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Essay Instructions: Overview

You will remember from the lecture that in today?s business world many organization's HR departments are viewed as strategic partners within the organization. HR works with senior management in establishing the strategic direction of the organization. This exercise will engage you to go beyond the traditional administrative view of HR and to begin linking the vital, strategic role an HR department plays within an organization.

Here are several tips for successfully completing this case study.

You should incorporate information from the textbook, the lectures, and/or the discussions to support your position.
Make sure to fully explore your thoughts with each question
Your answer for EACH question must be within the range of 150 to 250 words (use MS Word?s word count feature on the Review tab to ensure that your answer is not too brief or too verbose). Be sure to answer each question fully as you are subject to point deductions for incomplete answers. Use 1.5 line spacing. Also, please remember that you will be using information supporting your position from sources such as our textbook, articles, and the Internet. You MUST use proper APA citations and references. See the Syllabus for an APA tutorial. Also, do not rely too heavily on borrowed material. It should NOT dominate your work. Point deductions will occur if more than 15% of the answer is borrowed. I want to read YOUR thoughts on these questions.

Strategic Linkages Tutorial

View the Strategic Linkages presentation before working the learning questions in this week's assignment.

Strategic Linkages Interactive

There are four different kinds of linkages HR functions can have with the organizational strategy.

Check this Strategic Linkages Tutorial to view it.

Learning Questions

After reviewing the Strategic Linkages presentation, answer the following learning questions:

Why do you think it is important for HR to be a strategic partner to the business?
What benefits do you think the employees derive from this arrangement?
What do you think are the risks involved (to HR and the organization as a whole) if HR does not make this a priority and instead remains a purely task-oriented department mostly administrative in nature?

You must NUMBER your responses on your assignment. You do not need to repeat the questions above. Please title your assignment with your LAST NAME and week number (for example, SmithWeek1.docx).

Submit your assignment to the Dropbox located on the silver tab at the top of this page. For instructions on how to use the Dropbox, read these step-by-step instructions or watch this Dropbox Tutorial.

See the Syllabus section "Due Dates for Assignments & Exams" for due date information.

I will grade your assignment and post the grade and comments in the Gradebook. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Note! Please use APA formatting in your papers this term. There is an APA handbook and tutorial links in the syllabus. Our online librarians and Tutor Source are also good places for APA help. Or, try The APA guide video in THElHUB.

For one of the references you can use a book called Fundamentals of Human Resource Management, 10th Edition if that helps. Thank You in advance for your assistance in the matter.