Flexibility, innovation and the elusive HR mandate

There is much thinking and debate going on in the HR profession today as to what would constitute the true mandate of HR in business.

There are a number of schools of thought on this subject and consensus on the matter seems to be increasingly elusive.

The attention given to Talent Management recently seems to suggest that it is viewed as very important to the contribution of HR to the success of business today.

The HR Business Partner concept has also received a lot of attention as the practical manifestation of the so-called business-oriented HR mandate. HR as business partner is a derivative of the transformation of the HR function that demonstrates an "introspective" response of the profession to become more attuned to the needs of the business.

Returning to context to discover some guiding principles in the matter, in the information age the global economy is still capitalist of nature, and in the capitalist tradition businesses compete with each other to ensure that they get their fair share of the market for the ultimate purpose of profit making. Castells* indicates that the cross-over to capitalism by the majority of economies is/was done consciously and became a specific objective for most economies in the world as the global economy became well, global.

For three decades after World War 2, most market economies enjoyed unprecedented economic growth, prosperity and social stability, but during the period 1970 to 1979 saw inflation out of control, oil prices rocketing, and governments taking structural economic actions and reforms that are still underway, such as deepening of the capitalistic logic of profit seeking in the capital-labour relationship; enhancement of the productivity of both labour and capital; globalisation of production, circulation (of goods and services), and markets; marshaling (active) government support for productivity gains and competitiveness of national economies.*

Partly as result, the two commanding forces of the information age are competitiveness (the capacity of an economic entity to operate efficiently and productively in relation to other similar economic entities) and productivity (a measure of efficiency - the ability to perform well or achieve results without wasted energy, resources, time or money).

Competitiveness stems from flexibility or agility (the inherent capacity of an organisation's system of means to respond to rapid change) and productivity stem from innovation (the organisational capacity to continuously harness the process whereby knowledge is created, shared and applied).

Looking at the above-mentioned analysis, one could almost say that the derivative HR mandate becomes logically clear - that is, to ensure the organisation's competitiveness and productivity. Considering their respective drivers, the HR mandate is therefore extended to design and implement programs to enhance the organisational capacity to ensure that its system of means becomes and remains flexible and agile in the first instance, and in the second instance, to design and implement programs to support the organisational capacity to harness the knowledge conversion process or to continuously innovate.

One's immediate reaction is to wonder whether this HR mandate has changed at all over the past 100 years? It is a fair question. Perhaps we have deliberately strayed from this as our only true mandate - even if it did not change over the past century, perhaps we have tried (exactly because we are more [supposedly] people-focused) to insert more "humanity" in the relationship between capital and labour. If so, we should be congratulated.

So the question (also not new) remains - can we serve the capitalist ideal (the relentless pursuit of profit and personal satisfaction) and serve humanity at the same time - as an integrated HR mandate? And how? Where does the obvious conflicting ideals converge from a HR mandate perspective?

*Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture Vol. 1-3