Abstract Scholarly works stress the importance of strategic human resources in organizations.

The following study reflects whether or not colleges and universities are practicing strategic or traditional human resources. According to Edward E. Lawler, despite the compelling arguments in favor of human resource management being a key strategic issue in most organizations there is good reason to believe that historically, human resource executives have not been and are not now strategic partners. Instead of being strategic partners, the function has been largely an administrative one. (Lawler, 1995.p,10) . Therefore, based on Lawler, colleges and universities are probably not practicing strategic human resources; rather they are practicing traditional human resources. Traditional human resources practices, years ago, were thought of as paper pushers, which consist of hiring, firing, processing benefits and compensation, and vacation time. This is still true today of traditional human resources. However, strategic human resources are the new and innovative practice to improve the total performance and growth of an organization. Strategic human resources consists of interviewing, intrinsic, and extrinsic rewards program, employee performance/feedback appraisals, recruiting, advise, educate, and coach senior executives, and is an active participant in the strategic decision-making process. This study will determine how small colleges and universities in Kentucky practice human resources, based on the information collected from the survey of colleges and universities in Kentucky.

Introduction Every organization has one thing in common with each other; they revolve around people and need the knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics that people possess to be fully successful, to better develop the strategies for the organizations to guide them to a more certain success including the human capital. That is the function of the strategic HR department. Unfortunately, many organizations are still only using their HR departments as a traditional resource and not allowing them to be a strategic business partner. We often write about becoming more strategically involved and adding value at all levels of the corporate hierarchy, but seldom do we take this beyond the printed word or HR discussions and forums (Stemmet & Stemmet, 2010, pgs. 30 31). Many colleges and universities are teaching the importance of strategic HR and how students can become strategic HR professionals. Are they just leading the learning, discussions, and forums or are they strategic themselves? This question is latent for HR professionals within private universities. Commonly private universities are for profit businesses, however; do they practice their lectures that about human capital? If so does the practice give them the competitive advantage? With these questions in mind and limited research on the topic we looked for the answer are private colleges and universities HR strategic or traditional?

Strategic v. Traditional When thinking about the term strategic, thoughts like innovation, precision, initiative, well designed plans, and operations come to mind. Being strategic means management should include the HR department in the decision making process for other departments such as production, marketing, and development. According to Mello, strategic HR involves considering employees as human assets and developing appropriate policies and programs as investments in these assets to increase their value to the organization and the marketplace. This function is opposite from the traditional role of HR that focuses more on administrative aspects. According to Stemmet and Stemmet, these traditional roles are most comfortable for HR practitioners. By remaining traditional, HR avoids the overwhelming technicalities of business functions. They continue with this thought by stating, we then choose to stick to what we know best: HR practices, policies, procedures and the employment law, recruitment, selection and metrics (Stemmet & Stemmet, 2010, pgs.30-31). These practices include such things as filing new hire paperwork, maintaining records, administering payroll, and benefits, maintaining the knowledge to conform to the laws, and making sure the business policies that employees follow are current. Traditional roles maintain compliance and administrative functions whereas strategic roles bring new innovation to an organization that can best employ human capital to enhance the organization. Without effective human resources companies are likely to have little or no revenue Lawler cautions (Lawler, 1995, p.1). Considering an organization as strategic it must first be a participating partner at the top management level. Skinner believes that HR needs to be a top priority because superior human resources created the most central, basic, and powerful strategic competitive advantage possible, human resources management should receive top priority (Skinner, 1981,). HR executives

should not just update management but should be at the table when discussing important issues about the future of the college or university. HR executives need to be literate and aware of current trends in the business and finance arena, to develop strategic plans for human capital within the scope of what management demands for the business plan or the financial budget. New trends in strategic HR require performing various tasks simultaneously such as: - Active role in both HR development and implementation into the organizations overall strategic plan - Build performance appraisal systems that identify minor and major variances. - Develop human capital strategy to increase productivity, retain talent, and boost profits. - Recommend training methods, and systems to develop competent, knowledgeable, and skilled human capital. If the HR department have the capabilities to be strategic, why some are very traditional? According to Skinner (1981), they had a difficult time because, critical problems in the corporate management of personnel, such as the place of human resources management (HRM) in corporate decision making, the role of personnel staff, and a lack of sufficient human resources management know-how at top management levels, remain largely unresolved (pg. 106). Is it better for these critical problems to remain unresolved and to stay a traditional HR department? According to Beer (1997), it takes finding the right people with the right skills to become strategic. He also continues to speak about how HR departments cannot find the time to perform both functions furthermore, HR professionals who have somehow been able to perform both roles, often find their inclination to perform the traditional role diminishes. In short, the

administrative and strategic roles do not easily coexist in the same function or the same person (Beer M. 1997, pg.110). If this is true and the HR department cannot have both traditional and strategic aspects in one department, it is no wonder many organizations remain traditional today. Simply stopping at that HR cannot perform both roles in one department or have the time to do so is not the reason to not reach out to become strategic. Part of becoming strategic is finding these difficult challenges and creating solutions and implementing them for success. With technology constantly changing every day, technology drives many HR functions freeing up time from the traditional administrative roles for the strategic role. According to Lawler and Mohrman (2003), much administration can be done by self-service information technology, solutions that are either hosted by the company or outsourced. If this is simple why HR departments still focusing on administrative aspects alone. Outsourcing payroll, benefits, and hiring is becoming a very popular trend helping HR to acquire a strategic role. According to Becker and Huselid (1998) there is a relationship between firm performance and HR practices, they found that firms with the greatest intensity of HR practices that reinforce performance had the highest market value per employee. If colleges and universities are teaching different ways to be strategic and proposing tools to implement strategic HR are they using what they teach to improve themselves? If HR has the potential to make those colleges and universities to improve, is this a hole in one they want to score? The following study is to determine management and human resource involvement in strategic HR leadership.

The Study Our study, HR: A Hole In One?, aimed to reach faculty and staff at small private colleges and universities within Kentucky to determine if the small private colleges and universities have a strategic HR department as the one they teach. The surveys designed to ensure answers remain anonymous, and sent by e-mail to the faculty and staff of the colleges and universities. Sample The sample corresponds to small private colleges and universities with a population equal or less than 10,000 students. The study includes 15 campuses for a total of 433 surveys emailed to the faculty and staff. Forty-nine complete surveys representing a response rate of 11.3% are the basis for the research. Survey The survey covers four general areas of human resources along with collecting demographic information about the participants: 1. HR being an active participant at meeting relating to the future of the university. 2. Whether or not HR department is strategic or traditional and how leadership perceives it. 3. The HR and leadership involvement at the university. 4. Employees value to HR and Management by means of employee suggestions, human capital, utilization, and performance appraisals. Analysis The analysis is the result of the statistics from the survey and a comparison of the HR functions to determine if they are strategic or traditional. As discussed earlier, determining if an