The education and training that are used to support business objectives at Motorola for example, is typical of the challenges and opportunities faced by many organisations in today’s environment. Motorola discovered before most organisations that began introducing new sophisticated technologies within the workplace that their employees didn’t have the skills to make full use of the technologies (Agrawal, 1994). Organisations competing in the fast-paced communications market where customers are especially innovation-conscious must deliver high-quality, reliable products despite short product development cycles.
It has been argued that training and other initiatives associated with TQM have been critical in transforming marginal manufacturing plants in2 successful facilities (Sullivan, 1994).
HRD continues to be a primary vehicle for assuring high levels of employee competence and public safety in highly regulated sectors such as nuclear power industry (Paquin, 1994).
The influence of HRD on strategic planning is shifting from being solely a role supportive of business strategy to becoming a major force in the shaping of business strategy.
However, present conceptions of the strategic role of HRD view training in a supportive role. Strategies for product innovation or cost leadership for example are usually established and adopted by the organisation and when implementation problems emerge, only then is specific consideration given to employee expertise and the training implications of the strategy.
Although the role of HRD serves in support of strategy is necessary and important towards operational success, HRD can offer an organisation more strategic value.
The initiatives for developing employee skills and organisations strategic direction makes a ‘HRD-business strategy linkage’ and is the basis for HRD’s powerful role as a shaper of strategy.
Jacobs & Jones (1995) argue: ‘organisations in the new economy have cum to realise that employee expertise is a vital and dynamic living treasure. The desire for employee expertise is meaningless unless an organisation can develop it in ways that respond 2 the business needs’.
Two factors have influenced the evolution of HRD toward a more active role as a key determinant of business strategy:
1 – the centrality of information technology to business success
2- the sustainable competitive advantage offered by workforce expertise.
These two factors operate together in such a way that the competitive advantages they offer are impossible to achieve without developing and maintaining a highly competent workforce.
Organisations have been haste to embrace information technology as a way to improve overall efficiency and reduce costs. Yet, it is not the information technology itself but the way it is thoroughly integrated into major business processes that represent the greatest opportunities for the successful transformation of outdated business processes (Davenport, 1993).
However, its been pointed out that these advantages will not materialise without highly competent employees to both implement and utilise such innovative work systems.
Seeing that information technology can maximise performance, HRD is then in a strategic position to assure that the required expertise is available and effectively utilised.
Once competitive advantage has been attained it can quickly erode unless organisations find ways to sustain its present advantage or generate new ones.
Investments in employee education and training increasingly fund the development of an infrastructure to support the sustainable competitive advantage that a highly trained workforce provides. Developing employee expertise at all levels of the organisational and using knowledge as a catalyst for growth and competitive advantage represent a major frontier in organisational performance.
Strategy has been traditionally described as a deliberate process of planning in which data are collected and analysed using prescribed techniques such as environmental scanning, competitive benchmarking, and SWOT analysis through which informed judgements are made regarding an organisations future plans and objectives.
Yet, business strategy is more than a plan for addressing business conditions anticipated in the future. Strategy is a dynamic phenomenon that necessarily unfolds over a period of time within a business environment that is inherently unstable. While strategies may be based on structured planning and analysis, they also emerge out of many business opportunities and constraints that continually challenge organisations. That is, strategies may be deliberate, but they may also emerge from events (Minzberg, 1987).
Decision makers cannot possibly think through all possible events and contingencies in advance. Still longitudinal research on strategy has shown that strategy has materialised through actual events has both deliberate and emergent components.
By continuously developing employee expertise in key domains of product and market expertise, competitive advantage is achieved and expanded.
The nature of this strategy is closer to the deliberate than the emergent end of the strategy continuum as organisations use existing patterns of strategy to expand in areas where they already enjoy sales leadership or other measures of market success.
While employee expertise is developed to maintain present advantages, HRD also serves as a key enabler of strategy for expanding growth.
HRD as a major force in the shaping and emergence of business strategy can also be seen a global perspective.
Levels of education and expertise among populations of geographical regions in the world vary widely when viewed from a global perspective.
But the traditional view that the most educated people are predominantly in a Western industrialized nations is rapidly changing.
In certain regions, the levels of education, particularly in technical and scientific areas and the willingness of the population to acquire even higher levels of training are at least as favorable as it is in the US. Singapore and Malaysia for exampled have heavily invested in an infrastructure for developing targeted industry-specific expertise and have attracted export-orientated manufacturing as well as advance technology from abroad. China and India have rapidly developing employees capable of absorbing new technologies and direct a large proportion of their top students to elite technical institutes.
Instability and change continue to dominate the area in many of our domestic industries. On a global scale, political & economic instability underlies much of the social turbulence that confronts business development planning in many regions of the world. Yet at the same time, social & economic change abroad creates vast opportunities for new business development for enterprising firms around the globe. As ripple effects occur throughout our domestic industries, few organizations remain untouched by recent economic and technical change.
Pursuing deliberate strategy, although systematic and goal orientated, is without fail less productive during periods of business instability. Direction from present plans can be quickly lost as the need for strategic adjustments and new business directions emerge. It is during such periods that the emergent nature of strategy offers the most promise that future business growth can evolve from quite uncertain origins.
While the emergent properties of strategy seem intangible, some organizations appear to be pre-positioned to capitalize on emerging opportunities in the marketplace. By fostering cultures of innovation and flexibility, these organizations are capable of rapid adaptation to changing events and emerging business opportunities.
The development of employee expertise now represents a critical strategic imperative for organizations wishing to both create new opportunities for growth and to take advantage of opportunities that inevitably unfold in a rapidly changing business environment.
Only through the explicit adoption of polices for advancing employee expertise can organizations fully benefit on the emergent properties of strategy. As business conditions force the reshaping of strategy, competence & flexibility at all levels of the organization become more critical to business success.
In the midst of emergent strategies, planners and decision makers with HRD backgrounds are in the best position to examine business opportunities, determine key performance requirements of new business objectives and position highly competent people within state-of-art work systems to achieve those objectives. The emergent properties of strategy inevitably require high levels of employee expertise to capitalize fully and quickly on opportunities for growth as they become available.
Reference:
Johnson, G. & Scholes, K. (1999) Exploring Corporate Strategy, forth edition, Hemel Hempstead, Prentice-Hall
Jacobs, R. & Jones, G (1995) ‘Assessing management competencies’, Report of a survey of current arrangements in the UK for the assessment of management competencies. Berkhamsted: Ashridge Management Research Group.
Minzberg, H. (1987) ‘Strategy formation: schools of thought’, in Frederickson, J.W. Perspectives on Strategic Management. New York: Harper & Rowe.
Swanson, R.(1995) Human Resource Development Handbook: Linking research abd practice. San Francisco: Berrett-Hoehler.
Bibliography:
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