STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT MODELS: BUILDING ALIGNMENT BETWEEN PEOPLE STRATEGY AND ORGANISATIONAL GOALS

This article examines why a single, uniform human resource strategy so often fails to support an organisation's competitive position, and proposes a workforce-differentiated alignment model to address the gap. A review of current strategic HRM practice identifies four recurring problems: HR planning conducted in isolation from business strategy, identical practices applied to employee groups with very different value profiles, a short-term bias in reward design, and a weak evidentiary link between HR metrics and financial performance. Building on the human capital architecture literature, the article develops a four-quadrant model that classifies employee groups by strategic value and knowledge specificity and matches each quadrant to a distinct HR strategy — build, buy, bind or borrow. The framework is illustrated with practices drawn from manufacturing and service-sector organisations and offers managers a structured basis for allocating HR investment where it delivers the greatest strategic return.