Strategic partner role as mediator in the relationship between human resource competencies and organizational performance

Abstract

The concept of human resource (HR) strategic business partnering has begun to gain acceptance as a practice for improving business performance. To add value to organizations, HR as a strategic business partner is expected to acquire and demonstrate the knowledge of requisite critical competencies. Literature review reveals that the studies addressing jointly the conceptual relationship between HR competencies and strategic partner role are limited. Therefore, this study investigated the HR strategic partner role as mediator by examining the mediating effect of its role in the relationship between HR competencies and organizational performance by adapting the Ulrich HR Role Model. The study also examined HR competencies such as strategic positioner, credible activist, credibility builder, change champion, HR innovator/integrator, technology proponent and project facilitator by adapting the Ulrich Human Resource Competency Survey (HRCS). The mediating effects and competencies were examined based on 215 HR professionals from 20 consolidated banks located in South-West Nigeria. A quantitative approach employing the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20 software was used for the analysis. The findings revealed that strategic partner role mediates six out of the seven HR competencies investigated, with project facilitator as an exception. There were 24 factors in the seven HR competencies studied. The top ten factors that emerged from the findings are from the domains of technology proponent, strategic positioner, credible activist and project facilitator. The findings also showed that from the seven HR competencies, only technology proponent and strategic positioner have contributed the most to the organizational performance. In the study, competencies have significant correlation with organizational performance. Besides that, the study has shown that top management should encourage HR professionals to demonstrate more of their technology proponent skills and continue to acquire skills to leverage social media tools to improve HR operations.