Asian Social Science; Vol. 11, No. 9; 2015 ISSN 1911-2017 E-ISSN 1911-2025 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 118 The Role of HR Managers: A Conceptual Framework Bahare Ghalamkari 1 , Negar Mahmoodzadeh 1 , Nouredin Barati 1 , Aliyu Isah-Chikaji 1 , Ahmed Umar Alkali 1 & Roya Anvari 1 1 Department of Human Resource Development, Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia Correspondence: Roya Anvari, Department of Human Resource Development, Faculty of Management, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia. E-mail: roya.anvari@utm.my Received: September 2, 2014 Accepted: October 18, 2014 Online Published: April 2, 2015 doi:10.5539/ass.v11n9p118 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ass.v11n9p118 Abstract In the process of decentralization, the role of Human Resource (HR) Manager has changed from having overall responsibility for employees to having responsibility for the management of the organization. Despite the aforementioned fact, a gap in the knowledge can be detected in the field of systematic evaluations of the claims that it is linked to effectiveness and doubts. This review has determined influence of HR practices on the three basic patterns base on Resource based view. Further studies need to be established to study other important factors involved. Keywords: human resource management, performance, resource based view 1. Introduction The factors of globalization of production and markets contribute to increase the dynamism of the competitive environment and innovation in global scale. Firms need to exploit all the available resources as a means of achieving competitive advantage in order to survive in a global economy in the new millennium. The human resources have been recently identified as a source of competitive advantage (Pfeffer, 1994). To state the matter differently, it is widely accepted that people in organizations are an important source of competitive advantage for firms. According to several researches, the assumptions that employees and the way they are managed are critical to the success of a firm are based on the increasing interest in human resources (Lado & Wilson, 1994; Wright & McMahan, 1994; Kamoche, 1996). Similarly other researchers consider human resources as intangible assets that have essential role for successful in organizations (Rayej et al., 2011). Several of the strategic human resource management studies have been concentrated on the understanding the relationship between SHRM practices and firm performance because firm performance is considered as one of the major organizational goals. As the matter of fact, it is rational to emphasize on the role of SHRM system as solutions to business problems in a study that illustrates the organizations with ability to achieve competitive advantages and greater market share. Producing the quality and productive individuals that will eventually minimize the problems that are related to human resource such as turnover of employees, job dissatisfaction and absenteeism are the direct results of having an effective strategic human resource. In order to compete effectively with other organizations, firms must constantly improve their performance by enhancing quality, reducing costs and differentiating their services and products. Furthermore, by increasing the intensity of competition among organizations, corporation cannot guarantee their ability to compete by price, quality competition and eventually uncertainty of environment increases. Hence, innovation and speed in respond to customers is the key to business success (Chang & Huang, 2005). The pressures on firm increase considerably and the need to continuously reform ways to compete has become inevitable. It was indicated that only by the value, rarity, difficult to copy and difficult to imitative a firm is able to achieve competitive advantage (Barney, 1991). According to many investigators, a sustained competitive advantage for an organization will be gained if that organization controls human resources in a direct employment relationship (Wright & McMahan, 1994). Similarly, finding of Pang et al. (2009) in IC design industry in Taiwan shows that the management and human resources have positive impacts on firm performance. The quality of being diverse and not comparable in kind of human resources makes investigators to seek competitive advantage from outside the enterprise environment, industry structure that transferred to the internal enterprise. Current research is an effort to analyse the human resource practices in the enterprise applications.