Industrial&Labor Relations Review Volume57,Issue12003Article84
Strategy and Human Resource Management Peter Boxall∗John Purcell†
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Copyright c 2003by the authors.All rights rerved.No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system,or transmitted,in any form or by any means,elec-tronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,or otherwi,without the prior written permis-sion of the publisher,bepress,which has been given certain exclusive rights by the author.In-dustrial&Labor Relations Review is produced by The Berkeley Electronic Press(bepress). ll.edu/ilrreview
BOOK REVIEWS145
part-time workers equitably with respect to to-tal compensation.
Not only should public policy help to ensure that workers receive good jobs with adequate benefits, it s
hould also aid in the creation of more jobs for the future through improved fiscal, monetary, and trade policy. In the fiscal realm, Sicker suggests reducing or eliminating corporate subsidies and using the additional funds to subsidize work, for example by offering employers wage rebates in times of sluggish labor markets, or by rewarding them for job creation. With respect to monetary policy, Sicker dismiss the notion of the natural rate of un-employment as empirically unsupported, and argues that monetary policy-makers should put strong economic growth first, rather than low inflation. Last, he argues that trade policy has focud too much on unregulated trade and capital flows and that the incorporation of worker rights in trade agreements could sup-port the creation of good jobs. Without such active employment and economic policies, Sicker argues, there will not be enough good jobs for the coming generations of older work-ers.
The book is a very nsible, insightful, and provocative analysis of the trends that are likely to influence the creation of good jobs. It chal-lenges the notion that older workers will find meaningful employment to support them as they age, and it challenges policy-makers to address this apparent divergence between pre-diction and reality.
I n arguing his point, Sicker takes to task many sacred cows of economists, including the natural rate of unemployment and the trend toward unregulated trade and capital flows. Economists have increa一田百货
singly questioned the validity of the natural rate hypothesis, as the book illustrates in its references to the work by the late Robert Eisner, by James Galbraith, and by Paul Omerod. Moreover, Sicker touches upon the ongoing discussion among econo-mists over the benefits of unregulated trade and capital flows. This discussion has been partly fueled by examples of job loss outside low-skill occupations, which directly contradict the theoretical predictions of neoclassical economic theory. For instance, Sicker points to the De-partment of Labor’s certification of trade-re-lated job loss at GE and Hughes Aircraft. On this matter as on others, Sicker weighs the exist-ing evidence from various sources, including academic studies, think tanks, and the media, in a balanced manner.
Most of the trends the book highlights as responsible for the disappearance of good job opportunities have continued, and some have intensified, since 2000. As the economy and the stock market unraveled, firms began to lay off workers and to reduce benefits, especially pen-sion and health benefits, and the government restricted active fiscal policy, concentrating in-stead on eking new trade agreements to gen-erate demand for American-made products.
One subject regrettably missing from the book is the status of older workers’ health and of their retiree health care coverage. Many older workers—between 10% and 20% of them, according to various estimates—suffer from health problems rious enough to make con-tinued work impractical;
and yet many firms have cead offering retiree health care cover-age to their workers. Sicker’s omission of this subject is especially surprising since it ems a strong example of the declining commitment of employers to their employees that he dis-cuss at some length.
That shortcoming aside, the book is an in-sightful contribution to the literature on the social conquences of an aging society. I t provides cogent reasons to doubt rosy predic-tions of abundant job opportunities for older workers in the years ahead, and challenges read-ers to consider realistic policy options to create meaningful job opportunities for the growing share of the population that is elderly or near elderly.
Christian E. Weller Economist
Economic Policy Institute
Human Resources,
Management, and Personnel
Strategy and Human Resource Management. By Peter Boxall and John Purcell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. 299 pp. ISBN 0-333-77820-0, $29.95 (paper).
论文可行性分析
The increasing importance of people to or-ganizational success corresponds with the ri of Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) as a field of study worldwide. Rearch on SHRM issues has grown exponentially over the past ten years. Originating as it has, how-ever, across diver academic disciplines (for example, psychology, sociology, economics) and geographic regions (although primarily Europe and the United States), this literature has been
146INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS REVIEW
in need of integration and synthesis. Boxall and Purcell’s Strategy and Human Resource Manage-ment provides a thorough review of this eclectic literature in a framework that makes it easy for the reader to grasp the field’s evolution and current state of thinking. I e this outstanding book as distinguishing itlf from other similar efforts in three important ways.
First, it fairly considers both U.S. and Euro-pean perspectives on SHRM, which differ in important ways. Most rearchers in the United States adopt an implicitly managerialist ap-proach, focusing on how HR can benefit share-holders, while rearchers in Europe empha-size the importance of balancing the interests of multiple stakeholders such as employees, unions, governments, and society. The Euro-pean view tends to emphasize the importance of context; the U.S. view, “best pra
ctice.” Boxall and Purcell do an outstanding job of accurately reprenting the different viewpoints, par-ticularly in how they affect rearch and prac-tice. When presd, it ems clear that they, not surprisingly, adhere to a more European view, but their prentation is both fair and balanced. Chapter 1 makes a strong ca for how HRM can affect business performance, and a recurring theme throughout the book is that properly managed human resources will benefit share-holders. The authors do not create an artificial either/or distinction, but simply focus readers on the fact that incread business performance is only one positive outcome from the effective management of people.
Second, whereas often the tendency in cover-ing SHRM is to emphasize the current state of the art, focusing only on the most recent devel-opments in rearch and thinking, Boxall and Purcell’s treatment of the field dwells more on its evolution. Consistent with the European emphasis on understanding “context,” the authors invariably prent topics from the stand-point of how thinking and practice have devel-oped over time, often exploring the critical factors driving that evolution, such as techno-logical change, economic cycles, and govern-ment intervention. One clear value of this approach is the help it offers in answering a question the authors often po: is the current state completely unique and never en before, or simply the latest return of some pha in a recurring cy
cle? This brings the concepts of both dynamism and predictability to our under-standing of how the whole SHRM knowledge ba has evolved. In particular, Chapters 5–8 thoroughly cover the evolution and context of rearch and practice with regard to the con-cepts of work systems, models of employment, managing individual performance and devel-opment, and employee voice.
Third, satisfying the promi implied by the book’s title, the authors do a tremendous job of discussing the basic concepts of strategy on their own merits. Too many prentations of SHRM begin and end with HRM, exploring strategy in shallow and superficial ways, and probably only insofar as the concepts directly link to HRM. I believe that it is impossible to study SHRM without a relatively deep knowl-edge of strategy, and the authors of this book demonstrate such knowledge. Chapter 2 dis-cuss the strategic decision-making process, Chapter 4 prents a deep analysis of the re-source-bad view of the firm, Chapter 9 ex-plores the dynamics of industry-bad competi-tion, and Chapter 10 does the best job I have en of examining the distinct issues that ari from distinguishing between corporate-level and business-level strategy. I n each ca, the au-thors accurately reprent strategic concepts bad in the strategy literature. Only after prenting the concepts do they examine the implications for HRM. Clearly, this is a book about strategy and HRM, not simply about stra-tegic HRM.
我很好英语
I find little to fault in Boxall and Purcell’s book. It accurately and thoroughly reviews the evolution and context of both rearch and practice in the area of SHRM, and integrates and synthesizes the burgeoning literature on the subject. For tho interested in understand-ing the current state of the field, this book is a must read.
游记题目Patrick M. Wright Professor of Human Resource Studies小米解锁
New York State School of
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Industrial and Labor Relations
江服Cornell University
International and
精忠报国故事Comparative Industrial Relations
Transforming Gender and Development in East Asia.Edited by Esther Ngan-ling Chow. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. 263 pp. I SBN 0-415-92492-8, $22.95 (pa-per).
The gender-blindness and androcentrism of mainstream scholarship on East Asian develop-ment is particularly shocking when women are
