relational perspective into strategic human resource management (HRM) and investigates how to make this integration in three studies. Chapter 1 first provides a review of the extant strategic HRM studies with a relationship-related focus. The review shows that our knowledge is limited in understanding the potential for HRM systems to directly influence individuals’ relational attitudes and behaviours. To address this void, this chapter develops a theoretical model of strategic HRM systems—strategic relational HRM—an interrelated set of HR practices that intends to help employees build and maintain workplace relationships. Theoretically, the model of strategic relational HRM emphasizes the role of individuals’ relational competencies in facilitating the emergence of human and social capital at the unit-level, which further contribute to firm performance. Chapter 2 explores how strategic HRM can enable new ventures to satisfy their simultaneous strategic needs of survival and growth through an inductive approach. Drawing on 51 semi-structured interviews conducted in two young hospitals in China, this study finds that young organizations relied on relationship-oriented collaboration to achieve their strategy through the implementation of a multilevel model of HRM systems. Specifically, at the macro-level, they used cross-organizational partnership to share human resources and develop their own employees. At the meso-level, these organizations cultivated collaborative cultures and designed HR policies targeting a promotion of relationship-building within firms. At the micro-level, they highlighted relational capabilities of individual employees, in addition to their technical skills. Having established the importance of relational attributes in the first two chapters, Chapter 3 develops a measure of strategic relational HRM following a rigorous procedure of measure development. This study underscores the importance of employees’ relational competencies as the micro-foundation of human capital and argues that strategic relational HRM can lead to superior firm performance through enhanced relational skills of individuals. Drawing from four samples from North America and Asia, this study tested content validity, internal consistency reliability, convergent, discriminant, criterion-related and incremental validity of a new strategic relational HRM measure. Evidence of the present study supports the use of strategic relational HRM measure in future research.
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