Sustainable Business Models and HR

This assignment delves into the relationship between sustainable business models and Human Resource (HR) management within value networks. It examines how HR policies and practices, including job enrichment, influence organizational performance in the context of sustainability. The analysis draws upon scholarly research to understand the impact of managerial self-efficacy, employee voice, and leadership styles on the implementation and effectiveness of sustainable business models.

Running head: HRM 1
Human Resource Management

HRM 2
Executive summary
Human resource management is the process of managing people of the company by using human
approach. It is the efficient approach which can be utilized within an organization for not only
advantages of the company but for the progress and self-satisfaction of the concerned people.
Thus, HRM is considered as the system that evaluate the performance of the management on one
hand and effective management of human resource on the other hand for the purpose of
providing human dignity to the employees.

HRM 3
Contents
Executive summary.....................................................................................................................................2
Topic 1........................................................................................................................................................5
Topic 2........................................................................................................................................................7
Topic 3........................................................................................................................................................9
Topic 4......................................................................................................................................................11
Topic 5......................................................................................................................................................13
Topic 6......................................................................................................................................................15
Topic 7......................................................................................................................................................17
Topic 8......................................................................................................................................................19
Topic 9......................................................................................................................................................21
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................22
Recommendations.....................................................................................................................................24
References.................................................................................................................................................25

HRM 4
Human resource management plays a vital role in the organization. It is a report which
will focus on various aspects regarding human resource management. HRM roles, functions and
rules will be considered in this report. Recruitment and selection are main component that is
performed by HRM in an organization. A brief discussion will be made in the context of pay,
rewards, performance management, equity, diversity and wellness. There are different roles and
responsibilities of HR manager in the organization and to follow them in an appropriate manner,
there are number of rules are formulated within an organization for employee as well as
employer.

HRM 5
Topic 1
1)
Problem
Lack of industrial relations is a major problem of an organization and it brings the situation of
miscommunication. Industrial relations are related to mutual cooperation.
Causes
 Lack of communication between employee and employers.
 Inflexible working practices.
 The personal objectives are being ignored.
 Staff management conflicts.
Potential solutions
In the perspective of unitary, the organization is perceived as an integrated system and
viewed as a happy family. On the other hand, it shows that the entire staff member of the
organization is shared same goals to attain the same objective (Brewster and Hegewisch, 2017).
It is required for the organization to have the flexible working environment and the participation
of employee in decision making process should be enabled because it enhances the productivity
of the employee in an appropriate manner.

HRM 6
2)
Problem
The importance of human resource is keeping paramount value in the success of any
organization. Improper changes in the transformation of HRM from the former personnel
management is considered as the major issue.
Causes
 Unplanned change process.
 Lack of selection and development of personal staff.
 Devolution of inappropriate functions to line managers.
Potential solutions
The strategy should be planned in an efficient manner so that irrelevant issues could not
rise within an organization in the form of conflicts. It is integral to consider the implications of
the delegation of routine administrative HR activities to line managers. In the transformation
hard and soft approaches should be considered appropriately. For instance, if an organization
focuses to control the functions of the organization, it may be hard approach to HRM. While
soft approaches is there when it recognizes a range of various situational factors impact the
policies of HR, involving prevailing management philosophy, laws and societal values (Purce,
2014). The role of HR manager is to manage the entire employees by providing efficient training
and development program.

HRM 7
Topic 2
1)
Problem
A normative business model does not able to explain the situation or structure of an enterprise. A
Harvard model stresses the requirement for integrated links between management issues and
major components of HRM.
Causes
 Various key stakeholders
 Influence HR policy choices
Solution
The aspects of normative business model are similar as descriptive model. The most well known
model of HRM is soft model which is known as Harvard model. Government is key stakeholders
of the organization that act as employer and stakeholder (Randles and Laasch, 2016). Harvard
model is considered as the “ideal type” model. It is able to identify the key levers of change in
the various elements of HRM.
2)
Problem
Difference of human resource practices whether changes in an organization are done from
growth to a decline strategy.

HRM 8
Causes
 Lack of staffing is the main cause of decline strategy
 Training and development
 Compensations and benefits
Solution
The three example of human resource practices is mentioned below which would be differ if an
organization changed from a growth to a decline strategy. Staffing is a great example of HRM
practices which determines that how many resources are required to implement the strategic
plan. Training and development is another practice of HRM that involves succession planning
including the proper management of various departments. It is the responsibility of HR manager
to provide the efficient services to the employee and appreciate them by rewarding and
recognition them for their successful achievement (Breuer and Lüdeke-Freund, 2014).

HRM 9
Topic 3
1)
Problem
Lack of proper handling of employees by HR manager within an organization is considered as
the major issue under this topic.
Causes
 Lack of knowledge about the responsibility.
 The role may create the conflict with operating managers.
 Lack of social and professional significance.
Solution
The role of HRM in modern organization is categorized into operational and strategic roles. The
strategic HR roles refers that HR manager is proactive in addressing the realities of business and
they should focus on the potential requirements of the business (Duffield, et. al., 2014). The role
of HRM as a strategic is referred as an important and shows that HRM should be responsible for
financial aspects and employee boost. HRM should be responsible to bring the benefits in the
favor of organization by using resources in an effective manner.
2)
Problem

HRM 10
Lack of rules and responsibilities within an organization is major issues.
Causes
 Improper design of organization and job
 Lack of training and development program
 Lack of significance for individual enterprise
Solution
A rule about the rights and accountabilities of managers and employees at work is vital
because it controls many aspects in proper manner. It involves the employee benefits,
employment discrimination protection and health and safety at work place. It is the rule of HRM
that the strategic function of it should be carried out as close to the strategy and decision maker.
The HR manager should be most talented and well trained (Fried, et. al., 2013). For instance if
employees of the company are not aware about the strategy they would not be able to fulfill the
requirements of the company. The well trained line manager of the company can be the role
model of others to accomplish the task within time frame.

HRM 11
Topic 4
1)
Problem
The bad relationship between job analysis, individual competency development and job design
can be the major issue within an organization.
Causes
 To avoid the production capacity required to support organizational objectives.
 Minimum use of human resource for enhancing the productivity.
Solution
Human resource planning is considered as the process of analyzing and recognizing the
requirement of human resource to meet the objectives of the company. It is required for the
HRM to maintain the relationship between job analysis, individual competency development and
job design. Job analysis helps to determine the requirement of job and the development of skills
as per job requirement in an individual is referred to individual competency development
(Karami, Sahebalzamani and Sarabi, 2015). Job design is a structure in which profile are
formulated as per the requirement and the development of an individual.
2)
Problem
Concepts of the psychological contract

HRM 12
Causes
 Lack of fairness
 Improper managing expectations
 Deficiency in trust between employee and employer
Solution
The psychological contract is known as the unwritten set of expectation in which employer of the
organization give commitment to the employee regarding appraisal and promotion. It keeps huge
importance in the modern organization because it involves solid agreements between company
and its employee beyond the written contracts (Guest, 2007).

HRM 13
Topic 5
1)
Problem
Insufficiency in promotion and appraisal
Causes
 Due to inappropriate training program
 Lack of knowledge about the promotion policy
Solution
A resource based view of the organization shows a paradigm shift in SHRM thinking by keeping
consideration on the internal sources of the organization. The HR manager needs to consider
how to enhance the productivity of the employee to attain the certain objectives of the company.
It describes that the manager of the organization should prefer existing employees for promotion
and provide appraisal to them who have served one or more within an organization (Sparrow,
2007).

HRM 14
2)
Problem
Insufficient business cycle as per the requirement is known as the major issue within an
organization.
Causes
 Inefficient process of recruitment and selection
Solution
Recruitment and selection process plays essential role in the organization because in
encompasses matching people and their expectations with the job specifications. High road refers
the best offers to the employee by providing them an efficient services such as living wage,
better benefits and many more on the other hand low roads is the adoption of short term benefits
(Kumar, et. al., 2014). These approaches are keeping huge importance in the organization and
interlinked with business life cycle because if the employee would get all facility at work place,
he will stay with the organization for a long time and in opposite, he will look after for another
opportunity.

HRM 15
Topic 6
1)
Problem
Lack of involvement in helping employee plan their careers
Causes
 Always thinking about the benefits of the organization
 Ignore the important factor as the point of view of employees
Solution
Company should be interested in helping employee plan their careers and make them ready to
get the higher position in the organization. It would be helpful for company as well because it
can attain the corporate benefits if their existing employees get promotion and appraisal after
certain period (Banker, Byzalov and Chen, 2013). There are foremost five performance
management tactics such as clarity, support, feedback, fit and development.
2)
Problem
The found problem is Inefficiency in performance review system.
Causes
 Lack of mutual setting of goals and objectives
 Improper evaluation of performance review system

HRM 16
Solution
A performance evaluation is not a process but also it is the opportunity for the manager to
discuss and meet the job performance of employee. It is vital for the HRM to evaluate the
performance of the employee in an adequate manner. It can be used as the important tool to
measure the individual performance and to make progress in employees into high performing
individuals (Beardwell and Thompson, 2014). It is beneficiary process not only for employee but
also for employer because it enhances the efficiency of employees.

HRM 17
Topic 7
1)
Problem
Strategic remuneration system
Causes
 Unfair policy of remuneration
 Non-comply with workplace laws and regulations
Solution
Strategic remuneration system is able to attract and retain the talented employees. It
would be helpful for motivating employees to enhance the productivity. HRM should be ensured
that the remuneration policies of organization are well aligned to its strategic aims (Berman,
2015). The employee remuneration should be fully explained where deviations are recognized.
2)
Problem
Unfairness and distributive justice
Causes
 Lack of motivation
 Due to insufficient knowledge about the remuneration and rewards

HRM 18
Solution
Equity theory refers the equal fairness between employees regarding rewards and recognition.
The main focus of it is on the work compensations relationship that is known as equity theory as
well (Hammer, et. al., 2016). It is interlinked with procedural justice that is link with fairness and
might be contrasted with distributive justice.

HRM 19
Topic 8
1)
Problem
Safety risk and health issues
Causes
 Improper rules and regulation of health and safety risk
 Breaches of laws of health and safety act
Solution
It is the responsibility of HR manager to define the safety responsibilities for each level within
the organization. HR manager should enforce the accountability for being visibly involved. First
aid box should be ready for an emergency (Fast, Burris and Bartel, 2014). Incident investigation
system should be evaluated in an adequate manner. Training program should be conducted for
the point of view of safety of the employees in which entire information regarding safety should
be given to employees.
2)
Problem
‘Glass ceiling’ and ‘sticky floor’
Causes
 Discriminations

HRM 20
 Negative influence from outside
Solution
Glass ceiling and sticky floor are barriers to career advancements. Glass ceiling is a theory of
unseen and unreachable barriers that keeps minorities. Sticky floor is used in an organization
explain the discriminatory employment pattern that keeps a certain group of people at the low
level of job scale. The consequences may come in negative perspective for the organization
which will reduce the goodwill of the company (Xiu and Gunderson, 2014). A human resource
development strategy helps to address these issues because it is able to enhance the skills of an
employee in an appropriate manner. It will be facilitated to provide equality at workplace
without any discrimination.

HRM 21
Topic 9
1)
Problem
Inefficiency in the performance of organization
Causes
 Ignoring the voice of employee
 Improper organizational performance
Solution
Voice is the foundation of the success of the sustainable business. It enables employee to involve
in the decision making process and enhance the productivity of the employee because due to this
employee are free to share their concern with higher authority (Zhang, et. al., 2015). Voice is
about both cultures as well as structure and for this it is vital to have the authentication and trust
over the organization.
2)
Problem
Offensive response to employee voice
Causes

HRM 22
 Improper response of employee voice
 Inadequate behaviour with employee
Solution
The three mechanisms can be direct voice, employee engagement and collective bargaining.
Direct voice is where when employees of the company raise their voice with small group of
employees and their immediate manager. Employee engagement is important where people
employ themselves emotionally and physically in their job roles for attaining the objectives of
the organization (Boxall, et. al., 2016). The third mechanism is collective bargaining in which
the leaders of well known trade unions are agreed to procedural and substantive terms and
conditions of employment. The organization may get advantages if it response to employee voice
in the form of long stability of the employee with the organization. for instance, if an employee
are not satisfied with working environment and raise their voice against it and in revert he get
better resolution from the management, it would make feel him happy with the response of
company which may impact to other employees as well in progressive way.
Conclusion
It has been concluded that human resource management is vital for the growth of the
organization. Human resource planning is integral for the success of the organization because it
contains various aspects such as planning, hiring, recruiting, training, compensations, benefits
and evaluation. It has been described in this essay that the role of HRM is most vital in today’s
modern organization. Various topics have been discussed with defining the issues, causes and

HRM 23
solution of the problems. Problem based learning methods have been applied in this essay to
identify the issues and their causes for finding the appropriate solutions.

HRM 24
Recommendations
It has been recommended to HRM to follow the policies and procedure of the organization in an
adequate manner. HR manager of the organization should be involved in every activities of the
organization from hiring of the employee to resigning of the employee. The performance of the
employee should be evaluated with fairness and loyalty and equality among employees should be
applied within an organization.

HRM 25
References
Banker, R, D, Byzalov, D, and Chen, L,T, 2013, Employment protection legislation, adjustment
costs and cross-country differences in cost behavior, Journal of Accounting and Economics,
55(1), pp.111-127.
Beardwell, J, and Thompson, A, 2014, Human resource management: a contemporary approach,
Pearson Education.
Berman, E., 2015, Performance and productivity in public and nonprofit organizations,
Routledge.
Boxall, P. and Macky, K., 2014, High-involvement work processes, work intensification and
employee well-being, Work, Employment and Society, 28(6), pp.963-984.
Breuer, H. and Lüdeke-Freund, F., 2014, Normative innovation for sustainable business models
in value networks.
Brewster, C. and Hegewisch, A.,2017, Policy and Practice in European Human Resource
Management: The Price Waterhouse Cranfield Survey. Taylor & Francis.
Duffield, C., Baldwin, R., Roche, M., & Wise, S., 2014, Job enrichment: creating meaningful
career development opportunities for nurses. Journal of nursing management, 22(6), 697-706.
Fast, N.J., Burris, E.R. and Bartel, C.A., 2014, Managing to stay in the dark: Managerial self-
efficacy, ego defensiveness, and the aversion to employee voice, Academy of Management
Journal, 57(4), pp.1013-1034.

HRM 26
Fried, Y., Laurence, G. A., Shirom, A., Melamed, S., Toker, S., Berliner, S., & Shapira, I., 2013,
The relationship between job enrichment and abdominal obesity: A longitudinal field study of
apparently healthy individuals. Journal of occupational health psychology, 18(4), 458.
Guest, D.E., 2007, Human resource management and industrial relations [1], Journal of
management Studies, 24(5), pp.503-521.
Hammer, L.B., Johnson, R.C., Crain, T.L., Bodner, T., Kossek, E.E., Davis, K.D., Kelly, E.L.,
Buxton, O.M., Karuntzos, G., Chosewood, L.C. and Berkman, L., 2016, Intervention effects on
safety compliance and citizenship behaviors: Evidence from the work, family, and health
study, Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(2), p.190.
Karami, A., Sahebalzamani, S. and Sarabi, B., 2015, The Influence of HR Practices on Business
Strategy and Firm Performance: The Case of Banking Industry in Iran, IUP Journal of
Management Research, 14(1), p.30.
Kumar, P., Mehra, A., Inder, D. and Khan, A.M., 2014, A study of human resource policies and
practices for primary health care system in Delhi, International journal of medicine and public
health, 4(4).
Purce, J., 2014, The impact of corporate strategy on human resource management, New
Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals), 67.
Randles, S. and Laasch, O., 2016, Theorising the normative business model. Organization &
Environment, 29(1), pp.53-73.

HRM 27
Sparrow, P.R., 2007, Globalization of HR at function level: four UK-based case studies of the
international recruitment and selection process, The International Journal of Human Resource
Management, 18(5), pp.845-867.
Xiu, L. and Gunderson, M., 2014, Glass ceiling or sticky floor? Quantile regression
decomposition of the gender pay gap in China, International Journal of Manpower, 35(3),
pp.306-326.
Zhang, Y., Huai, M.Y. and Xie, Y.H., 2015, Paternalistic leadership and employee voice in
China: A dual process model, The Leadership Quarterly, 26(1), pp.25-36.