Strategic Human Resource Management: A New Theoretical Direction

Strategic human resource management is the approach an organization wishes to pursue in order to achieve its goal through people. In this study effort was made to examine human resource management strategies and goal attainment in 12 selected companies; 2 from each of the (6) states in the south-south Nigeria. The survey and purposive sampling method was adopted for the study. Data for this study were collected mainly through questionnaire carefully designed and administered to the respondents, as well as oral interviews. Tables, simple percentages, Pearson product moment of Correlation and simple regression were adopted as analytical tools for this study. Five hypotheses were formulated and tested using the Pearson product moment for correlation and simple regression model. All the null hypotheses were rejected and the alternate accepted. Our findings show that there is a positive significant relationship between human resource management strategies and goal attainment in the selected companies. Also, human resource management strategies contribute significantly to goal attainment in the organization. Thus, it is concluded from the study that the inability of most organization to attain their goals is due to exogenous variables which is outside the control of the organization. Finally, it is recommended from the study that line managers and supervisors should be involved in the formulation of human resource management strategies because they are the real people involved in the implementation of these strategies. The open system method of appraisal should be adopted and group incentive scheme should be abolished. Employees should be rewarded based on personal effort and result. The internal and external environment should be taken into consideration when formulating and implementing human resource management policies.