A Study on the Emerging Dimensions of Strategic HRM in Different Subsectors of IT Industry

In today’s turbulent environment, the key to competitiveness lies in the ability to lead change and depends on how organizations build change leadership that enables them to capitalize and master change. This is where strategic thinking lies for management in general and for Human Resource (HR) in particular. Many authors have maintained that Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM) is directly linked to organizational performance. However, despite the increasing popularity of SHRM, there have been very few systematic evaluations of the claims that it is linked to performance, and doubts regarding its theoretical foundations remain. It should also be noted that HR does not distinguish HR professionals in high-performing firms from those in low-performing firms. The external knowledge (not internal knowledge) of HR is the key differentiator. Most HR professionals have a low level of external business reality — customers, competitions, stakeholders, industry structures, globalization and all the things that make business what it is. There are two starting points for thinking on this line. First, HR should aspire to be a business partner; and second, to be a business partner, it needs to create a line of sight to the outside. The Information Technology (IT) revolution has brought about a situation in which knowledge workers are replacing blue-collar workers. In such a scenario, an organization needs to invest more in human assets in order to gain a competitive advantage over other organizations. The purpose of this research is to make a comparative study of emerging dimensions in SHRM in the different subsectors of the Indian IT industry.