Answer to Question 1
Answer: The three levels are corporate-level, business/competitive-level, and functional-level strategies. Corporate-level strategy identifies the portfolio of businesses that comprise the company and the ways in which these businesses relate to each other. The business-level strategy is the next level. It identifies how to build and strengthen the business's long-term competitive position in the marketplace. The lowest level is the functional-level strategies. Functional strategies identify the basic course of action that each department will pursue in order to help the business attain its competitive goals. HR strategies are a type of functional strategy.
Every company needs its human resource management policies and activities to make sense in terms of its broad strategic aims. Strategic human resource management means formulating and executing human resource policies and practices that produce the employee competencies and behaviors the company needs to achieve its strategic aims. The basic idea behind strategic human resource management is simple: In formulating human resource management policies and activities, the manager's aim must be to produce the employee skills and behaviors that the company needs to achieve its strategic aims. Management formulates a strategic plan. That strategic plan implies certain workforce requirements. Given these workforce requirements, human resource management formulates HR strategies (policies and practices) to produce the desired workforce skills, competencies, and behaviors. Finally, the human resource manager identifies the measures he or she can use to gauge the extent to which its new policies and practices are actually producing the required employee skills and behaviors.
Answer to Question 2
Answer: TRUE