The Harvard framework of Human Resource Management

The other founding fathers of HRM were the Harvard School of Beer et al (1984) who developed what Boxall (1992) calls the ‘Harvard framework’. This framework is based on the belief that the problems of historical personnel management can only be solved:

when general managers develop a viewpoint of how they wish to see employees involved in and developed by the enterprise, and of what HRM policies and practices may achieve those goals. Without either a central philosophy or a strategic vision – which can be provided only by general managers – HRM is likely to remain a set of independent activities, each guided by its own practice tradition.

Beer and his colleagues believed that ‘Today, many pressures are demanding a broader, more comprehensive and more strategic perspective with regard to the orga- nization’s human resources.’ These pressures have created a need for: ‘Alonger-term perspective in managing people and consideration of people as potential assets rather than merely a variable cost.’ They were the first to underline the HRM tenet that it belongs to line managers. They also stated that: ‘Human resource management involves all management decisions and action that affect the nature of the relation- ship between the organization and its employees – its human resources.’

The Harvard school suggested that HRM had two characteristic features:

1) line managers accept more responsibility for ensuring the alignment of competitive strategy and personnel policies;
2) personnel has the mission of setting policies that govern how personnel activities are developed and implemented in ways that make them more mutually reinforcing.

According to Boxall (1992) the advantages of this model are that it:

• incorporates recognition of a range of stakeholder interests; 
• recognizes the importance of ‘trade-offs’, either explicitly or implicitly, between the interests of owners and those of employees as well as between various interest groups; 
• widens the context of HRM to include ‘employee influence’, the organization of work and the associated question of supervisory style;
• acknowledges a broad range of contextual influences on management’s choice of strategy, suggesting a meshing of both product-market and socio-cultural logics; 
• emphasizes strategic choice – it is not driven by situational or environmental determinism.

The Harvard model has exerted considerable influence over the theory and practice of HRM, particularly in its emphasis on the fact that HRM is the concern of manage- ment in general rather than the personnel function in particular.