Begrippen Strategic Human Resource Management

Competitive advantage: An advantage an organization has over its competitors that allows it to perform better. It is important for survival and is at least partly manageable by HRM.
Micro HRM (MHRM): Perspective on HRM that covers HR sub-functions such as recruitment, induction and training, and studies the effect of single HR practices on employee attitudes and behaviour.
International HRM (IHRM): HRM in multinational companies and HRM across borders (Brewster, 2004), including transfer of practices and expatriate management.
Strategic HRM (SHRM): Perspective that links HRM to business strategy, designs high performance work systems and adds value through people to gain sustained competitive advantage (Delery and Doty, 1996).
Fit: The alignment between HRM and strategy, between HR practices themselves, or between HRM and the context. Central concept in SHRM.
Multi-actor perspective: Studying HRM by taking into account multiple stakeholders such as employees, managers, HR professionals, works councils, unions, top management, shareholders and government.
Multi-level perspective: Studying HRM at both the individual employee level and the strategic organizational level.
Balanced approach: View on HRM that balances goals of the individual employee, organizational goals and societal goals, instead of focusing on financial performance only.
Contingent workers: Workers without a standard permanent employment relationship, such as temporary agency workers or freelancers; part of the workforce covered by HRM according to Boxall and Purcell (2003).
Stakeholder: Any party that affects or is affected by the organization and its HRM, such as employees, shareholders, unions, works councils, customers and government.
Best-practice proposition: The idea (Pfeffer, 1998) that one universal set of HR practices increases performance in every organization ('one size fits all').
Best-fit proposition: The idea (Delery and Doty, 1996) that HRM's success depends on its alignment with the internal and external organizational context.
Strategy: An organization's intention to achieve certain goals through planned alignment (fit) between the organization and its environment (De Wit and Meyer, 1998).
HR strategy: One of the functional strategies (silos) within the business strategy; SHRM concerns its fit with the organization's strategy.
4 Cs: The HR outcomes of the Harvard approach: commitment, competence, congruence and cost effectiveness.
Strategic fit: Fit between the HR strategy and the external market contexts (general and population).
Institutional fit: Fit between the HR strategy and the external institutional contexts: laws, norms, CBAs, unions and works councils.
Organizational fit: Fit between the HR strategy and the configuration (history, culture, ownership, technology, workforce) of the organization.
Internal fit: Consistency and mutual reinforcement between the individual HR practices (a coherent bundle).
Configuration: The internal organizational context in the strategy scan: history, culture, ownership, technology and workforce.
Employee engagement: A state in which employees are highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace and act as psychological owners of their work.
Talent (strengths approach): A naturally recurring pattern of thinking, feeling or behaving that can be productively applied; developed into a strength with knowledge and skills.
Employee experience: The whole lifecycle of an employee in the organization: attract, hire, onboard, engage, perform, develop and depart, framed by purpose, brand and culture.
Resource-based view (RBV): Theory stating that competitive advantage comes from inside the organization, from resources and capabilities including people.
HR business partner (HR BP): HR professional linked to a part of the business who works with its management team and connects business leaders, employees and the HR Centers of Expertise.
Center of Expertise (CoE): Specialist HR team (e.g., Compensation and Benefits, Learning and Development, Recruitment) that designs HR policies and tools for the organization.
Sustained competitive advantage: A competitive advantage that lasts over time because the underlying resources are valuable, rare, difficult to imitate and supported by the organization.
Competitive parity: Situation where a resource is valuable but not rare, so the firm performs at the level of its competitors (normal performance).
Causal ambiguity: Source of inimitability: it is unclear which factors caused the success, so competitors do not know what to copy.
Path dependency: Source of inimitability: a resource results from a unique history of events and decisions that cannot be repeated.
Social complexity: Source of inimitability: a resource depends on complex social relations, culture and specific people.
Cost-effectiveness: Critical HR goal concerning labour productivity: realizing output with acceptable labour costs.
Numerical flexibility: The ability to adjust the number of workers or working hours to fluctuations in demand.
Functional flexibility: The ability to move employees between tasks or functions, e.g., through multi-skilling and job rotation.
Mental flexibility: The ability of employees to adapt mentally to change, disruption and uncertainty.
Legitimacy: Critical HR goal: acceptance of the organization and its employment practices by society and stakeholders.
Viability: Ultimate business goal: the survival and continuity of the organization.
Intended HR practices: HR practices as designed in HR policy by HR professionals.
Actual HR practices: HR practices as actually implemented by line managers.
Perceived HR practices: HR practices as experienced and interpreted by employees.
HR outcomes: Employee-level results of HR practices such as satisfaction, motivation, retention, presence, trust and commitment.
HR metrics: Quantitative measures of HR input, processes and outcomes used to make the added value of HR visible; also called Human Capital Valuation.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI): Measurable indicator derived from strategic objectives; HR measures are needed to predict KPIs.
Evidence-based decision-making: Making management decisions based on measured data and scientific evidence rather than intuition.
Valorisation: Expressing the value of HR interventions in financial terms, such as return on investment ('monetisation').
Hard outcomes: Objective, often financial measures such as labour productivity, labour costs, sales and profit; more solid but backward looking and distal.
Soft outcomes: Perceptual measures such as satisfaction, commitment, engagement and turnover intention; require interpretation but are more future-oriented and proximal.
Human Resource Accounting (HRA): 1970s and 1980s approach that tried to quantify the value of human capital for accounting and investment purposes.
Human Capital Valuation (HCV): The modern term for HR accounting and metrics, focused on creating added value through people.
Organizational commitment: The relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization (Mowday et al., 1979).
Affective commitment: Commitment based on emotional attachment and desire to stay.
Normative commitment: Commitment based on a sense of obligation to stay.
Continuance commitment: Commitment based on the perceived costs of leaving.
Validity: The extent to which an instrument measures what it is intended to measure.
Reliability: The extent to which an instrument measures consistently, with minimal noise (same score on repetition).
Inter-rater reliability: The degree to which different raters give consistent judgments.
Confounding: Accidentally measuring a related but different concept (e.g., engagement instead of commitment).
Latent concept: A complex concept that cannot be measured with one question and is represented by a set of items.
Operationalization: Translating a defined concept into observable indicators and measurement instruments.
Perceived organizational support: Employees' perception of the extent to which the organization cares about their well-being and values their contribution.
Organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB): Voluntary extra-role behaviour that goes beyond formal job requirements and benefits the organization.
Mutual gains: The idea that HR practices can benefit both the employer (performance) and employees (well-being) at the same time.
Critical HR studies: Dissensus-oriented research that questions mainstream HRM assumptions and highlights negative effects such as exploitation, stress, insecurity and discrimination.
Consensus orientation: Research perspective that assumes shared interests; typical themes are HRM and performance, RBV and competitive advantage, and strategy and fit.
Dissensus orientation: Research perspective that focuses on conflicting interests, power differences and the downsides of HRM.
Work intensification: Employees having to work harder or faster, often as a side effect of HR renewal or staff shortages.
Job demands: Stressors such as workload that require sustained physical and/or psychological effort or skills.
Job decision latitude: Job control or discretion: the combination of skill use and decision authority (Karasek).
High strain job: Job with high demands and low decision latitude; highest risk of stress (Karasek).
Active job: Job with high demands and high decision latitude; stimulates learning and new behaviour patterns (Karasek).
Passive job: Job with low demands and low decision latitude; induces a decline in activity (Karasek).
Job resources: Job aspects such as autonomy, social support and feedback that help achieve goals, reduce demands and stimulate growth (JD-R model).
Agility: The organizational capability to adapt easily to changes in its external environment (Dyer and Shafer, 1999); what employers want.
Vitality: Employee-level concept combining satisfaction, job demands, trust in the organization and managers, job stress and physical health; what employees want.
Reverse mentoring: Mentoring arrangement in which younger employees mentor older employees, for example on digital skills.
Organizational Health Psychology: Discipline that studies the potential negative effects of jobs and management practices on employee well-being, such as stress and burnout.
High performance work system (HPWS): A bundle of HR practices that creates employee abilities, motivation through incentives, and opportunity to participate in decision making.
Bundle of HR practices: A coherent and consistent set of HR practices with internal fit, expected to perform better than the sum of the separate practices.
Scientific Management: Approach of Taylor (1911) based on division of labour, direct supervision and individual financial incentives, assuming employees are lazy and money-driven.
Human Relations movement: Approach (Mayo, 1933) seeing organizations as social systems and employees as social beings motivated also by social relationships.
Theory Y: McGregor's (1960) view that employees are motivated by participation, autonomy and responsibility; basis of Revisionism.
Socio-technical systems theory: Approach (Emery and Trist, 1960) that optimizes the interaction between social and technical systems, using teamwork, autonomy and job enrichment.
Job enlargement: Adding more tasks of a similar level to a job (horizontal extension).
Job enrichment: Adding responsibility, control and decision-making to a job (vertical extension).
Discretionary effort: Extra effort that employees can choose to give beyond the minimum; the mediator between HPWS and firm performance in the AMO model.
Ability-enhancing practices: HR practices that increase knowledge and skills, such as selective recruitment and training.
Motivation-enhancing practices: HR practices that motivate employees, such as appraisal, performance-related pay, employment security and promotion opportunities.
Opportunity-enhancing practices: HR practices that give employees the chance to contribute, such as autonomy, involvement, teamwork and decentralization.
Work practices: In Boxall and Macky (2009): practices about the organization of work and involvement, such as teams, rotation and autonomy.
Employment practices: In Boxall and Macky (2009): practices about managing people, such as selection, training, compensation and appraisal.
Cognitive path: Direct route from improved skills, knowledge and collaboration to operating outcomes (Boxall and Macky).
Motivational path: Indirect route from HR practices via employee affective outcomes (trust, satisfaction, commitment) to operating outcomes (Boxall and Macky).
Recruitment: The activities of attracting applicants to an organization (Bloisi, 2007).
Selection: Sifting through the pool of applicants and deciding on their appropriateness (Bloisi, 2007).
Stars: Core employees who create added value (Baron and Kreps, 1999).
Guardians: Core employees mainly needed to minimize risks and avoid losses (Baron and Kreps, 1999).
Foot soldiers: Peripheral employees (Baron and Kreps, 1999).
Commitment-based HR: HR configuration for knowledge employees (high value, high uniqueness) focused on long-term commitment and development.
Productivity-based HR: HR configuration for job-based employees (high value, low uniqueness) focused on efficiency and output.
Compliance-based HR: HR configuration for contract workers (low value, low uniqueness) focused on following rules and contracts.
Collaborative HR: HR configuration for alliance partners (low value, high uniqueness) focused on cooperation and trust.
Unconscious bias: Implicit stereotypes and associations that influence recruitment and selection decisions without awareness.
Realistic job preview (RJP): Honest information to applicants about a vacancy, including its negative aspects (Wanous, 1989).
Signalling: Recruitment tactic that sends messages (e.g., about salary or development) to attract the right applicants.
Employer branding: Applying marketing and branding principles to HR activities targeted at current and potential employees (Edwards, 2010).
E-recruitment: Web-based recruitment that is cheaper, standardized and uses automated filters.
Person-Environment fit (P-E fit): Overall compatibility between a person and the work environment; includes P-J, P-O and P-C fit.
Person-Job fit (P-J fit): Match between a person's qualifications and interests and the demands and rewards of the job.
Person-Organization fit (P-O fit): Compatibility between people and organizations when one provides what the other needs, they share characteristics, or both.
KSAs: Knowledge, skills and abilities (competences) on which candidates are recruited and selected.
General mental ability (GMA): General cognitive ability; GMA tests are among the best predictors of job performance (validity 0.51).
Work sample test: Selection technique in which candidates perform a representative part of the job; highest validity (0.54).
Assessment centre: Combination of selection techniques (e.g., work samples, tests, interviews) to assess candidates.
Validity coefficient: Correlation between a selection score and later job performance.
Performance management (PM): A system to inform, guide, monitor and evaluate employees to achieve organizational goals; built on performance appraisal and linked to other HPWPs.
Performance appraisal (PA): Identifying, observing, measuring and developing human performance in organizations (Cardy and Dobbins, 1998).
Hard model of PM: PM through direct supervision and monitoring of measurable output.
Soft model of PM: PM focused on employee well-being, development, norms and values.
Performance evaluation interview: A two-way dialogue between employee and supervisor about work, cooperation and development.
Performance appraisal interview: A formal judgement of an employee's past performance by the supervisor, often with consequences.
Management by objectives: Drucker's (1954) approach in which managers set objectives, organize tasks, motivate, assess performance and manage knowledge workers.
360-degree feedback: Feedback from multiple sources (supervisor, peers, subordinates, self); more reliable due to multiple raters.
SMART: Criteria for goals: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Results-oriented and Time-bound.
Expectancy: In Vroom's theory: the perceived link between effort and performance ('can I?').
Instrumentality: In Vroom's theory: the perceived link between performance and outcome ('will my performance be rewarded?').
Valence: In Vroom's theory: the value an employee attaches to an outcome.
Self-efficacy: An employee's confidence in his or her own competences to perform a task.
Psychological contract: The employee's beliefs about the mutual obligations between employee and employer; a breach occurs when expectations are not met.
Procedural justice: Perceived fairness of the procedures (process) used to make decisions, e.g., in appraisal.
Distributive justice: Perceived fairness of the distribution of outcomes (rewards and punishments).
Up or out: Career system in which employees are either promoted or have to leave.
Compensation: All financial and non-financial rewards employees receive in exchange for their work.
Fixed pay: A standard fixed amount of pay per month.
Variable pay: Pay that depends on sales or performance, such as bonuses and commissions.
Employee benefits: Non-wage rewards such as vacation days, flexible hours, laptop, phone, insurance and leave arrangements.
Cafeteria plan: A compensation system in which employees can partly choose their own package, e.g., buying or selling vacation days.
Job evaluation: Systematic assessment of the weight of a job, used to determine role-based pay.
Seniority pay: Automatic pay increases based on years in the company.
Idiosyncratic deal (i-deal): An individual agreement with an employee, e.g., flexible working times or extra pay, which should be explainable to the organization.
Outcome/input ratio: In equity theory: the ratio between what an employee gets from the job and what he or she puts into it.
Principal: In agency theory: the owner of the organization.
Agent: In agency theory: the management of the organization, acting on behalf of the principal.
Tinbergen norm: Normative suggestion that the top manager should not earn more than 5 times the lowest salary in the organization.
Relative performance: Performance judged in comparison to others rather than against an absolute standard; basis for prizes in tournament theory.
Career: The evolving sequence of a person's work-related experiences over time (Arthur et al., 1989).
Non-normative approach: View that there is no single correct career path; every career sequence can be meaningful (Van der Heijden, 2005).
Career anchors: A person's evolving career-related values and motives (Schein), e.g., autonomy, security, service, challenge, lifestyle.
Boundaryless career: Career that crosses boundaries between employers, occupations and industries (Arthur, 1994).
Protean career: Self-directed, values-driven career managed by the individual (Hall, 1976, 2002).
Kaleidoscope career: Career pattern that shifts over time as people rebalance authenticity, balance and challenge (Mainiero and Sullivan, 2005).
Customized career: Career pattern tailored to individual needs, such as reduced hours or breaks (Valcour et al., 2007).
Post-corporate career: Career outside traditional large corporations, e.g., self-employment or project work (Peiperl and Baruch, 1997).
Individual agency: The individual's own initiative, motivation and behaviour in shaping the career.
Subjective career success: A person's own evaluation of career success, e.g., meaningful work and valuable relationships.
Sustainable career: Sequence of career experiences with patterns of continuity over time, crossing social spaces, characterized by agency and providing meaning (Van der Heijden and De Vos, 2015).
Person-career fit: The dynamic fit between the person and his or her career that leads to being happy, healthy and productive.
Career shock: A disruptive, partly uncontrollable event that triggers deliberate thinking about one's career.
Employability: One's ability to realize job opportunities within and between employers over time (Fugate et al., 2021).
Functional age: Age based on a person's health, abilities and performance.
Psychosocial age: Subjective age: how old people feel and how others perceive them.
Organizational age: Seniority: years of service in an organization or job.
Talent management (TM): Activities and processes to identify key positions, develop a talent pool and use a differentiated HR architecture to fill key positions and ensure commitment (Collings and Mellahi, 2009).
War for talent: Competition between organizations for scarce, qualified and highly motivated workers.
Subject approach to talent: Talent seen as people: valuable, scarce, inimitable and hard-to-replace individuals.
Object approach to talent: Talent seen as characteristics (capabilities, competences) of people that are valuable for the organization.
Inclusive talent approach: View that every employee is a talent.
Exclusive talent approach: View that only a specific group (talent pool, high potentials, A-players) is talent.
Talent pool: An exclusive group of high potential and high performing employees who can fill key positions.
Key positions: Jobs and functions of high strategic value that differentially contribute to sustainable competitive advantage.
High potential: Employee expected to be able to grow into higher or critical positions in the future.
Succession planning: Systematically preparing employees to fill key positions when they become vacant.
Deliberate practice: Focused, effortful practice aimed at improving specific aspects of performance, with feedback.
Occupational expertise: Expertise in an occupation, consisting of domain-specific knowledge, skills, meta-cognitive skills, social recognition and growth and flexibility (Van der Heijden).
Meta-cognitive skills: Skills to reflect on and regulate one's own knowledge and learning.
Flexpertise: The ability to maintain expertise under changing circumstances and to master learning strategies to reach expertise in any domain (Van der Heijden, 1998).
Half-life of knowledge: The time it takes for half of a body of knowledge to become outdated.
Upskilling and reskilling: Deepening current skills (upskilling) and learning new skills for another role or domain (reskilling).
Employee participation: Employees having influence on decisions about their work and organization, directly or through representatives.
Direct participation: Employees themselves take part in decisions, e.g., in self-managing teams or team goal setting.
Indirect participation: Employees participate through representatives such as works councils and trade unions.
Works council: Elected employee representative body; mandatory in Dutch organizations with 50 or more employees, with information, advice and consent rights.
Collective labour agreement (CLA): Agreement on employment conditions negotiated between unions and employers or employers' organizations.
VUCA: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous; description of the current business environment.
Collective knowledge: Knowledge held and used by a team as a whole rather than by individuals.
Appreciative development: Development approach that focuses on strengthening what people and teams are good at.
Responsibility culture: Team culture in which everyone can speak freely, agreements are made on equal footing and members hold each other accountable.
Dynamic judgement: Forming a shared judgement by connecting facts, concepts, feelings, goals and means around a central question.
Connected labour market: A labour market in which institutions facilitate transitions and multiple careers across employers and sectors.
Warm transfer: Personally connecting a candidate to an employer instead of only passing on data.
HR ambiguities: Three sources of HR's lack of power: overlap with line management, difficulty defining HR success, and HR's dual position between management and workers.
Conformist innovator: HR professional who gains power by identifying with managerial values and criteria such as cost-benefit analysis (Legge, 1978).
Deviant innovator: HR professional who gains power by identifying with a different but not necessarily conflicting set of values and taking an independent professional stance (Legge, 1978).
HR problem solver: Ambitious and realistic HR role focused on delivering basic HR practices to employees and line managers.
Personal credibility: HR professional's trustworthiness and reputation through effective relationships, getting results and personal communication.
HR delivery: Delivering HR practices such as development, staffing, performance management and HR measurement well.
Strategic partner: Ulrich role (strategic, process): aligning HR strategy and practices with business strategy.
Change agent: Ulrich role (strategic, people): managing transformation and change.
Administrative expert: Ulrich role (operational, process): efficient HR processes and administration.
Employee champion: Ulrich role (operational, people): listening to employees and representing their interests.
Credible activist: HRCS competence at the core: being trusted and taking a position; credibility combined with a point of view.
HR enactment: The way line managers carry out HR practices in daily people management (Knies, 2012).
Degree of institutionalization: The extent to which a country's HRM is shaped by labour legislation and the influence of social partners such as unions and works councils.
Social partners: Employers' organizations and trade unions that negotiate on employment conditions and labour market policy.
Globalization: The transition from local or regional activities to global ones, including markets, products, services, information sharing and communication.
Internationalization: The phenomenon that mainly larger organizations expand their international activities.
Global Village: McLuhan's term for a world in which media and fast communication remove barriers of time and place.
Universalist paradigm: IHRM view that best HR practices can be applied successfully worldwide (mainly US).
Contextual paradigm: IHRM view that, despite some general principles, the context determines specific HR practices (mainly Europe).
Multinational company (MNC): A company with operations in several countries.
Expatriate: An employee sent by the organization to work in another country for a longer period.
Subsidiary: A company controlled by a parent company, often in another country.
Guanxi: Chinese system of personal networks and relationships based on trust and mutual obligations.
Wasta: Use of personal connections and influence to get things done in Arab countries.
Individualism: The degree to which individuals look out for themselves first and the organization and society next (Hofstede).
Masculinity: Cultural emphasis on assertiveness, competition and material success versus care and quality of life (Hofstede).
Power distance: The degree to which individuals accept an unequal distribution of power (Hofstede).
Uncertainty avoidance: The way people accept and deal with uncertain situations and their willingness to decide under uncertainty (Hofstede).
Long-term orientation: Cultural focus on perseverance and thrift versus tradition and social obligations; also 'Confucian dynamism'.
Indulgence: Cultural allowance of relatively free gratification of basic drives related to enjoying life, versus restraint.
Convergence: The trend that HR practices across countries become more similar.
Divergence: The trend that HR practices across countries remain or become more different.
Culture shock: Disorientation and frustration an expatriate experiences when adjusting to a new culture.
Outsourcing: Buying from a third party a part or service the company used to produce itself.
Offshoring: Shifting the location of production or services to another country.
Human capital: The knowledge, skills and abilities of employees.
Social capital: The social networks with relevant actors that employees can use.