An Attention-Based View of Strategic Human Resource Management

In spite of the designation, research in strategic human resource management (SHRM) has largely focused on tactical rather than strategic issues. These studies have attempted to explain whether firm performance is associated with "best-practice" or "best-fit" human resource management (HRM) practices. The focus on internally consistent (horizontal fit) HRM practices is better characterized as tactical implementation than as strategic formulation. In the latter, HRM leads rather than follows the firm's long-term responses to shifts in the firm's competitive and market environment. In this paper, I propose an attention-based view of the firm to reframe SHRM research and policy to support a strategy formulation based on environment conditions (vertical fit). From an organizational policy perspective, this approach elevates the role of the HR executive from that of a functional specialist to that of a strategic generalist.