What is human resource strategy? How are human resources strategies formulated and how can we explain the variance between what is espoused and what is actually implemented? What impact – if any – does human resource strategy have on the organization’s "bottom line," and how can this impact be explained? Is there one best HR strategy for all firms, or is the impact of HR strategy on performance contingent on some set of organizational, technological, or environmental factors?

Human Resource Strategy provides an overview of the academic and practitioner responses to these and other questions. Applying an integrative framework, the authors review twenty years worth of empirical and theoretical research in an attempt to reconcile often-conflicting conceptual models and competing empirical results. The authors present much of the relevant research in the context of the critical strategic decisions that executives must actually make with regard to human resource investments and deployments. As a result, often complex theoretical models and scientific findings are presented such that they are not only understandable but also highly relevant to non-research-oriented practitioners.

Using real-world illustrations to clarify complex concepts and theories at the same time it provides a strong theoretical underpinning to basic models of HR strategy, Human Resource Strategy offers researchers a thorough review of literature in the field and the practitioner a useable guide to its application.