To understand Ulrich, we have to understand where he is coming from. This, you will see, brings light in what he wants to achieve. In his early days as a researcher, Ulrich was into competency research. Already back in the 80ies he has started an important project which a) is still going on and is quite interesting for us in HR as well as for Talent Management and b) builds the foundation for his model. This project is called “The Human Resources Competency Survey”. Some more details about it as well as the results of the latest edition can be found here. For deeper understanding I suggest to read “HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources” (2012) or “HR Competencies: Mastery at the Intersection of People and Business” (2008).
The HR Competency Survey is the biggest study on critical success competencies for HR professionals. The study is mainly influenced (as is Ulrich’s model) by US participants, but in its recent two episodes it was rolled out all over the world. In fact, not only Ulrich is running this, but some researches (see for example here) have used his survey to assess companies/ industries in different regions of the world.
In his study, Ulrich identified the critical competencies that an HR professional must have to be successful in todays business world. His study is based on self- and peer-rating of competencies as well as rating of company success/ business success.
After running 3 rounds of the survey (end of 80ies, beginning and mid 90ies) Ulrich used the results to propose a new model for HR based on a new purpose and backed with an organizational idea. Not the first mentioning but the most popular article about it was A new mandate for HR.
His 2nd theoretical basis, and this is an important one to understand, is the resource-based view of the firm. I will talk about that in my next posting.
Chief HR Officer 