Smart Power as a Pathway for Employing Sustainable Human Resource Management

Abstract

Challenges for human resource management (HRM), as increased number of work-related illnesses or aging society, require from organizations to rethink the way, how people are managed. The most appropriated way relies on sustainability concept, as the axis of sustainability is resource preservation, reproduction and regeneration. The sustainable HRM is designed for enhancing organization’s profit, for minimizing “ecological footprint” and for reducing the harm on employees. However, the employment of sustainable HRM in daily organization’s life is still challenging and calls business to search for new pathways. The paper argues that smart power (the concept mostly used in political sciences) could be used for contributing to sustainable HRM field. The paper describes smart power (soft and hard power) and elaborates how smart power could be applied in business context and in the area of sustainable HRM. The paper provides initial insights on power utilization in human resource development, human resource regeneration and human resource preservation practices. The theoretical findings provide some examples how soft and hard power could be used for career management, for training programmes for sustainability capacities, and for keeping the workforce fit. Some thoughts as findings focusing on the use of smart power for work-life balance, management of employees’ relations, and stress management are described. Hereafter, the research area could be expanded by empirically testing theoretical insights and contributing to extremely relevant topic - the use of smart power for employing the sustainable HRM practices.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ee.28.2.17645