Analysis of WalMart's Approach To Employee Management Using SHRM Boxell/Purcell Model

In the past it was noted by Snell, Youngy and Wright (1996:62) that organisations would purposely 'take human resource out of the strategic equation'. Today it is widely accepted that linking HR to strategy because of a shift in ideas concerning competition and firm advantage (Snell, Shauder and Wright (2001:3)). This shift was identified by Quin (1992:241) "with rare exceptions, the economic and producing power of the firm lies more in its intellectual and service capabilities than in its hard assets"

Wal-Mart are aware of this and so by examining Wal-Marts practices using the 'best fit' perceptive will give a better understanding as to why they have adopted their various practices by linking them to their key organisational strategy and will also help to explain their stance on unionisation.

The 'best fit' school (Boxell & Purcell (2000), covers a range of ideas, perspectives and models that are based on the practice of fitting HR Strategy into the organisations surroundings.

A protest in Utah against Wal-Mart

English: Walmart Home Office, the headquarters of ...

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This school has been broken into two groups identified by Baird and Meshoulam (1988). The 'external fit' deals with integration with the organisation competitive strategy and 'internal fit' which concentrates on the idea of using a combination of factors that should work together forming consistency within HRM.

Miles and Snow (1994) developed an 'external fit' framework which linked HR Strategies to competitive strategy. They defined three types of strategic behaviour and I would suggest Wal-Mart are 'analyzers' (A mix of prospectors and defenders). They concern themselves with innovation (Wal-Mart were one of the first organisation to use stock-based-ordering and have the largest organisation IT system in the retail world) and succeed through new market opportunities (Wal-Mart aim to enter a new country every financial year) like 'Prospectors' while still maintaining a core base (Wal-Mart brand), a trait of 'Defenders'. In terms...