The goal of strategic integration lies at the heart of Guest's (1987) model of Human Resource Management (HRM). Legge (1995) cites Guest (1987) in identifying three aspects of strategic integration: the integration or "fit" of human resources policies with business strat­ egy; the integration or complementarity and consistency of "mutual­ ity" employment policies aimed at generating employee commitment, flexibility and quality; and the internalisation of the im­ portance of human resources by line management. This paper will concentrate on the first aspect, and as such, an appropriate starting point is to consider the development of the theory of strategic human resource management (SHRM). The HRM integration approaches have been divided into "hard" and "soft" models (Storey, 1992; Legge, 1995). According to the most technical and functionalistic approaches of HRM integration, it is the business strategy that guides the formulation of human resource poli­ cies.