Strategic Human Resource Management: 37 years in academia, how many in practice? A focus on Large Companies

Abstract

In the fast-changing global workplace of today, maintaining competitive advantage has become imperative to survival. Employees matter today more than ever since they become non-imitable sources of firm uniqueness that can deliver value to every stakeholder. Based on this, the field of Strategic HRM has gained a special interest among researchers and practitioners since it employs a strategic approach to the role of employees within the organisations. However, looking at the business world results, it looks like there is a divorce between academia and practitioners and that they are operating in a parallel way. With the aim of evidencing this gap and echoing this issue, this chapter is structured as follows. It starts with a summary of the research conducted under the SHRM field in the last two decades. It follows with a section that evidences the gap between research and practice showing the results of global companies’ surveys related to people management. In the third section a special focus on big companies is done due to their importance when legitimizing managerial trends. The chapter finishes with some conclusions and thoughts for future managers.