The widening of HR knowledge is a result of the need to connect with business strategy, and to be clear about how HR activities support operational requirements. From the 'fit' between HR and business strategy, programmes (sometimes of only one or two vears' duration) are designed to meet the strategic needs of the organisation. These programmes provide the managerial agenda, the criteria for deciding what is appropriate knowledge. Line management's heavy involvement in these programmes, and the integration of HR into their concerns, puts the business and operational activities to the fore.
Rajagophan and Spreitzer (1996) show how managerial interventions in response to similar environmental and organisational factors are variable: managers do not respond in a programmed or predictable manner to changes and the differences, it is suggested, are attributable to managers` different cognitions and to different organisational learning processes. One example of how this happens in HR work can be found in the field of organisation development and change management (Dunphy and Stace, 1993). A number of commentators argue that HR's contribution is not in 'technical svstems and techni.ques' but in the management of a social process, because successful change management requires working at a deeper level than that of systems:
Neither management nor employees realise that part of strategic HRM's value lav not only in changed structures and systems, but in engaging in a learning agenda, connected to the barriers and their underlying assumptions about management.