HR Leadership

Citation

Holbeche, L. (2011), "HR Leadership", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 19 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2011.04419bae.001

HR Leadership

Article Type: Suggested reading From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 19, Issue 2

Linda HolbecheButterworth-HeinemannOxford, 2010ISBN 978-0-7506-8173-5£24.99241 pp.

This is the first book I have read which comes with a caution! This is not because of the content which is praiseworthy, but because of the potential for litigious readers to inflict harm on themselves, others and organizations by not carefully considering the varied strategies and advice recommended within its pages.

On the inside cover, the publishers, Butterworth-Heinemann state: “Notice: no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any methods, products, instruments or ideas contained in the material herein. Because this is an HR book, the clause for medical science is not needed.”

A number of years ago in the US Stella Liebeck spilled coffee on herself in a MacDonald’s restaurant and was awarded $2.9 million. To mark this absurd legal decision and to draw attention to other cases where people have been rewarded for what most other people would regard as stupid or clumsy behavior, the Stella Awards were inaugurated to champion more sane court judgments. It is to be hoped that this never happens as a result of this or any other HR book although it would be interesting and probably entertaining to hear the case for the prosecution!

The HR profession continues to question its own role and in some ways is almost neurotic in its self-examination and the flagellation that it inflicts on itself. Other areas, such as marketing, sales, operations, and finance do not have such crises of confidence. Nor should HR – this book by Holbeche is a welcome contribution charting a course of action that encourages HR to lead confidently and thereby give belief and trust to those within the profession and those who depend on their leadership, guidance and support.

Human resources is considered by many people to be a service function which supports the rest of the organization. This may be partly true but it does not fully represent the important range of functions for which HR has responsibility. If we consider Ulrich’s main areas of HR organization: strategic partner; administrative expert; employee champion; and, change agent, we can see that HR people are not just responsive individuals but important people in their own right who operate at a strategic level and influence people.

The book consists of ten chapters and Holbeche takes the reader through a wide range of issues which affect HR and how good leadership is needed to raise the standing of the profession. The first chapter contextualises HR leadership within the business environment and the current economic travails which engulf many western countries. It argues that these pressures provide a good opportunity for HR to show its mettle and it concludes with a chapter on where the future of HR might be heading.

There is also a chapter on building healthy and ethical organizations areas which HR would appear only to have given lip-service in recent years. Holbeche also draws attention to huge excesses in executive compensation and large bonuses even when the performance of the organization has under-performed. That this issue can be addressed and solved by individual HR leaders or even the profession as a whole is unlikely, but greater attention and an ethical compensation framework are strongly needed.

Importantly, Holbeche does not equate HR leadership only with rank or hierarchical position although she uses case studies from a range of prominent HR leaders. Instead, she considers HR leadership to be a state of mind that combines a strategic approach with a pragmatic orientation. This perspective is important because leadership can be demonstrated at all levels of an organization and most if not all employees need to be given responsibility for their operations. In particular, HR personnel should demonstrate their expertise and provide guidance and information to line managers without taking over from them.

The task of advising on leadership is not an easy one nor one where there is any clear consensus about what to do. Indeed, Holbeche quotes Augier and Teece who state that, “as a scientific concept. Leadership is a mess.” She also states, “leadership will be understood as the collective capacity of all members of an organization to accomplish such critical tasks as setting direction, creating alignment and gaining commitment. Leadership is variously described as ‘shared’. ‘we’, or ‘distributed’.” She also draws upon the arguments of Hamel and Breen who argue that, “management as currently practiced is a drag on success,” and describes the recommendation arising from the 2009 Half Moon Bay conference to chart the future of management.

There is no fully accepted agreement about what constitutes good leadership and good management, so it is a little unrealistic to assume that Holbeche can provide all the answers for HR. However, the book contains a great amount of good advice and practice that can be intelligently adopted and applied with good effect, and readers should not forget that ultimately they are responsible for their own actions and not contenders for a Stella Award for unthinking HR behavior!

Reviewed by John P. Wilson, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK.

This review was originally published in Industrial and Commercial Training, Vol. 42 No. 6, 2010.