Form 15 (3/31/86) NSF PROJECT IST-850 5411 EXPERIMENTS ON THE COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF INFORMATION SEEKING AND INFORMATION RETRIEVING USER QUESTIONS FOR ONLINE SEARCHES QUESTION NUMBER: 007 A1. BRIEF TITLE: Barriers to strategic human resource management A2. QUESTION STATEMENT: Employee commitment to an organization develops as a result of the interaction between the organization's treatment of employees (i.e. skills, performance, company policies regarding benefits, career opportunites), and the employees' contribution to the company (i.e. skills, performance, abilities). Generally, the belief is that the greater the employees' commitment to the organization, the greater their motivation to perform the task and projects required by the organization. To maximize employee commitment, and thereby maximize organizational performance, senior managers can no longer assume a short-term planning horizon toward employee issues. That is, they must no longer wait until a crisis arises to address issues regarding the organization's treatment of employees. Instead, senior managers must assume a long-term, strategic, planning perspective that enables them to not only attain business objectives but also enables them to enhance the development of employees in the organization. At the present time, the majority of U.S. corporations react to human resource issues only when they reach crisis levels. Very few companies plan proactively to meet employee needs, and even fewer consider the need to enhance employee development along with attaining business objectives. This research examines the barriers to managing employees and planning for future human resource issues in a long-term, strategic manner. Specifically, this research addresses the question: What factors impede the strategic management of human resources in today's organizations? Possible determinants include: *Status and role of the Human Resource Function in general, and the senior Human Resource executive in particular. Role may be defined as the behaviors expected of the occupant (s) of the Human Resource function; this definition includes the expectations of Human Resource's constituencies (senior management, employees) regarding which behaviors are appropriate, and the enactment or conduct of the Human Resource executive. STATUS may be defined as the position in the social system of the organization accorded the Human Resource staff and senior Human Resource executive, and includes the characteristics of esteem, power respect. Š*Organizational Norms regarding proper modes of interaction between managers and employees. NORMS may be defined as the standards against which behavior is evaluated; a shared view of desirable behavior. *Company Characteristics including: its age, employee number, long-term financial performance, labor requirements (labor intensity and skill mix), degree of decentralization, organization structure and design. QUESTION 007 - page 2 TYPE OF SEARCH REQUESTED B. A precise or a broad search: Broad C. Research application: Graduate study-management D. Retrieve articles in English only or any language: Any language E. Years to be searched: No limits F. DIALOG databases suggested: