Advanced Human Resources

Management
Cairo University - Faculty of
Commerce
DBA Programme

Presented to: Prof. Dr. Adel Zayed

Prepared by: Zeinab El-Sadr

Date: 23rd March, 2010

 Strategic Human Resources Management

The field of Strategic Human Resources Management (SHRM) is not an emerging filed. It is
originated in the early 20s “While most of the academic literature on SHRM has been published
in the last 30 years, the intellectual roots of the field can be traced back to the 1920s in the U.S.
(Kaufman, 2001).”
Definitions of SHRM vary, but many authors such as Dulebohn; Huselid and Wright suggest that
the essence of the human resource perspective is that employees are viewed as valuable assets
and SHRM, in turn, is the development and implementation of an overall plan that seeks to gain
and sustain competitive advantage by managing these human assets through an integrated,
synergistic set of HR practices that both complements and promotes the overall business strategy
of the organization. SHRM focuses on aligning internally consistent human resource
management (HRM) practices to build employees’ knowledge, skills, and abilities in an effort to
support competitive strategies and achieve business objectives (Huselid et al., 1997, Becker
& Huselid, 1999 and Wright & Snell, 1991).

SHRM achieves this by addressing the need to create linkages on both vertical and horizontal
level of the organization; vertical linkages of human resource management (HRM) attributes
with the organization’s strategy as well as horizontal linkages that integrate practices among
HRM functions at the organization.

Strategic Human Resources Management is how to realize the mission of the organization
capitalizing on its most important asset (human resources) in a competitive environment.
SHRM should synergize all the way through with the planning, marketing and human
resources departments as to keep the link between what the organization should achieve
and what it has/should have to achieve it.
References:

Becker & Huselid, 1999 B.E. Becker and M.A. Huselid, Overview: Strategic human resource
management in five leading firms, Human Resource Management 38 (1999), pp. 287–301.
Dulebohn, J., Ferris, G. and Stodd, J., 1995. The history and evolution of human resource
management. In: Ferris, G., Rosen, S. and Barnum, D., Editors, 1995. Handbook of human
resource management, Blackwell, Cambridge, MA, pp. 19–41.
Huselid et al., 1997 M.A. Huselid, S.E. Jackson and R.S. Schuler, Technical and strategic human
resource management effectiveness as determinants of firm performance, Academy of
Management Journal 39 (1997), pp. 949–969.
Kaufman, 2001 B. Kaufman, The theory and practice of strategic HRM and participative
management, Human Resource Management Review 11 (4) (2001), pp. 505–533.
Wright & Snell, 1991 P.M. Wright and S.A. Snell, Toward an integrative view of
strategic human resource management, Human Resource Management Review 1
(1991), pp. 203–335.

Knowledge Based Society

It was introduced by Peter Drucker back in 1959 (Landmarks of Tomorrow). Since then, there
are different definitions for Knowledge Worker that all agree on the simple fact that this is a type
of workers that capitalize on their intellectual power and thinking abilities to do the work rather
than using their physical abilities.

Knowledge Based Society

The term Knowledge Based Society (KBS) was introduced for the first time by the United States
sociologist Daniel Bell (used the notion at that time of information society) in his book “The
Coming of Post-Industrial Society”. This expression reappears strongly in the 90s, within the
context of the development of the World Wide Web and ICTs.

A knowledge-based society is an innovative and life-long learning society, which possesses a

community of scholars, researchers, engineers, technicians, research networks, and firms
engaged in research and in production of high-technology goods and service provision. It forms a
national innovation-production system, which is integrated into international networks of
knowledge production, diffusion, utilization, and protection. Its communication and information
technological tools make vast amounts of human knowledge easily accessible. Knowledge is
used to empower and enrich people culturally and materially, and to build a sustainable society.

Knowledge worker

It was introduced by Peter Drucker back in 1959 (Landmarks of Tomorrow). Since then, there
are different definitions for Knowledge Worker that all agree on the simple fact that this is a type
of workers that capitalize on their intellectual power and thinking abilities to do the work rather
than using their physical abilities.

A knowledge worker is anyone who works for a living at the tasks of developing or using
knowledge. For example, a knowledge worker might be someone who works at any of the tasks
of planning, acquiring, searching, analyzing, organizing, storing, programming, distributing,
marketing, or otherwise contributing to the transformation and commerce of information and
those (often the same people) who work at using the knowledge so produced. The knowledge
worker includes those in the information technology fields, such as programmers, systems
analysts, data analysts, product developers, planners, programmers, and researchers who are
engaged primarily in acquisition, analysis, and manipulation of information as opposed to in
production of goods or services, technical writers, academic professionals, researchers, and so
forth. The term is also frequently used to include people outside of information technology, such
as lawyers, teachers, scientists of all kinds, and also students of all kinds. Employees such as

Intellectual Capital

"The new source of wealth is not material, it is information, knowledge applied to work to create
value." Walter Wriston, former chairman of Citibank

Intellectual Capital can be defined from different viewpoints such as accounting (the above
quote) or managerial or information technology. From an information technology point of view,
it is the intellectual material that has been formalized, captured, and leveraged to produce a
higher-valued asset. This definition assumes that knowledge resources can be captured and
processed and that the outcomes from these efforts can exist separately from the people that
created them.

From the managerial point of view, intellectual capital is the knowledge, applied experience,
organizational technology, relationships, and professional skills that provide for a competitive
edge in the market.

As a combination of these points of view we can define intellectual capital as the ability to
transform knowledge and intangible assets into wealth-creating resources.