Developing a HRM Model - The Four Faces of HRM 
                                                                    
                                           Autoria: Betânia Tanure, Paul Evans, Vera L. Cançado 
                                                                    
                   Abstract 
                    
                   This essay endeavours to discuss the literature about The Three Faces of Human Resource 
                   Management (HRM) model, to compare it to Brazilian literature and researches and to present 
                   the model, The Four Faces of HRM. First, we discuss the model that has been developed from 
                   the reality of North American and European companies – the Three Faces of HRM - the 
                   building, the partner change and the navigator. Each of the faces and its underlying roles 
                   reflects a different set of assumptions about the link between HRM and organizational 
                   performance. Each face corresponds to a different theoretical perspective and has particular 
                   implications for HRM. Then, we argue that the data and the analyses of Brazilian reality 
                   revealed a prior face to the builder, called the executor. In Brazilian development, some 
                   historical and economic characteristics still permeate the management rationality. They 
                   include centralized power, personal relationships and flexibility, great adherence to the 
                   “modern” and imported management techniques, without appropriate adaptation to local 
                   reality. In addition, HRM development in Brazil is almost half a century later than in other 
                   developed countries. Those characteristic reflect on HRM. Research on HRM in Brazilian 
                   companies indicates that HR is still operational, even though it utilizes modern and 
                   sophisticated practices. Analyzing such considerations, we conclude that the evidence justifies 
                   the face of the executor, preceding the builder face on the Three Faces of the HRM model. 
                   However, we do not mean that this first face – the executor – should be characteristic only of 
                   companies in Brazil or in developing countries. We are just saying that the data revealed this 
                   face, characterizes the Four Faces of HRM model.  
                         
                       1  INTRODUCTION 
                        
                       To meet the demands of global organizations, HR needs to perform new roles, more 
                   complex and even more paradoxal. There are several models of HR´s new setting of actions 
                   (Burke & Cooper, 2005; Ulrich, 1997; Weiss, 1999, among other). Within these models, we 
                   can highlight the contribution of Evans, Pucik and Barsoux (2002). From research undertaken 
                   in Europe and the United States, they concluded that the relationship between Human 
                   Resources Management (HRM) and organizational performance can be seen through three 
                   different roles or faces: the builder, that cements HR´s foundations in a consistent form; the 
                   changing partner, that searches for the realignment of companies strategies to the external 
                   environment; and the navigator, which helps the organization to face the contradictions and 
                   paradoxes of the globalized companies. 
                       The first face is building HRM or getting the basics of human resource management into 
                   place and ensuring its internal coherence. While this role is often the responsibility of 
                   specialized personnel or an HR department, it may be assumed by line management. In both 
                   cases, the strategy of the firm is taken for granted, and the builder may over time become a 
                   custodian of HRM. 
                       The second face or stage is realigning HRM so as to meet the needs of the changing 
                   external environment. Shifts in the marketplace or the structure of competition or the advent 
                   of new technologies call for a strategic realignment within the firm. Attention is focused on 
                   reconfiguring and changing the approach to HRM, so as to implement new strategies 
                   effectively. Typically this involves a partnership between line management and the 
                   professionals within HR. We call this role the change partner. 
                       The third face may be described as steering by HRM and it is called the navigator.  Here 
                   strategic and HR factors cannot be separated. Both are interlinked. The focus is on 
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        developing the capabilities of the organization and its people to thrive in a world of 
        continuous change, which in fact means constructively managing the tensions between 
        opposing forces such as short-term operating results and long-term growth, global integration 
        and local responsiveness, the need for change and the continuity required by execution. 
        Indeed these contradictions are at the heart of what is called the transnational firm.  
         However, the experience of Tanure, Evans and Pucik (2007) and the results of some 
        research undertaken in Brazil (Costa, 2000; Fischer & Albuquerque, 2001; Hanashiro, Texeira 
        & Zebinato, 2001; Sarsur, 1997) showed that it is necessary to adapt this model to Brazilian 
        reality. This is not to say that it should be adapted just for Brazil or developing countries, 
        although data from HR in South America (Elvira & Davila, 2005) suggested that it is similar 
        in other Latin America developing countries. We just discovered that the data from Brazilian 
        companies suggest the need to add the fourth face to the model.  
         In Brazilian development, some historical and economic characteristics still permeate the 
        rationality of organizational management, such as centralized power, personal relationships 
        and flexibility (DaMatta, 1983; Faoro, 1979; Freyre, 1981; Holanda, 1989; Ribeiro, 1995; 
        Tanure, 2005). Combined with these characteristics, we observe great adherence to the 
        “modern” management techniques that come from developed countries, without adapting 
        appropriately to local reality (Caldas & Wood, 1999). Some research results indicated that HR 
        is not seen as a strategic partner. However, HR has, in fact, an operational role and its 
        contribution to the organization’s performance is not clearly perceived (Fischer & 
        Albuquerque, 2001; Hanashiro, Texeira & Zebinato, 2001; Sarsur, 1997; Tanure, Evans & 
        Pucik, 2007, among others). Other research showed that line managers do not believe that HR 
        is able to contribute to their task of team management (Cançado et al., 2005; Coda et al., 
        2005). 
         Tanure, Evans and Pucik (2002) proposed this fourth face called the executor, preceding 
        the builder face. In many companies, HR just carries out administrative activities and 
        recruiting and selecting people functions. It only fulfills a bureaucratic role. These practices 
        are easy to identify in small and medium companies, but they also appear in some large 
        companies. In these large companies, the HR practices and policies can be sophisticated and 
        even considered to be benchmarking. However, there is a lack of coherence between them and 
        organizational strategies. This aspect is the key point to understand in the addition of the 
        executor’s face in the model. 
         Taking as a reference The Three Faces of HRM (Evans, Pucik & Barsoux, 2002), this 
        essay discuss the literature about the model, to compare it to Brazilian literature and 
        researches and to present the model The Four Faces of HRM.   
          
         2 THE THREE FACES OF THE HRM MODEL 
          
         Despite the globalization of corporations, there is a variety in human resource practices 
        across countries and industries (Brewster & Hegewisch, 1994; Sparrow & Hiltrop, 1994). 
        Culture and context make the issue of how HRM contributes to organizational performance 
        even more complex. In addition to the diversity, there is considerable flux over time in what is 
        regarded as successful HR practice (Bartlett & Yoshihara, 1988; Porter, Takeuchi & 
        Sakakibara, 2000). Research and the experiences of Evans, Pucik and Barsoux (2002) over 
        three decades with multinational firms lead to the conclusion that one reason for the 
        controversy and confusion is that we are looking at different aspects. There are three different 
        faces to the contribution that HRM can make to organizational performance. They are the 
        builder, the change partner and the navigator. 
         These faces can be thought of as stages, because development in most organizations goes 
        from the simple to the complex. Each of these faces or phases of HRM and its underlying 
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        roles reflects a different set of assumptions about the link between HRM and organizational 
        performance. Each face corresponds to a different theoretical perspective that has particular 
        implications for HRM. 
         In the first face - Building HRM – the focus is on foundations. Every organization must 
        cope with a number of basic and vitally important human resource tasks, those of attracting, 
        motivating, and retaining people. Most texts on personnel and HRM are organized around 
        frameworks for these basic activities. Examples of such texts are Torrington and Hall (1995), 
        Milkovich and Boudreau (1997), Jackson and Schuler (1999), Noe, Hollenbeck et al. (1999). 
        This framework is the basis in this paper for discussion of the functional foundations of HRM.  
         The key activities of HR are recruitment and selection, development and training 
        (including career management), and performance management (including commitment 
        management and rewards). The quality of such foundations is related to the consistency of the 
        elements, the way in which they fit together. The traditional activity-based view of HRM 
        misses what is, perhaps, the most important issue at the building stage – namely that the 
        whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Objective-setting, appraisal, and reward practices 
        may contribute separately to performance. However, they contribute much more when they 
        are considered to be parts of an overall performance management system.  
         Consistency is important for performance for many reasons. For example, if a firm 
        invests a great deal of money in skill development, it should pay attention to retention through 
        feedback practices, above-average compensation, and careful attention to career management. 
        Policies of long-term employment do not make sense unless people have valuable skills that 
        are worth retaining. Consistency is also psychologically important – as the performance, 
        motivation, and retention of staff suffers when they are subjected to policies that they perceive 
        to be inconsistent or when they feel that they have been treated unfairly or not as well as 
        others. Some scholars argue that consistency is one of the only nostrums in the domain of 
        HRM (Bacon, 1999; Baron & Kreps, 1999; Mabey, Skinner & Clark, 1998). If practices and 
        policies are constantly changing, productive energy will drain away and lead to dysfunctional 
        frustration. 
         Underlying the idea of consistency is the concept of fit, which is clearly the most 
        important theoretical perspective underlying HRM. The concept of fit first appeared in the 
        1960s. It was associated with developments in systems theory and was also a reaction against 
        previous, “one-best-way” thinking about management (Evans & Doz, 1992).The basic idea of 
        systems theory is that nothing is right unless it fits with the other elements of a system. Other 
        concepts that are associated with fit theory are matching, coherence or consistency, 
        complementarity, and contingency. Since then, the approaches to fit evolved from the human 
        relations movement and focused on the internal fit between the elements of what constitutes 
        an organization (Burns & Stalker, 1961; Leavit, 1965). The Socio-Technical systems theory 
        emphasized how changes in technology implied a need for changes in work system 
        management, including HR (see Trist & Bamforth, 1951; Thorsud, 1976; see also the British 
        studies of Woodward, 1965; and the empirical work by the Aston School in Birmingham, 
        England). The growing HRM movement adopted this perspective in the applied psychology 
        focus on person-job fit and in the Harvard general management model. In the latter, the four 
        HRM policy areas of work systems, human resource flows, reward systems, and employee 
        influence must combine to create the optimum commitment, congruence, competence, and 
        cost effectiveness (Beer, Spector et al., 1984; Hanna, 1988; and Nadler and Tushman (1988).  
         This means that practices have to be tailored to specific circumstances. In fact, the 
        consistency between external strategy and internal HRM may be what is important. As 
        contingency theory would predict, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that there are 
        different possible configurations of HRM, organization, and strategic orientation. In 
        summary, we conclude that there is evidence to suggest that firms that pay careful attention to 
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        the selection of people and their skill development, worry about means of retaining people 
        who possess valuable skills, and try to find an appropriate way to link performance to 
        individual rewards will indeed yield superior financial results – if their practices are internally 
        consistent and consistent with their strategies. This, in our experience, seems so plausible and 
        supported by the data that one can accept it as a hypothesis that applies universally, regardless 
        of context. Indeed, this is what we mean by “foundations.” However, it is important to 
        emphasize that it is not the specific practices that are important as these do very much depend 
        upon context. 
         The need in our dynamic and competitive business environment for proactive human 
        resource management moves us on to the second face, Realigning HRM. The focus of this 
        second face is managing change, in order to achieve new strategic goals and to implement 
        strategy by facilitating change, including changes that necessary in the deep structure of HRM 
        foundations. The fit remains the theoretical framework behind the second face of HRM. 
        However, achieving this is more complicated since the need for internal consistency must be 
        complemented by a new emphasis on adapting to the demands of the external environment. 
        This is external fit, often called strategic HRM (Lengnick-Hall & Lengnick-Hall, 1988; 
        Meshoulam & Baird, 1987). Sometimes internal fit or consistency is called “horizontal fit” 
        whereas external fit is known as “vertical fit” (Wright & McMahon, 1992). These two aspects 
        of fit, internal and external, were brought together in theories of HRM in the late 80s, 
        although they remain largely separate (Lengnick-hall and Lengnick-hall, 1988 Meshoulam 
        & Baird, 1987). 
         The fit theory is focused on the external interface between an organization and its 
        environment, particularly the competitive environment (Chander, 1962); in the structural 
        contingency theory (Donaldson, 1996; Galbraith & Nathanson, 1979; Lawrence & Lorsh, 
        1967); or in Porter´s 7-S model, which emphasizes that effectiveness is the fit between the 
        hard Ss of strategy, structure, and systems, and the soft S of staff, Style, skills, and 
        superordinate values. Additionally, the notions of fit and coherence are at the heat of one of 
        the most influential models of managing change, known as the punctuated equilibrium 
        model. Simply put, organizations go through cycles of evolution where tight coherence 
        develops - and revolution where external changes lead to radical reconfiguration of fit 
        (Tushman, Newman & Romanelli, 1986). This underlies the theories of transformational 
        change and has been used to analyze how technological innovation leads to strategic, 
        structural, and organizational revolutions in industries (Tushman & O’Reilly, 1996).  
         While its advocates would regard fit as common sense, there are severe methodological 
        problems with its conceptualization and measurement (Wright & Snell, 1998). The nature of 
        the theory is such that, with an infinite number of angles of fit, it is doubtful that it could 
        ever be proven scientifically, although there is credible evidence that supports certain 
        propositions (Donaldson, 1996). Contextualism argues that contingencies are so complex 
        that they should be the objects of study and that the content of HRM can only be understood 
        in the external context of the firm, its internal context, its business strategy context, and the 
        HRM Context (Hendry and Pettigrew, 1990; Sorge, 1991; Sparrow, Schuler & Jackson, 
        1994; and Jackson & Schuler, 1995). 
          When looking at "Strategic" Human Resource Management, we should ask, “How does 
        one test the hypothesis that a tight link between HRM and strategy leads to better 
        performance?” 
         This leads to a broader and more complex concept of fit, for which there are many 
        different frameworks. Baron and Kreps (1999) emphasize that HRM must strive to achieve 
        internal coherence on the one hand, as discussed in the previous section, and more externally 
        oriented coherence on the other hand, with five different factors in mind. They are the 
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