Strategic human resource management: integrating the universalistic, contingent, configurational and contextual perspectives

From its origins at the end of the 1970s, strategic human resource management has developed quickly. After its uncertain first steps, the number of models and explanations proposed grew exponentially, especially after some theoretical revisions presented in the 1990s. The present explosion of literature requires a systematic revision of the state of the art in this field of research. This is the objective of this paper, which classifies the literature theoretically into four generic perspectives. The principal conclusion derived from this analysis is that, despite the differences among the universalistic, contingent, configurational and contextual approaches, it is possible to make their contributions compatible balancing their limitations. Finally, to illustrate this, we present an integrative exploratory model representing our actual understanding of the complex phenomenon of strategic human resource management.