Strategic Human Resource Management: An Indian ...

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Strategic Human Resource Management: An Indian Perspective. Anuradha ... business process offshoring of most professional services. On the .... Agrawal, N. M. and M. Thite (2003), 'HR Issues, Challenges & Strategies in Indian Software.
Industrial Relations Journal 41:2, 185–187 ISSN 0019-8692

Book review

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Strategic Human Resource Management: An Indian Perspective Anuradha Sharma and Aradhana Khandekar Response Books, 2006, 276 pp., £15.99 India can best be described as a ‘country of complete contrasts’. This ancient country with a population of over a billion people is on the threshold of transformational change, economically, politically, socially and culturally. On the one hand, the positive outlook for India presents a promising picture: a booming economy that has finally overcome the infamous Hindu rate of growth; thriving intellectual capital that boasts the world’s second largest pool of Englishspeaking scientists and engineers; robust democratic political system; Westernoriented education, judicial and financial systems, thanks to British legacy; and world-class information technology (IT)-enabled services sector that dominates global business process offshoring of most professional services. On the other hand, the majority of the population lives in rural areas; 60 per cent is dependent on agriculture and the country is still plagued with woeful infrastructure. Hardly 10 per cent of the 500 million strong workforce is in the so-called organised sector of the economy which pays wages and salaries and is covered by federal and state laws. The ‘new economy’ that covers knowledge-oriented service sector and powered by IT has made a very small dent in the largely unorganised, agrarian and small-scale business sector. Considering these extreme features of the Indian economy, one can understand the difficulty in generalising the context and nature of a management discipline. This is more so in the case of human resource management (HRM) discipline, which is highly context specific with a largely intangible outcome. Most of the publications on HRM in India take the form of a chapter in books on HRM in the Asia Pacific (e.g. Saini and Budhwar, 2004) or a comparative study between HRM systems in India and another country (e.g. Budhwar and Khatri, 2001) or an account of HRM-related phenomenon in a particular sector of the Indian economy (e.g. Agrawal and Thite, 2003) or a particular HRM function (e.g. Amba-Rao et al., 2000). While sector and functional-specific empirical articles on HRM in India have made good contribution to Western understanding, there is limited contribution from books that take a macro view of HRM discourse in India. For example, Rao (1999), Ramaswamy (2000) and Varkky et al. (2001) do provide an Indian setting to their HRM discourse but by mainly recycling popular Western HRM concepts and practices; they offer ‘old wine in a new bottle’ and often send ‘confusing signals’ (Saini and Budhwar, 2004). Therefore, this book that offered an Indian perspective to HRM had the opportunity to fill a void, particularly to Western readers who are eager to broaden and sharpen their understanding of an emerging nation from the perspective of managing people. © 2010 The Author(s) Journal compilation © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St., Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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Mohan Thite

The book promises to provide a strategic perspective of HRM with special reference to India and is structured accordingly. After introducing the concept and models of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM), it explores the SHRM dimensions in India and Indian managers’ perception by presenting a survey of nine Indian and foreign global organisations operating in India, supplemented by three case studies of best performing multinational firms in India. The authors set the scene well by providing a historical evolution of SHRM and the theories that shaped its foundation. They proceed to explore its micro dimensions within the context of organisational behaviour concepts such as culture, empowerment and structure. The first two parts of the book help the reader appreciate the link between SHRM and competitive advantage in modern organisations. Part three that deals with emerging dimensions of HRM in India traces the evolution of HRM from a functional perspective but fails to link the same with the economic development of India in terms of the changing profile of the economy, workforce demographics and other institutional mechanisms. However, this part brings together various research studies on strategic dimensions of HRM within Indian organisations. The major contribution of this book lies in presenting the results of a two-part survey of three Indian and six foreign global organisations operating in India involving 300 managers. The selection of the sample highlights both the strengths and the weaknesses of this book. The global nature of these organisations enable the authors to provide a unique perspective of how they resolve the tension of being global and local at the same time. The international HRM philosophy, policies and practices of foreign global organisations across the world are well documented, and this book extends that knowledge to the Indian context. What is sorely needed is the understanding of the issues and challenges that the Indian global organisations face in entering and growing in the world markets as upcoming multinational companies from emerging markets. Only three out of the nine global firms covered in the study are headquartered in India while domestic Indian firms focusing on domestic operations are ignored. To that extent, the ‘Indianness’ of this book is diminished. At best, the book provides a ‘bird’s-eye view’ of glimpses of HRM in India. Its contribution is much like an empirical article published in a journal rather than a comprehensive account of HRM in India, as one would expect from a book. It fails to highlight the different worlds that exist within the Indian economy. For example, the Indian IT-enabled services sector in India is highly global and world-class and exempt from the infrastructural and legislative bottlenecks that plague the rest of the economy. Trade unions are almost non-existent in the new economy whereas they are dominant and often play a confrontational role in pushing forward the much needed economic reforms. The federal, state and local governments are either reluctant or unable to provide structural flexibility to employers to alter employment conditions in line with changing business conditions. Despite the abundant supply of the labour force, its quality, in terms of trainability and employability, is suspect. Knowledge workers are in high demand to fuel the booming exports and domestic markets, but their wages are spiralling and employee turnover is high. Thus, despite the growing awareness of SHRM among Indian managers, its practice in terms of delivery of key HR functions varies widely across manufacturing and service sectors, public and private enterprises, and metropolitan and regional/rural areas. A large, diverse and complex country like India poses its own challenges in comprehensively covering the practice of a management discipline. This challenge © 2010 The Author(s) Journal compilation © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2010

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needs to be kept in mind while noting that the contribution of this book is limited mainly to global organisations headquartered and/or operating in India. Mohan Thite Department of Management, Griffith University, Australia References Agrawal, N. M. and M. Thite (2003), ‘HR Issues, Challenges & Strategies in Indian Software Services Industry’, International Journal of Human Resources Development and Management, 3, 3, 249–264. Amba-Rao, S. C., J. A. Petrick, J. Gupta and T. J. Von der Embse (2000), ‘Comparative Performance Appraisal Practices and Management Values among Foreign and Domestic Firms in India’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 11, 1, 60–89. Budhwar, P. and N. Khatri (2001), ‘Comparative Human Resource Management in Britain and India: An Empirical Study’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, 13, 5, 800–826. Ramaswamy, E. A. (2000), Managing Human Resources: A Contemporary Text (New Delhi, Oxford University Press). Rao, T. V. (1999), HRD Audit: Evaluating the Human Resource Function for Business Improvement (New Delhi, Response Books). Saini, D. and P. Budhwar (2004), ‘Human Resource Management in India’, in P. Budhwar (ed.), Managing Human Resources in Asia-Pacific (London, Routledge) pp. 113–159. Varkky, B., P. Parashar and G. Brahma (2001), Human Resource Management: Changing Roles, Changing Goals (New Delhi, Excel Books).

© 2010 The Author(s) Journal compilation © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2010