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But when one of the major costs is labour like in service sector, it is more difficult to persuade managers and financiers of the long term benefits of investing in human capital. It is difficult to persuade employers due to the difficulty in increasing the pay rates or offer training when resources are constrained. Secondly, it depends upon the categories of staff that employers are trying to recruit. MacDuffie is one of the researchers who are supportive of universality argument but even his studies show that this model is situation specific. According to him, ' innovative HR practices are likely to contribute to improved economic performance only when three conditions are met: when employees possess knowledge and skills that managers lack; when employees are motivated to apply these skills through discretionary effort and when firm's business and production strategy can be achieved when employees contribute these discretionary efforts.' Thus, the 'best practice' model may be unattractive or inappropriate in some industries or with certain groups of workers and hence, it's not universally applicable. Baron and Kreps (1999, p. 29) argue that, 'no single approach to human resource management is universally applicable. Employees are people, and people are complex. They interact in complex ways with each other, with customers, with technology, and with strategy.' Lepak and Snell (1999) argue that, 'it may be inappropriate and monolithic to suggest that there is a common bundle of practices for managing all of a firm's employees. They agree with that while a dominant HR strategy or 'architecture' may exist (Becker and Gerhart, 1996), at an operational level multiple bundles of practices may develop that are unique to particular employee sub-groups.' A good deal of research into HR systems has taken place since Dyer & Reeves article was first published but difficulties still remain in understanding the components of high performance HR bundle. The mix of HR practices can vary according to organisations, sectors and countries. There are no set ways to determine as in which set of HR activities are more important. An organisation will enjoy success if their practices form a coherent and synergistic bundle. Guest (1997.270-1) in exploring the notion of fit as bundles, suggests that, 'in practice there may be a number of possible combinations of practices which will lead to high performance; for example some organisations may emphasize job security as the building block others prefer training and development. The other practices fit around these.' Thus, this shows that all practices have to fit with one another but all are not equally important. Their importance depends upon the situation and kind of problem in hand. Also it can be suggested that HR practices show an 'additive' relationship with each other and that they may have interactive effects where their effectiveness depends on the level of other HR practices, for instance workers will show interest in team working if their efforts are rewarded with performance related incentives like share ownership, access to training opportunities, etc. Ultimately, it's we who have to decide what suits our organisation whether 'best practice' or 'traditional practices' depending upon above mentioned situations.

There have been certain methodological issues with most if not all the studies concerning 'best practice' model. Limitations include reliance on single respondent data, use of sing