Strategic Human Resource Management Ethical Stewardship Strategic

Strategic Human Resource Management Ethical Stewardship

Strategic Human Resource Management as Ethical Stewardship

Over the past few decades, the most controversial debate between the professional economic research institutions (practitioners) and the academic institutions (scholars) has been on the strategic human resource management and the adoption of ethical stewardship framework. Currently, most of the economic and business studies and research on the strategic human resource management (SHRM) elicit that human resource professionals possess the greatest opportunity of playing greater roles. These roles and obligations may contribute to organizational achievements and success in developing policies, as well as systems that aim at improving the organization's values, mission and goals (Mohrman & Lawler, 2000). Human resource professionals owe their organizations explicit ethical duties, which are geared towards raising the standards of organizational performance and modern economic demands, which are environmentally competitive. For this reason, it is quite recommendable for the human resource professionals to adopt a framework of ethical stewardship and the transformative leadership qualities. Through this adoption, HRPs will be capable of realizing their ethical duties within their organizations hence achieving their desired organizational outcomes, which help in increasing the organizational wealth and establishing a conducive work environment that satisfies the employees (Caldwell, Truong, Linh & Tuan, 2011).

A more focused and strategic human resource management system is truly effective when aligned with organizational structure, values, purposes and mission (Huselid & Becker, 2006). According to Schein (2005), understanding and knowing the imperative role of the strategic human resource management within the modern organizations, assists in the provision of a crucial context of understanding the concept behind the HRPs' ethical duties (Caldwell et al., 2011). Very effective and active human resource professionals contribute to addition of organizational values and effectiveness through linkages of strategies, people, and performance. Consequently, this linkage aligns the human resource systems with a critical maximization of the organizational performance outcomes within the modern world that is highly dependent on upon creativity employees' commitment in order to succeed (Werhane, 2007).

The integration of fundamental human resource functions in order to reframe the organization's internal environments results into significant improvements in organizational financial performance and outcomes. Huselid and Becker (2006) elicit that there are three crucial functions of the strategic human resource management systems. One of the functions is cultural management that is in alignment with the cooperate strategy. This component aims at creating mutual cultural relationships and practices, to employees and the surrounding community and/or environment (Huselid & Becker, 2006). The second function in this regard, deals with the focusing of human resource structure and plans on human resource managers, who act partners of a given business and other departments. This results into common agreements during business plan formulation and strategic management systems. Finally, the last function of the strategic human resource management system is the professional and operational excellence when conducting essential tasks. These three functions of organizational management are correlated hence the organizational cultures can be utilized in the enrichment of human lives and increment of organizational profitability. According to Huselid and Becker (2006), empirical evidence provided in 1995 by an award winning study on human resource management, elicited that, there was a remarkable improvement of general financial performance by 15%, turnover- 11%, and in productivity by 14.5% in organizations, which implemented the above factors of organizational human resource management systems (Caldwell et al., 2011).

In order to realize a high level status and positive organizational impacts, a successful human resource transformation focuses on three key factors of reform: (i) new knowledge development: this factor confirms that an organization's culture, goal achievements and financial performance are correlated elements of a successful organization (Caldwell et al., 2011). It obliges the organization to value people (employees, customers and members of the entire society) and treat them uniformly hence improving the bottom-line of organizational performance (Caldwell et al., 2011). (ii) Cost effectiveness focus: it reframes the functions of human resource management hence delivering services at minimized costs. Through this factor, the human resource management functions can be assessed for proper financial accountability. (iii) Merging of the human resource management functions with the strategic role: this encompasses the alignment of core organizational processes, and the key task performance, which supports the organization in utilizing people and their human resources effectively and efficiently (Solomon, 1993).

In the contemporary world of business and competitive economic demands, many organizations draw much of their attention towards human resource professionalism as ethical stewardship (Mohrman & Lawler, 2000). By the articulation of the existing relationship between employees and their organizations, famous economists have termed leaders as stewards who participate in multifaceted set of responsibilities for the sake of stakeholders. Such responsibilities can be utilized in the creation and achievement of long-term organizational wealth hence, benefiting all the stakeholders and honors the business' obligations to the entire society. Ethical stewardship therefore, refers to the honoring of employees' duties, stakeholder roles and the society's responsibilities by an organization (Caldwell et al., 2011). This has been found to be in pursuit of the long-term creation or organizational wealth.

Ethical stewardship is an organizational theory of governance, where leaders serve to obtain superlative stakeholder interests, through the creation of high level of cultural trusts, which honors the distinguished duties that organizations owe to their followers (Caldwell et al., 2011). In pursuit of the finest stakeholder interest, the responsibility of leaders is to augment outcomes, rather than compromising the positions that oversee the possible opportunities. One of the positions held by the ethical stewardship is based on the leadership obligations in pursuing the long-term creation of wealth, through system implementations and stakeholders' commitments (Huselid & Becker, 2006). In human resource management, ethical stewards have the obligation of demonstrating the insights of pronounced organizations hence, transforming such organizations to be humane. Subsequently, communities are capable of creating human resource empowerment systems, establishing shared partnerships and enhancing their leadership trustworthiness (Caldwell et al., 2011).

Supposing the human resource professional is to function like an ethical steward within the modern organizations, it must conglomerate the profound firm operational knowledge and understanding on the system implementations. Moreover, it should be able to determine which organizations are capable of maximizing their human resource performance. Through this knowledge and performance, the society and employees acquire the ability for effective communication with the top management and board of directors hence creating a convincing trail for the policy makers who adopt the essential systems that support organizational goals (Caldwell et al., 2011). As organizational leaders, human resource professionals own specific responsibilities, which necessitate insight, wisdom, experience, profound knowledge and skills of enhancing their organizational performance and outcomes. As a result, human resource professionals are regarded as transformative leaders, who respect their broad-based ethical duties as ethical stewards (Caldwell et al., 2011).