ABSTRACT
A fully strategic approach, however, is still limited by a number of things in practice. First, there is the linkage of people planning to corporate strategy. It does not help that the HR or personnel function still does not play an active role in the development of corporate strategy in many organizations. In the Price Waterhouse/Cranfield survey which obtained some 2800 questionnaire responses from HR specialists and chief executives in the UK, only in half the cases was the HR specialist involved in developing corporate strategy from the outset (Brewster and Smith, 1990). Interestingly, in finance and professional services, and in building and construction, this was down to a third, compared with the distributive trades where it was nearer 60 per cent. In Europe (for example, in France and Sweden), early involvement was generally higher. The problem exists on a similar scale in the USA, the home of HRM (Greer, Jackson and Fiorito, 1989).
