Research On Enterprise’s Human Resource Management Role Development

The increasingly complex and competitive environment has changed the organizational management mode, and constantly has propelled the transformation of enterprise’s human resource management functions. With the evolution of HRM functions, HRM roles development has undergone several stages:firstly transferred from the administrative roles to the service-delivery roles, and then played the strategic partnership roles. Although the mainstream theories emphasize the contribution of the strategic roles of HRM to organizational performance, but HRM still has been regarded as worthless. Therefore, clarifying the differences between theories and reality is the fundmental for understanding such questions as "where does HRM come from?"," where does HRM go?", and "how to go to the future?"Most HRM roles are classified based on the roles task feature in research. For example, Ulrich has classified HRM roles into four groups:strategic partners, change agents, employee champion and administration experts. Although this paradigm matches the structural role theory, it can’t reflect the overall structure of HRM roles, and then results in disputes. At present, cross-boundaries HRM practices have emerged in large numbers of enterpriese, which is much more important for HR managers to balance the different demands coming from stakeholders inside and outside enterprise. It is valuable to exploring the new HRM functional roles from the perspective of beyond organizational boundaries.Many researchers have explored the HRM roles transformation mechanism with dynamic analysis methods, however, most researches still focus on how to change HR managers’ behavioural pattern to meet up with roles expectation. And the same time, there are no adequate systematic theories which explain the question:Why HRM functions usually develop from administrative roles to strategic roles in most western countries? From theories constructing viewpoint, roles’ formation, evolution, transformation and position are the relative themes in strategic HRM field. Among them, roles development’s reasons and process are the basic topics in these themes.The purpose of this research as following:(1) making a reflection on the views in HRM roles research in western mainstream theories.(2)elaborating the reasons of HRM roles development from across organizational boundaries.(3)constructing the systematic theories of HRM roles development research in context of China.(4)extending research scopes in strategic human resource management field.This research utilizes multiple methods including literature analysis, deduction and questionaire. With literature review, this research designes the analysis path and constructs the P-R-T model for analyzing the structural content of HRM roles. By means of logic deduction and induction, this research makes an investigation about the HRM roles configuration. After that, this research explores the characteristics, structure of HRM boundary-spanning roles arising from inter-organizaitonal HRM practices. Lastly, this research constructs an empirical framework for explaining HRM roles development mechanism and tests the hypothesis with statistical analysis. Finally, this research provides suggestions for improving the level of HRM roles development of Chinese organizations.The conclusions as following:Firstly, roles classifications are the foundation for roles development research. Current studies overemphasize the difference among the roles task and behaviorial feature, but not to explain the overall feature of HRM roles structure. This paradigm results in confusion in understanding roles categories. The confusion of roles nomination and categories could be avoided on basis of P-R-T model. It is essential for HRM roles classification from the complete roles structure viewpoint.Secondly, organizations have changed from closed system to open system in nowadays. Inter-organization HRM business emerges and propells the emergence of HRM new roles——boundary spanner. Based on across organizational boundaries viewpoint, this research constructs five new rols of HRM function, such as: ambassador、relationship-facilitor、knowledge-champion、task-coordinatior and gatekeeper. Such roles are different from Ulrich’role classfication.But both constitute the entire HRM roles system.Thirdly, HRM roles development is propelled by multiply factors inside and outside organization, which can’t separate from environment. This research makes an investigation about the relationship of HRM roles development with organizational strategies, structure, HR departmental social capital, inter-organizational relationship on basis of co-evolution framework, and finds that:open-innovative strategy, the level of organizational mechanism have the positive influences on HRM roles development. While integrated inter-organizational relationship is the moderate variable, HR departmental structural social capital is the mediator variable in the relationship of HRM roles development (dependent variable) with independent variables in the context of China.