Literature Critique Essay

Literature Critique Essay

Introduction

Over the past few decades, organizations have progressively worked towards ensuring business practices embraced guarantee they remain competitive, innovative and operate as successful going concerns. This led to a situation where organizations began perceiving that their human resource function as a very critical factor towards determining the success with which they are able to meet short and long-term organizational goals and operating outcomes (Wright & McMahan, 2011). This has led to the development of innovations centered on strategic human resource management. Strategic HRM seeks to ensure organizations meet the diverse needs of workforce members while at the same instance ensuring organizational goals are positively embraced.

Youndt, Snell, Dean and Lepak (1996) published an article titled Human Resource Management, Manufacturing Strategy, and Firm Performance in the Academy of management Journal on this matter. They discussed the control theory and behavioral perspective on an organization’s workforce with the aim of maximizing organizational performance. Jackson, Schuler and Jiang (2014) also published an article titled An Aspirational Framework for Strategic Human Resource Management discussing how strategic HRM is employed by firms to practically enhance environmental sustainability and positively managing innovation. This paper seeks to critique these two scholarly works on strategic human resource management in an effort to underscore the significance of SHRM that promotes the concerns of an organization’s workforce to positively influence the performance of other organizational functions.

Critique

Youndt, Snell, Dean and Lepak (1996) conducted a study aimed at investigating two alternative viewpoints with regard to human resource management in manufacturing organizations. The objective of the study was to investigate the impact of contingency and universal factors affecting human resource management strategies with regard to performance metrics in manufacturing entities. On the other hand, Jackson, Schuler and Jiang (2014) sought to look into three decades of innovate developments in the field of strategic human resource management. These three scholars examine the value of strategic human resource management initiatives with regard to their impact on external and internal stakeholders.

According to Youndt, Snell, Dean and Lepak (1996), an organization’s employees offer organizations with a significant foundation for realizing a competitive advantage that is not only sustainable but also captures the essence of an effective and strong human resource management function. As such, these authors contend that organizational performance is greatly determined by the successful administration of human capital as opposed to physic