Strategic Human Resources: Frameworks for General Managers

By James N. BaronDavid M. Kreps
Wiley
 April1999
Organizational Behavior
Management
Book cover for Strategic Human Resources

Human Resources are the most important resource that a firm commands and should be regarded as capital, a factor of production in which managers invest today in order to realize future profits. This book deals with the strategic implications of Human Resource Management as an important strategic asset and emphasizes its importance within the overall strategy of the firm. The book covers issues such as job design, evaluation, recruitment, training, career concern, and outsourcing and downsizing. The linkage between the various pieces of HRM policy are stressed and how the policies are related to management issues such as TQM, just-in-time manufacturing, and others. The book is aimed at the general manager, not the HRM practitioner and it stresses conceptual frameworks, not procedural methodology.

Selected Editorial Reviews
I would have asked every one of my professional HR people to read the text if it had been available to them. The HR profession has been longing for a solid foundation from which to operate and this text provides it.
Debra Engel, Executive Adviser and retired Senior Vice President, Corporate Services, 3Com Corporation
It's very simple. Baron and Kreps have produced a path breaking HRM text by mixing rigorous analysis and up-to-date research findings with engaging case material. They convey what all current and future managers, regardless of their functional specialty or interests, need to know to manage effectively the workforce and organizations of the future. HRM teaching will never be the same, and we will all be better off for it.
Thomas A. Kochan, George M. Bunker Professor of Management, Sloan School of Management, MIT
This book provides general managers with a valuable framework, empirical evidence, and some thoughts to consider on how to align human resource strategy with business vision.
Richard M. Kovacevich, President and CEO, Wells Fargo & Company
Baron and Kreps have written an extraordinary text on human resource management that combines as perhaps no others have the cutting edge in social science theory on the employment relation with the best in real business practice.
James R. Lincoln, Spieker Professor of Leadership, Haas School of Business, and Director, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California at Berkeley