Management consultant Peter Drucker once said, “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” As this maxim relates to firm performance, it seemed to hold water.
And now it seems that strategy is coming for its revenge, according to Dr. Theresa Welbourne, professor of management, the Will and Maggie Brooke Endowed Professorship in Entrepreneurship and executive director of Culverhouse’s Alabama Entrepreneurship Institute. She discusses research into this on a recent entry on Reworked.
In her research which is based on surveys of business leaders and data on firm performance, “strategy is again coming out on the winning end again, but with a twist. It is strategic human resource management that is winning the day.”
This year presents an interesting evolution of the strategy vs. culture debate. Strategic HR and items that could be considered part of strategic HR, such as promotion and rewards, ended up as being the categories that show the higher potential for driving future firm performance and employee energy. Energy, in our over 25 years of research, has been proven to predict not only individual performance outcomes but firm-level outcomes, including firm survival in studies of multiple organizations.
Get the details, especially as they relate to firm size, in the post here.