Old State University, Case Study Example

How and why do strategic decisions affect human resource management policies? Can human resource policies or constraints ever affect strategy? Why or why not.

Human resource management policies are the ways in which strategies are put in place with regard to objectives and intentions of old state university on what it wants to accomplish in future. Strategic decisions affect human resource management depending on the cooperation of other people in the organization. Therefore, for old state university, when Dr. George Barnes retired, the new dean came up with his own strategies in order to increase enrollment of students and also increase number of lessons thus affecting the whole organization since it had to adjust to new transitions within it. Human resource management policies are affected because in organization, there are many players who come together for some strategies to be realized. In this case, the old state university is comprised of the central administration and students. Some people in administration were not willing to change from there old way of doing things therefore they opposed the new move by Mr. Jack Blake.

Human resource management policies do affect strategies when it comes to its implementations. The relationship between the new dean and the faculty members was good this meant that it was easy for the university to increase enrollment of students both undergraduates and post graduates and creation of new faculties in order to offer more courses rather than concentrating in few fields such as marketing and accounting.

Identify the problem and the cause of the problem in this case

The retiring dean did not lead to any new direction since he concentrated on strengthening the existing courses without considering the changes that were taking place in market. This meant that student were not competent enough when they finished their courses.

Evaluate Dean Blake’s strategy and human resource policies. Did the strategy make sense in terms of the internal and external environment of the school? Do human resource strategies support and reinforce the organizational strategy? Why or why not?

At his arrival, Mr. Blake came up with strategic plan which he intended to use in order to drive the school of business in a new way. For example, it was necessary to evaluate both the school and outside school environment in order to know what challenges they brought to students. University’s external environment would unravel the job opportunities that existed, how competitive other people were while the internal enabled them to get acquainted with school culture and how students behaved. More so, new missions, goals and objectives were put in place to help students remain focused. In this sense, Mr. Blake met with school administration to familiarize him with his colleagues with whom they were to work together to accomplish their goals. This also gave chance to local businessmen to know kind of education that was being offered at old state university.

The strategy was sensible in terms of internal and external environment in that it was easy for him to identify which courses needed to be added and what kind of education was being disseminated to students. The external environment on the other hand gave students chance to know what kind of job opportunities existed, competition and interpersonal relationship with the employer. Human resource strategies do support organizational strategy in that the organization convenes a meeting and discusses what it is willing to do. More so, it gives room for peaceful co-existence among workers this would to consistency in work.

Evaluate the process by which Dean Blake implemented the strategic and human resources changes. Can suggest any improvements?        

When Mr. Blake received the recommendations, he backed the report and disseminated the information to all faculties when the next semester began this showed how he was committed to implementing his strategies. In addition, during the departmental meetings, he states his next move and how he wanted to do it. For instance, when recruiting new chairs, it was going to be based on personal experience in teaching and the ability to work with the management.

When evaluating the performance of existing faculty and during salary increment it was to be based on merit to avoid bias. More so, he was so caring in that he suggested assistant practitioner to be recruited to represent the external affairs and link them with external community. After his faculty recommendations, the conservatives felt that he was using institutional resources on non academic matters hence they opposed him. Also, they thought they had only been hired to teach full time students on campus but the new evaluation criteria threatened them.

Many of old guards believed that departmental recruitment was a waste of university’s resources on other activities. Their fear was that quality of education was going to go down. However, some improvements can be made if the university put some money in expanding its infrastructure since population of students has gone up.