Debi, this was the question when I decided to get my doctorate that focused on the hormones of decision making. I discovered that 1) HR is there to protect the company and not the people within and 2) the people within believe that HR is there for them. Thus this is a conflict that is insurmountable in the eyes of the company.

A secondary component is represented by the hormones that predispose a person to either be a leader or be a follower/manager. To be a leader, the hormones of the person must be such that the release of stress hormones provide pleasure and an exciting challenge. The hormones of the managers/general employees are such that the release of stress hormones make them sick. Few companies--if any--understand this mechanism.

You can find the details in the book I edited and one of two chapter I wrote. The book title is Neuroeconomics and the Firm and the particular chapter I am referring to is chapter 8 titled: Hormonal influence on male decision-making: implications for organizational management. The book is edited volume of many articles and I am not permitted to share any articles but perhaps you can read into it through the "look inside" mechanism on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Neuroeconomics-Firm-Angela-A-Stanton/dp/1848444400/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401995049&sr=8-1&keywords=neuroeconomics+and+the+firm

Non-alignment is often observed in actuality, because of the differences among people in skills, expertise,attitudes, and competencies. The degree of satisfaction among employees also differs due to several reason as the reward system,promotion policy, and other factors.

the reward system and promotion are key topics of the article I referred to earlier. :)

This can also be due to a secondary failure at the middle management level with these managers not ever having been fully aligned with the business strategy. This results from either a) the HR leadership not being involved in the organizations strategic planning or b)failure of HR leadership to be able translate the business strategy into meaningful operational plans which will be able to be followed at the level of the coalface (which requires involving middle managers and is also dependent on these managers skills-as alluded to in a prior post).

The book Angela you edited appears very exciting; I will order a copy for my library today. The problem of conflict in HR roles that you are raising is so true. They do not serve the expected role of employee champions, and have got discredited in the process. I would say, the problem is more with the top management than with HR itself; these decisions are of the top. It is only in few companies that HR is in fact allowed to play this role as expected. One research had discovered that the strategic role was performed by HR in only 2 out of the 20 companies studied. HR was helping the companies in cost-cutting. I will get back to you after I read your book..

: I fully agree with the points you have made, dear Mahfuz, about the discrepancy between what should be done on people front and what is actually done. As you know, that precisely is the essence of non-alignment. Unlike in cases that Angela refers to, there are also actual cases of HR not focusing on the issues that it ought to. This is because of its error in diagnosing the real issue that is causing the problem, due to which it is not able to produce the requisite behaviors that are warranted by the business strategy..

I discovered a very reference in this regard in the book by Dave Ulrich and Wayne Brockbank that I am attaching.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Value-Proposition-David-Ulrich/dp/1591397073

True Adel but who do you mean under "we"? HR? Leadership? Management?

I am no longer in the industry since I left it for academia, but while I was still working as a corporate executive, I found that HR appeared to function like a separate company. I personally, as an employee, only saw them at the first day of my job when I had to go through some training. After that, the HR department was a non-existing entity.

My staff and I have often discussed issues and problems and at times the question of how to handle something came up and HR was mentioned but no one ever wanted to get them involved. It seemed that people within the company feared the HR.

Thus the non-alignment did exist, as you stated it, but who would one go to in order to fix the broken system?

Communication breakdown can be one of the problem. If its a business strategy it suppose to be chunk down to operational strategy that aligned.

It suppose to be communicate from top to bottom as usually if its aligned only to middle management there will be loss or distortion taken from perception that middle management have from top management.

HR function suppose to bridge down and support alignment between the organization with employee.

But the problem is as said with all the prof. state in previous question, hr always state or taken them self as out of boundary of organizational business strategic.

Angela is on to something that goes well beyond failure to communicate effectively and other reasons advanced here. HR is indeed (in my experience) an insular entity that works for its own purposes. Interactions with employees are often difficult, hamstrung by bureaucratic hoops, and have the precisely intended discouraging effect. Were it helpful and proactive, it would have more work to do, and perhaps more responsibility for outcomes. So HR works very well for HR employees. My point is that far from evincing a lack of communication skills or training, it is purposeful behavior that yields the results intended by those engaging in it. The diagnosis of problems is important because it tends to drive fixes. As Angela pointed out, in the HR case as in any other organizational challenge, it is necessary to figure out who is "we." "We" includes those whom the problem affects, those who have the incentives to provide fixes, and those who can actually do it. So unpacking "we" is critical to this analysis.

Angela, Adel, Deborah and Sanda: The problem of indifference of HR is called rent-seeking in economics--Angela being an economist perhaps can better appreciate it. This means HR has the power to say Yes, but does not say so. This is so because it has not been given the responsibility, as Deborah is also envisaging in that issue of inertia or indifference among the middle managers. I feel that this kind of problems that you all are mentioning are problems of poor leadership. The top should be aware what the competency of its HR is. If they are not competent to contribute to alignment of HR with business they should go; so should they when they do rent seeking, and are not willing to positively facilitate the work of the line. I tend to believe that the top in Angela case was poor, as it did not have the courage to take action towards making HR accountable..

Adel's "we" of course has to be HR in case it is responsible, and has the willingness to correct problems of non-alignment. Of course, the team to actually do the alignment would be cross-functional after taking into account the nature of non-alignment. But if the CEO feels that HR is not realizing its responsibility of aligning the two, then s/he will have to take the initiative of setting up a cross-functional task force to plan the alignment, and HR would have to provide the key assistance in this process, as also in implementing the action taken for alignment..

At the operational level where business and IS departments should be aligned, Benbya and Mckelvey (2006) reported that in firms where misalignment occurs, business and IS managers are unable to express themselves in a common language, which is necessary to cope with the absence of rationality and analyzability. Therefore, successful links between business objectives, IS strategy, and underlying IS architecture are insufficiently built. Furthermore, they do not understand the complexities that the other party has to deal with. Hence, tightly aligned business and IS domains require continuous co-ordination and communication between the two entities of the duality, business and IS. Yours,

Was it because the business management can be more scientific?

I agree with Debi's comments around the fundamental role of organizational leadership and what then needs to follow to correct the problems around non-alignment. Delving into this of course does require exploring and unpacking the "we" behind it all as outlined by Sandra.

Very beautiful summary, Sandra. I have seen that in case of most leading organizations the basic approach to treating people is the decision of the top. They hire competent HR to translate those basic thoughts.

If there are problems of HR non-alignment, cross-functional teams sit down to analyze the new trends in the business environment, how the organization can get competitive advantage, what kind of culture needs to be developed to gain the competitive advantage, what is required to develop that culture, what are forces that oppose the new initiatives and why, focus on new HR initiatives that need to be taken so as to promote better alignment between HR strategy and business strategy, and clear accountability about who will do what so as to see that the alignment succeeds. These were the steps that Motorola took and could correct the position with great success,

Non-alignment has been as a result of old management and HR practices. However, currently, and as a result of the advent of strategic HRM, organisations are now beginning to achieve or realise the needed alignment except those organisations that still prefer to stick to the old wagon.

Yes, Wilfred, that is mostly the reason. But non-alignment also happens despite the adoption of the strategic HRM approach. There are genuine unwillingness or mistakes in comprehending the needs of the business. For example, we might be already giving better than the best compensation; but the employees might be expecting better challenges and growth prospects, or more interesting work, or better organizational climate. Any exercise in re-alignment would have to attend to these needs so as to succeed.

Deborah: All the three points you have summarized in your nice thread are very important i.e. role of the top in identifying the non-alignment issues; the decisions it has to take to start the correction process; and the "we" issue of Adel and Angela.

As you know, these points also get illustrated when the management comes into the hands of a transformational leader who decides to change the organizational direction by bringing in new HR people, new values, and fresh set of initiatives/perspectives to stem the existing rot. There are so many stories of such turnarounds. They definitely involve attempts towards better alignment. Also, for example, when the globalization phenomenon led to the emergence of strategic perspective of HR, that Wilfred is envisaging, enlightened organizations had to change their HR chiefs as they were in adversarial molds and could not deliver the expected changes that were needed in view of the new realities.

Of course Debi, you made a point there. Cheers.

To me, there are significant constraints related to knowledge/information acquisition and perception in a complex and very dynamic evolving social/collaboration network. This implies that input of information based on f. i. human resources cannot predict output based on expected results and performance. Constraints on knowledge acquisition will obviously increase when the social/collaboration network becomes more complex (e.g. two collaborators versus 2000 collaborators constituting the network).

Well-known example:

Person A talks to person B to transmit message A. Person B transmits message A to person C, so message A becomes slightly modified as it is perceived by person C (i.e. messages A becomes message A1). Person C transmits message A1 to person D, so message A1 becomes slightly modified as it is perceived by person D (i.e. message A1 becomes message A2). After let say 26 interactions involving 26 persons (A to Z), message A has become message A26 and the two messages are not related anymore?

Perhaps the word 'message' could be replaced by 'daily task' or 'decision'

By the way, who is able to verify the reliability of the information and decisions transmitted in the collaboration network given that people are often overloaded with information (e.g. number of emails per day to be treated)?

It is not enough a HR manager or head think only in terms of HR, he should have capability to think holistically, like a CEO, then it will match, we can remain within our silo of functionalities and not understand other part, after all a business in an enterprise, it needs consistency all the way!

Hi Rojan, the trend has changed, because all managers are now expected to play a HR role. Whether you are a finance manager, a marketing manager, a procurement manager, etc, as far as you have people working under you, you are automatically a HR manager.

Well said Wilfred. So we must distinguish between HR function and HR department. While HR function is performed by all managers so long as they have people working under them, HR department consists of people who are concerned with devising and implementing plans related to the people function.

Hi Wilfred and Debi,

Thank you for your kind remarks. I am not in different side of your opinion. Yes, every manager must be a HR manager, but the irony is - not all of them are trained as HR specialized manager. I totally agree, managing people is one of key aspect of the jobs of all managers. I am specifically saying if someone is leading HR unit, he or she has to have caliber of that of CEO to understand all aspects of business. I am sharing one experience with you, that I am devising Performance Management System for an airline company, we are having great difficulty to change mindset of line managers to appraise subordinates. They simply refuse to acknowledge that they are responsible for the growth and development of those who report to them. If every manager bear the responsibility of HR manager, HR team can just play the role of facilitator.

A formation in psychology at university is at least four years. Are HR managers trained to be efficient (professional) psychologists being able to handle distinct and dynamic personality profiles?

Is practice and local experience more important than theory accepting that the expression of each multi-component environment' is unique in a dynamic world? For instance, if you know the collaborators better are collaboration interactions and information flows more efficient at a long-term basis?

Great insight Rojan. Thanks for corroborating Debi. Cheers colleagues.

Rojan, I understand your problem. I know, changing attitudes and mindsets is the most difficult thing. One must devise the change interventions very carefully, and by posing the problems to the people concerned and seeking the solution, rather than by forcing on to them. I found somewhat similar problems when i started training of all 147 first-line managers of a large automobile company some two year back (still continuing); but eventually, I discovered how that could be done by creating a buy-in for them. Now it is working extremely well, which they are enjoying. .

I would say, Rojan, it should be written in the KRAs of the managers you are referring to. Their performance should be evaluated against those KRAs. But the most important thing is convincing, and not coercing, them about the non-alignment, and their expected role in the process.

Thank you Debi for such a wonderful suggestion. I could not have received a better suggestion as I am working in KRAs right now. I plan for buy-in training after KRAs with the stakeholder managers at line managers and department head levels. I will he sharing the updates and experiences. Once again, it is great to be part of such a wonderful community, than you Debi and Wilfred, may be we can work on some research together in near future.

Mistyped, Thank you Debi and Wilfred

The human resource may be highly underestimated and/or undervalued!

Period!

Dear Angela,

you have apparently a proximate (mechanistic, short-term) approach, not an evolutionary (long-term) approach. What are the costs and benefits of such a neuro-hormone system influencing future company populations (e.g. future HR managers and employees constituting the same company)? Should competitive neuro-hormone systems be replaced by collaborative neuro-hormone systems at a long-term basis or not? Are evolutionary-based 'optimal neuro-hormone' system environment-specific, thus company-specific? Can what is happening in company A be blindly applied to company B? Etc.

Accepting that many social relationships among company members are invisible, would you take hormone measurements (e.g. measurements of stress hormones) of employees to reveal hidden information about dominance-subordinate relationships in a company (e.g. why has person A exceptionally high CORT levels?)? Should hormone measurements be taken to select recruits (e.g. those with to much testosterone should not be hired because of reason X)? .....

This is an interesting topical area that has direct practical applications. In our sales management book we look at internal alignment with the external environment. Studies have shown consistently that higher performing sales organizations show internal alignment for selecting, training, motivating, and rewarding individuals for taking the correct actions that move the organization forward. This begs the question: if aligned firms perform at higher levels, then why don't firm managers try to keep the work force aligned? This question is similar to one I use to ask my MBA/Ph.D. students: if marketing is such an easy function to perform why are so many companies poor at marketing?

In our book we offer four "gaps" similar to the service gaps to explain mis-aligned organizational structure that leads to entropy:

1. Lack of personal alignment - a gap between stated values and behavior.

2. Lack of structural alignment - a gap between stated values and rules, regulations, and managerial systems put in place.

3. Lack of values alignment - a gap between individual personal values and the group values of the firm.

4. Lack of mission alignment - a gap between firm goals and employee goals.

A manager can either change the strategy to fit the existing internal culture or try to change the internal culture, which is not easy to do.

In my opinion, higher level managers get rewarded for short-term financial results rather than long-term internal alignment changes that may be nearly impossible to attain without spending a lot of time/money firing and replacing a number of managers and workers. We know what we should do, but the doing is difficult and the needed internal culture may change again within a few years! Thus, organizations "satisfice."

Several authors emphasize the effects of changes that occurring and the need for HR to reconstruct roles and functions. There is need to alligne HR strategy.

I think there are many valuable comments but I agree the most with Earl D. Honeycutt. I believe that when analyzing this problem it should be bilaterally, when strategy and HR are not properly aligned there's something wrong both sides. One of the mistakes I've seen is that companies are dishonest when setting goals, for example they say their target is to satisfy consumers (because that is what they are supposed to say) when in reality the goal is plainly to make money. Therefore, like Earl says rewards are given to financial results even when they are not beneficial in the long term. This is aligned to the goal of securing more monetary benefits but not necesarilly with the mission of the company. When your goal is not the one you say it is it becomes extrremely difficult to achieve it. If the goal is to make money for the owners that is also correct, however you should not expect employees to share that vision.

Something that commonly happens is that HR managers lower costs at the expense of employee satisfaction, and get rewarded. Actually, in México the most common reason for which a "succesful" business closes is a demand from unsatisfied employees.

When you actually commit to the goal of providing quality products or services you may have to spend more money (to keep your employees trained and satisfied) in order to make it happen and the company will probably be more succesful, though the money will be distributed differently, and maybe in the short term stockholders and owners will get less revenues.

Carlos Kasuga, a succesful businessman, said that business owners should see their companies as they would see their own children, they should help them grow healthy and give them the tools to achieve their goals without expecting them to make money until their 20's.

Non-alignment can be because of the differences among employees in skills, expertise,attitudes, and competencies. Also, it can be as a result of lack of management vision.

Business strategies are aimed at maximum profit and profit related activities while human resource strategies aim at the physical and mental well being of the employees.

The basic difference in the approaches brings some non-alignment.

According to my opinion, the management should aim at bridging these differences;

Making good profit while keeping the employees happy.

I feel that there is some alignment between business strategies and human resource strategies in software industry. This may also be because of the buoyancy in that industry. Other service industries try to emulate to some extent.

However, manufacturing sector has differences.

With Motto of "Employee Come First", Southwest Airlines is able to achieve its business strategy as well as HR strategy. So, two need not be different, it is management's perspective, vision and implementation that makes a difference.

It is very difficult to say HR strategies and business strategies are not matching. If it is, there may be two reasons:1. These two strategies will not perfectly match if HR managers are not business partners.2. HR strategy is framed to make the organisation legitimate and to pursue ethical decisions those may not match with business strategy.

I do not see the relevance of aligning HR and business strategies since they both pursue different objectives.

HR strategies may be seeking to improve or create the favourable conditions which are thought to lead to improved characteristics of the employees to enable them to better their well being, while business strategies are geared towards profitability and the collective performance of a given organisation.

So provided there is a high correlation between both strategies, and this may not be feasible, they will remain misaligned.

In fact, human resource strategies are set after an organization's business strategies are decided upon. Three generic business strategies are differentiation, niche, and low price. If a firm is pursuing a differentiation strategy, like most firms, then human resource, marketing, finance, and operations must be aligned with the company's overall strategy. When the firm's internal operations are not aligned, there is "entropy" or behaviors that conflict with one another and lower the efficiency of the company. For example, a firm may adopt a strategy of high levels of customer service/customer sales satisfaction but leave an outdated management mechanism that rewards customer service representatives for keeping their interactions short with customers. In such a case the customer service representative talks to more customers in a day, but may not be able to solve their problems without being penalized for slow performance! As many have stated, there needs to be a high correlation/high alignment, but because a firm's alignment is managed by humans there will never be perfect alignment. Still, top managers must try to align human resource practices in support of the firm's external strategy. Entropy occurs because external market conditions change that necessitate internal changes, managers resist change, and for most the bottom line is maximizing profits.

There is always an issue of relative power on the board. A disproportionately high share of CEOs are finance people for one. HR directors are often the last to be added to a full board. This is also true in SMEs for the HR function per se. The second point is about strategic alignment across functional areas. If, for example, the global strategy is product quality to drive profit growth then HR might pursue internally consistent objectives and strategies, such as adopting PRP, which raise output , but at the expense of quality. I looked at this strategic misalignment issue a few years ago (see The Work Foundation:Cracking the Performance Code) and specifically at HR and firm performance (The Work Foundation: People and the Bottom Line) and found that generally only 12% of strategies are mutually consistent going across functional areas in terms of helping to deliver the big overall objective. And HR was the most guilty of over-strategising. Hope this helps a little? Marc

Thanks Marc, for this thread. Indeed, functional misalignment is one of the major problems in most organizations; and it is the job of the leadership (CEO) to ensure that it does not happen. The company needs competent people including HR ones who can help do this. Those who are able to effect this remain way ahead of others. I would suspect that this percentage of 12% that you have given would be still lower in other countries. And, HR people who are often seen doing rent-seeking, are equally to blame in the malaise like some of the other functional people. I am sure, this percentage would be less than 5 in India, where hierarchy, big ego and high power distance may not permit the alignment to ever happen.

I am giving reference to an HBR case where even one of the finest CEOs admitted that one of his principal jobs was to facilitate the inter-departmental conflict, which also caused much of the mis-alignment.

https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/480044-PDF-ENG

Dear Sadagopan

i agree fully with you, that software companies have better (or best, if I am allowed to say) alignment of HR with business, than is the case with the manufacturing sector. Even the service sector is likely to be better than manufacturing. Software companies perhaps can not exist without the alignment, because you are dealing with highly idiosyncratic knowledge (or gold-collared) workers. One of the key goals of HR and the top management is attracting and retaining talent, ensuring their engagement, and building employer brand. Unless you ensure that, the company would find it difficult to survive.

Dear Debi. I completely agree with you that one of the key goals of HR and the top management is attracting and retaining talent, ensuring their engagement, and building employer brand.

For any good company, not having HR and Organizational strategy aligned is not permissible. It will be serious lack in part of top management if organization is facing such situation. Again, HR strategy as Earl said above is a medium to get business strategy. After one set business strategy, HR strategy should be set in line with it. If not again, I repeat, management is not understanding the right way. Singapore Airlines and Southwest Airlines are great examples, one used employees as brand ambassadors and groomed them accordingly, other give liberty, fun, and freedom to employee so that they can operate freely. Both of them are attaining their business strategy through their HR strategy. And the reason we are having this discussion is most of management fail to do so. Thus, first and foremost the realization from top management about interlink is a starting point. Then the broader business strategy should be transformed or achieved through many strategies, and one of them is HR strategy, and this involves many things like what work climate to create, what type of culture to promote, what type of performance management system to implement, what type of recruitment policy to place etc. Thus, again the top management should have an ability.

In many cases an overall "strategy process" is missing, so that functional "sub-strategies" like the HR strategy and others, are not systematically aligned.

Yes, Mathis, what you say is so true. Many times they have processes, without being clear about what they want to achieve. Often, the policies they adopt just are not in sync with the vision and goals. Often, they practice the policy such that it reflects inter-departmental jealousy. I think, that also reflects poor or indifferent leadership.

it is the necessity of the organization to align its HR strategies with over all business strategy, because it modern researches relation has been established, that if there would not be the alignment organization will not be in a position to perform its function smoothly.

more over as in new researches it has also been establish that HR is the business partner, so taking aside the HR it would very difficult for organizations to even survive.

@ Rojan. I am in full agreement with you that for any good company, not having HR and organizational strategy aligned is not permissible. It will be serious lack in part of top management if organization is facing such situation.

I also agree with Judeh. HR strategy can not afford to deviate from business strategy. If it deviated, either there are operational problems or serious lack in part of top management or HR department is not working well.

I doubt very much about perfect alignments. We can have reasonably good alignment in recruitment, promotion, incentives and retirement. But to have alignments between Production and HR, Finance and HR etc., become like welding wood with iron. Probably, vestibules of broader strategies can be encouraged. Employees can be made to realize its long term benefits through training.

 I accepted Jaya Vikas Kurhekar  statement. In India, few companies treated human resource as an accounting. like BHEL, Infosys, etc.   And moreover human resource strategies are applied psychology based. Business strategies are SWOT analysis based. 

If you want success and sustainability as an organization it is essential that you strive for alignment not only across the upper levels of management (HR, finance, operations) but also across the organization as well.

This is one of the tenents of modern TQM (Total Quality Management). In practice within organizations, there are often gaps between the ideal situation and the current situation. The challenge for senior management is to identify where these gaps are and put measures into place to address them such that the reality becomes clsoer to the ideal. It is an ongoing challenge!

We did quite a lot of research on this and approached it from the business/strategy literature/practice rather than from HR.  You might find this useful. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/235253386_HR%27s_global_impact_building_strategic_differentiating_capabilities?ev=prf_pub  

Article HR's global impact: building strategic differentiating capabilities

This is due to schismic cognitive framework of organization, people working in it, and other stakeholders, i.e. they see dichotomy in the way they are related to each other. Here''s brief description of Bharatiya worldview which provides an integrative cognitive framework to look at these relatonships. 

Vocabulary:-

1)  धर्म Dharmā - धारयेत् इति धर्म: One that defines the relationship among entities. In our case, entities are organization, people, other stakeholders.

2)  अभ्युदय abhyudāyā - worldly goals

3)  निःश्रेयस nishreyāsā- liberation or higher goals around meaningfulness

Key principles of an Integrative Paradigm:-

1)  Integral Unity:- ।।एकं सत् विप्र बहुदा वदन्ति।। Truth is one, the wise say it differently.  No observation is invalid, it’s just the difference in perspectives to reality.

2)  Holistic Attainment through Dharmā:-   अथातो धर्म व्याख्यास्यामः |१ | यतो-अभ्युदय निःश्रेयससिद्धि स धर्मः |२ | (वैशेषिक दर्शन ) अब धर्म की व्याख्या की  जा रही है । १। धर्म वह है जिससे अभ्युदय (यथार्थ कल्याण) व् निःश्रेयस (परमार्थ कल्याण) की सिद्धि होती है ।   Defining Dharmā, “Dharmā” is that which ensures attainment of अभ्युदय abhyudāyā - worldly goals and निःश्रेयस nishreyāsā- liberation.

3)  Integral view on action:- समत्वं योग - ज्ञान gyaan- Knowledge, कर्म karma- Action and भक्ति bhakti- devotion

4)   We are all connected -   तत् त्वम् असि Tat Tvam Asi - You are that,  सबका साथ सबका विकास (Everyone develops, Everyone stays together)

A company may even try to form its human resources according to their strategies. But people have their own agendas. That is worth a lot more today, that employment volatility is huge in so many organizations. Ie, in the past, when the company was doing well and the employee was responsible, there was a tacit agreement that he would continue until retirement. Today, competition often prevents companies from maintaining old teams - because they are expensive. Thus began a wave to no longer maintain any commitment from both parties. Therefore, intelligent people respond using each company as a stepping stone in their careers. Thus, no possibility to align with business strategies.

@Roberto - that is a way of looking at it, but then that is the challenge for HR, to get people align with strategy, that is where companies like Southwest Airlines are born who are doing great despite situation, it requires visionary leadership and sharp implementation to bring this alignment, no one says, this is an easy task, but we consistently try for it. but I totally agree with Roberto's statement, that mentality people have, but then there are group of people who stay loyal too, we can not just generalise, we persistently strive for this excellence

Because teams are over-hyped,  and HR people (who are often low in status in orgs) are naive about destructive cultures, silos, grapevines/informal orgs, transparency, the dark side of trends like knowledge management (dark side of anything, really- that's why they're in HR), etc: 

Team Communication

http://www.johnwiley.com.au/highered/eunson3e/site/lecturer-res/downloads/sample_chapter.pdf

Organisational Communication

http://eunson.net/upload/c21-4/5_60_66172_com21st3e_Ch16.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Communicating-21st-Century-Open-University/dp/1118554159/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398229965&sr=8-1&keywords=baden+eunson

The Human resource strategies often not aligned with the business strategy. Because, the degree of Job satisfaction among employees also differs due to many reasons as follows:

Appraisal and reward, Employee health and safety, Industrial relations, promotion policy, Co-workers, Managing people and other factors.

Because companies are not only systems created and controlled by those who manage them but also self-organising entities that evolve through learning. Whereas an organism is a creation of natural replicators, genes, an organisation can be seen as a product of an alternative replicator, the meme or mental model, acting, like a gene, to preserve itself in an Evolutionary Stable System. The result is an organisation which self organises around a set of unspoken and unwritten rules and assumptions.

See http://shura.shu.ac.uk/4035/

Non alignment depends upon contextual prevailing business conditions. HR is given least attention by top management. Moreover high performance is sought from HR. Under this coercion and to prove its effectiveness.  HR defines strategies deemed suitable to achieve business objectives. But these strategies prove ineffective because of lack of management support and lack of coordination with other finance, marketing, and other departments. If management does extend its serious support to HR department, strategic misalignment can be overcome and gap be filled between actual and required.

If HR strategies are not aligned with business strategy, it will point towards complete lack of understanding of business requirement on the part of HR department. For any business growth, three important factors are : people, capital and technology. Hence, working out HR strategy, which is in tune with business strategy, is of utmost importance. Skill development, talent management and retention are some of the strategic responsibilities of HR department,  in addition to its generic responsibilities like manpower planning, recruitment, placement, working out motivational schemes, identification of training needs, assessment of job satisfaction level and measurement of productivity per employee etc. HR must realize that a satisfied employee is productive employee. Many a times, it is said that HR department is not given due importance in a corporate management system. But , I don't agree with this, as importance is to be acquired through shouldering of more responsibilities of non routine nature and delivering the desired result for fulfillment of corporate objective, which will ultimately will lead to the fulfillment of employees' expectation from the job.

Learning organizations that must rely on maintaining a competitive edge and organizations that thrive in global economies, or in industries that are governed by regulatory agencies (i.e., financial, healthcare, commerce, etc.) know the importance of having HR at the strategy table.  Successful companies aligning and weave HR into the fabric at the core of the business.  This ensures that t their vision and goals are the same -- that their resources and direction are in sync, and lastly that the most precious asset of all (the human asset) is moving in the direction of constantly being primed to meet the current and future needs of the organization (i.e., staff development training, talent acquisition, mentoring and leadership).

My dear 

We should take in consideration that our organizations do not suffer only from vertical misalignment (misalignment between HR strategies and Business strategy) but the attention should pay toward horizontal misalignment (misalignment among human resource strategies themselves). Effective human resource management requires an organisation to develop an HR strategies that achieves both horizontal and vertical integration.

In my opinion the reason is the next:

HR is not a subject only related to people 

I understood the issues working inside intellectual capital framework

Structural capital is the next step for HR managers

Regards

human strategies whatever the ridge from which analyzes have a subjective component is determined by values and perceptions, strategies of a company are eminently objectivist, these can in detail as they are completed a reward system for the individual , so they can be lined up

Main focus of the organizations is generally on products, markets and technology. 'People factor' takes a much lower place in the list of management's strategy meetings and thus, there is hardly any attention paid to create competent HR departments to manage this aspect. And thus, HR, even if involved in such meetings,find themselves out of place. 

On the other hand, in absence of such exposure to the HR by the management, HR people start indulging in power and politics games and start moving in a different direction to justify their survival. 

If somewhere people factor is considered, it is generally restricted to 'hiring good talent' to achieve an outcome and 'rewarding exceptional talent' to keep doing good things. Most of the time, this is is the understanding on both the sides - HR and Rest of the management. This generally results in narrow and skewed HR processes, not holistic to sustain over time. 

So, it has to be a collaborative effort from both sides to create an alignment. HR alone would never be able to accomplish this. 

Snow and Snell did a great paper on this in 1993 in the SIOP Frontiers series book (Schmitt & Borman, 1993) Personnel Selection in Organizations. Basically, they argue that the usual dichotomy of HR as a trailing "support" function versus an equal partner misses a third possibility: Staffing itself can be strategy (in fact the chapter is entitled "Staffing as Strategy."  The idea here is that organizational decision makers sometimes deliberately hire someone who they can build strategy around. I think of the Michael Jordan model: Hire a really talented person and then build strategy around them. In this case, HR sets strategy.

some times the issue of misalignment is due to lack of communication between top management and lower levels. Particularly, lower levels might not be fully aware about the main strategy or their objectives not clear.

There are some tools may be guide to achieve the alignment between HRS and business strategy. Norton and Kaplan's (2004) strategic maps is one of these tools. Therefore,  top management need to use the strategic map to access to alignment between HRS and business strategy.

Debi, your question is the one that got me to realize what field I need to get my PhD in. Seriously. I had the same question because I was a corporate executive at Visa and we had 3 consulting firms on campus at any given day and major issues with the very thing you are asking.

And I have found an answer. My answer may not cover all scenarios but in general represents a very large part of the gap between business strategy and human resources. 

The strategy of the business is a means by which the firm (not the people but the leaders of the firm) wants to achieve its goal of staying in business, make more and more profit, and also to have a larger and larger share of the market. This is clear.

Now look at the people who work for the firm. Other than the "owner" or the shareholders if a larger firm, no one within the firm has this same goal with that strategy. They have individual goals that are for their own benefits. Now these goal can very well align with the firm's goal for some of employees. For example, a sales representative on commission will have exactly the same goal in mind since he will make more money if the goal is followed. But ask the questions from those removed from the actual "motion" and "direction" of the company!

The people who are removed from the motion and direction are the managers and everyone below them other than the commissioned sales reps. 

Furthermore, as I wrote in the book Neuroeconomics and the Firm in chapter 8 "Hormonal influence on male decision-making: implications for organizational management" hormones matter in who is in management and who is in leader positions and who are the ones below them in rank. Place the wrong hormonal setup in order in the firm--meaning place a person whose stress hormones kick in from taking risks and creates havoc with his/her health over a person for whom risk kicks in a hormone that gives pleasure for the challenge--and you will have lost the connection between the goal of the firm and the goal of the human resources. 

In fact chances are your company will have a high turnover if promotion is not by the kind of skills that allow one to make the right judgment. Often times firms promote from within the firm by seniority... this leads to the Peter Principle. If they hire in from the outside, there is a better chance to find the right people provided the human resource manager conducting the hiring process knows what to look for. They may promote successfully from within the firm as well but the same principles must be used as for new hires.

Unfortunately human resources usually do not have any idea. Most tests conducted today are aptitude tests that anyone can override based on what he/she thinks the company wants to hear. In the US we also often have drug tests. But I think there would be a huge resistance against a hormone test to see what kind of job a person is qualified to handle based on stress versus challenge. To reach pure alignment, that is what would be necessary. Unfortunately it is politically incorrect. Thus the other option would be to change the aptitude test to see the kind of responses a particular hormone would produce. As of today such questionnaire does not exist. It could be done in a university setting in a research lab but it requires permits, computer programs to be written, and lots of money!

Quite often HR professionals are caught up in their own world and have a different mindset with regards to the role of HR vis-a-vis that of line management and other stakeholders. Mostly, emphasis tends to be placed on "best practice" and "compliance" at the expense of strategic imperatives.

The misalignment happens when 1) HR functions are too focused on administrative tasks. It implies that HR managers are reactive to and not proactive in business decision making process. In a perfect world, the human resource managers should operate at both administrative (operational) and strategic level. The strategic role should be concerned with the development of corporate strategy, policy, measurement, benchmarking and process improvement processes. Whereas, the administrative side is responsible for the deployment of those strategies and business processes. Greater inclination on administration or operational side means that HR will not be involved in the corporate planning, which in turn creates challenges for HR managers when trying to match their people plan with business plan. 2) Sometimes, the business and HR strategies does not reconcile because the HR practitioners lack HR competencies. It implies that strategic and operational HR positions require a completely different mindset. One is technical and the other is conceptual and in many cases the same person will not cope well in both arenas. Therefore, the business should consider the division of roles to resolve this issue. 3) HR lacks accountability. This is a common business belief that HR lacks accountability or legitimacy. They are often looked at as a “cost-centre” rather than a strategic partner. Therefore, for HR to prove its accountability top HR executives should have a representation in the org. board so that they can convince the importance of effectively managing the organisation's intellectual and learning capital (employees) to the CEO and other shareholders.

See Management summary of : http://www.oxfordstrategicconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Future-Models-of-HR_Full-Report.pdf

GOOD

In the United States, at least, so much of HR is about compliance with federal regulations, and with "covering the bases" in case the business is sued for improper hiring practices.

It can hard hard to align such requirements with ideal hiring practices to achieve business goals.

Following

Lack of Clear Management-Employee Communication; Organisations with inferior management-employee communication, adversely impacts employee motivation and creates difficulties in implementing the desired business strategy. In most cases, management is unable to communicate the strategic vision, mission and objectives, to existing employees, that hinders the alignment of business and HR strategies.

HR plan must be carefully written after evaluation of the organizational strategies.

The main reason that HR is not aligned with the strategy of an organization is that it does not hold a seat at the strategic planning table. The irony with HR being left of out of strategy planning is that by its nature, HR is about people, which is the core of an organization and its strategic plan.....(www.maverickec.com › index_files › Aligning HR Strategy epulse)

Lack of compatible Skills and Development. Organisations recruiting employees with incompatible level of skills and talent, is perceived as another major obstacle in aligning the business and HR strategic objective. In this context, inappropriate selection, recruitment and training procedures leads towards poor human resource development and reduces the extent of their valuable contributions towards the business goals. Identification, attraction, management and retention of skills that are compatible with the business strategy formulated, is a crucial challenge for organisations which can contribute towards a better strategic fit between internal and external factors

Hi A great question. Will answer in my thesis. Nicola

One of the main reasons is the lack of HR involvement in the Strategic Business plan. Even if HR gets involved they lack tools to access the skill gap of its employees to meet the skill demand.

Human Resource (HR) professionals have become so obsessed with "people management" to the extent that we tend to lose sight of the fact that the management of the workforce must occur in the context of and in alignment with business strategic imperatives. The whole concept (or is that now a fad?), albeit cobbled up with noble intentions, has become an amorphous abstraction, virtually self-serving and misaligned to business strategic imperatives.

Perhaps this simple question deserves some consideration: what proportion of HR professionals, in terms of their training, have the nous in entrepreneurship or thorough grounding in the management sciences? Furthermore, the identity crisis endemic in the discipline of HR does not make matters any easier - is it a social science or a management science?

The main reason that HR is not aligned with the strategy of an organization is that it does not hold a seat at the strategic table. HR leaders can ensure that decision-making not only aligns with strategic business objectives but also helps drive those goals. The process fails for a number of reasons, including lack of visibility into business goals and inadequately defined measures for success.

I believe employee and management opposition to change is the main reason. Organisations may encounter resistance to change from employees and managers who are accustomed to current HR practises. This opposition might make it difficult to match HR strategies with the changing needs of the business. In this regard, organizational learning courses and developing entrepreneurial orientation of heads is suggested.

HR professionals often have to deal with day-to-day operational tasks, such as recruitment, employee relations, and compliance. This operational focus can sometimes overshadow the strategic perspective. HR professionals may become more reactive rather than proactive, leading to a disconnect between HR strategies and the long-term business strategy.

Human resource strategy may not align with business strategy because of agency theory. Strategy is an action plan to achieve a specific goal by both the principal and the agents. The goal of HR department as agent is to retain a high quality staff for the organisation at all times to maximise profit. While that of the business department as agent is to retain customer at all cost to continue in operation. However, each manager has personal economic interest at the expense of the owners of the business. Hence, the conflict. To solve the problem, there must not be information asymmetry within the organisation so as to increase stakeholders trust.