Back to the Future: Implications for the Field of HRM of the Multistakeholder Perspective Proposed 30 Years Ago

TLDR

The Beer et al. model remains a valuable guide for the next 30 years of HRM. The authors examine how HRM has evolved over three decades and critique the view that its sole purpose is to improve shareholder returns. They conduct a normative review grounded in the Beer et al. model to assess this assumption.

Abstract

Thirty years on from the seminal works on human resource management ( HRM ) by Beer et al., we examine how the subject has developed. We offer a normative review, based on that model and critique the assumption that the business of HRM is solely to improve returns to owners and shareholders. We identify the importance of a wider view of stakeholders to practitioners and how academic studies on the periphery of HRM are beginning to adopt such a view. We argue that the HRM studies so far have given us much valuable learning but that the subject has now reached a point where we need to take a wider, more contextual, more multilayered approach founded on the long‐term needs of all relevant stakeholders. The original Beer et al. model remains a valuable guide to the next 30 years of HRM . © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.