International Bulletin of Business Administration ISSN: 1451-243X Issue 7 (2010) © EuroJournals, Inc. 2010 http://www.eurojournals.com

Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM): A Paradigm Shift for Achieving Sustained Competitive Advantage in Organization
Benjamin James Inyang Department of Business Management, University of Calabar P.M.B. 1115 Calabar, Nigeria E-mail: benji1955.unical@yahoo.co.uk Tel: +234 8033773403 Abstract The human resource of an organization offered the potential synergy for sustained competitive advantage, when properly deployed, maintained and utilized. From the onset, the traditional HRM, the formal system for managing people in organization, concerned itself essentially with transactional and administrative …show more content…

It further presents the resource-based view (RBV) of integrating SHRM with business strategy. The organizational implications of the strategic business partner model for corporate competitiveness, and the strategic skills and core competencies required of the HR practitioner are finally discussed.

2. Literature Review: Traditional HRM versus SHRM
In their seminal thesis on the development of HR function, Jamrog & Overholt (2004:1) declare that “over the past 100 years the HRM professional has been continuously evolving and changing, adding more and different responsibilities”. The authors’ account shows that the HRM function has evolved through many stages, from the medieval time through the industrial revolution, the scientific management, the human relations movement, etc., to the present strategic business partner model. For most of its history, HR has mainly focused on the administrative aspects of HRM, except recently, with the strident call for HRM to become a strategic business partner (Ulrich, 1997; Brockbank 1999; Lawler III & Mohrman, 2000; and Lawler III & Mohrman, 2003). 24

Some scholars therefore, are wont to differentiate between the traditional HRM and SHRM. Traditional HRM is transactional in nature, concerned essentially with providing administrative support in terms of staffing, recruitment, compensation and benefits (Rowden, 1999; and Wei, 2006). Ulrich (1997)