DDBA 8580 Week 2 HR Role Analysis Example

Who Benefits From What HR Does in a Week? A Role Analysis Sorting Sixteen Recurring Activities by Primary Beneficiary and by Whether HR Decides or Only Recommends, and What the Distribution Does to the Strategic Partner Claim

Student Name

Walden University

DDBA 8580: The New HR: The Savvy Strategic Partner

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Who Benefits From What HR Does in a Week? A Role Analysis Sorting Sixteen Recurring Activities by Primary Beneficiary and by Whether HR Decides or Only Recommends, and What the Distribution Does to the Strategic Partner Claim

The Sorting Rule

This analysis sorts the recurring work of the HR function at a composite food distribution company in Minnesota with about 3,100 employees, eleven warehouses and a fleet of 600 trucks. An activity counts as recurring if it occurs at least quarterly. Each is assigned one primary beneficiary, the party whose interests the activity most directly serves: owners and executives, line managers, employees or regulators. A second column records HR's authority: whether HR decides the matter or only recommends it to someone else who decides. The rule is applied without regard to whether an activity sounds strategic.

The Table

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Table 1

Recurring HR Activities by Beneficiary and Authority

What the Distribution Shows

Of sixteen activities, five primarily benefit owners and executives, four line managers, four employees and two regulators, while leave administration serves employees and regulators equally. HR decides nine activities and recommends seven. Every activity whose primary beneficiary is owners and executives is one where HR only recommends.

That pattern is the analysis's central finding. The activities most often described as strategic, workforce planning, succession, compensation strategy and labor relations, are those where HR's authority is advisory. Where HR decides, it decides administrative and service matters.

The Literature

Ulrich (1997) split HR's work into strategy partnering, administration, employee advocacy and change leadership, and the table's beneficiaries map onto them roughly: executive-facing work onto the strategic partner role, manager-facing work partly onto the administrative and change roles and employee-facing work onto the champion role. Ulrich's model treats the partner role as one HR earns by delivering results, not one defined by formal decision rights.

Francis and Keegan (2006) argued that the partner model encouraged HR to orient toward executives at the expense of employees. The table complicates that critique here: nearly a third of the function's recurring work still primarily benefits employees. What changed, if anything, is where status lies, not where the work lies.

Boudreau and Ramstad (2005) argued that HR should become a decision science, improving the quality of talent decisions made throughout the organization, including those made by line leaders. On their view, HR's influence lies in shaping decisions others make, so advisory authority need not mean low strategic value. The table cannot measure that influence; it only records who decides.

What This Does to the Partner Claim

The claim that HR is a strategic partner survives only in Boudreau and Ramstad's sense: as an adviser whose recommendations shape executive decisions. It does not survive as a claim to strategic authority. An honest partner claim would name the recommendations executives adopted and what difference they made.

An Objection

A defender of the partner model might say the table undercounts strategic work because it records only recurring activities, while HR's strategic contributions come in projects, such as a merger integration or a new site opening. That objection has force. But projects of that kind also run on recommendations: in the company's 2025 warehouse opening, HR proposed staffing levels and wage rates, and operations and finance set both. Adding projects to the table would add rows to the advisory column, not to the decision column. The pattern would hold, and the partner claim would still rest on the quality of advice rather than on authority.

A Test for the Claim

Count, over a year, how many HR recommendations on the advisory list executives adopted unchanged.

Limits

Beneficiary assignments involve judgment, and some activities serve several parties. The table records formal authority, not informal influence.

References

Boudreau, J. W., & Ramstad, P. M. (2005). Talentship, talent segmentation, and sustainability: A new HR decision science paradigm for a new strategy definition. Human Resource Management, 44(2), 129-136. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.20054

Francis, H., & Keegan, A. (2006). The changing face of HRM: In search of balance. Human Resource Management Journal, 16(3), 231-249. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-8583.2006.00016.x

Ulrich, D. (1997). Human resource champions: The next agenda for adding value and delivering results. Harvard Business School Press.