ABSTRACT
The ideals of engaged scholarship (Van de Ven 2007) encourage the collaboration between academics and practitioners with a view to creating practitioner-meaningful research underpinned by the rigor of scientific methodology. The quest for this collaboration transcends the vocation of academics and industry practitioners, moving into business disciplines. Empirically, there are many interdisciplinary studies among strategy, management, accounting, marketing, sales, finance, and operations management. Examples include Birts et al. (1997) who presented the story of a research exercise that encompassed the disciplines of finance, accountancy, marketing, organizational behavior, and strategy as well as the work of Karmarkar (1996) which brought together models, methods, and techniques from marketing and operations. However, interdisciplinary studies between Human Resources (HR)—the division of a company that focuses on activities relating to employees—and other major business disciplines are not as popular. Considering the opportunity that exists in this area of research, this chapter covers many different avenues. We start by looking at the impact of Strategic Human Resources Management (SHRM) as well as the concepts and practices that guide and align Human Resource Management (HRM). Next, we focus on the function in organizations designed to maximize employee performance of an employer’s strategic objectives philosophy. We also look towards enabling Production and Operations Management (POM), a process which combines and transforms various resources used in the production/operations subsystem of the organization in order to create Sustained Competitive Advantage (SCA)—a long-term competitive advantage for the business.
