On Becoming a Strategic Partner: The Role of Human Resources in Gaining Competitive Advantage

Although managers cite human resources as a firm\u27s most important asset, many organizational decisions do not reflect this belief. This paper uses the VRIO (value, rareness, imitability, and organization) framework to examine the role that the Human Resource (HR) function plays in developing a sustainable competitive advantage. We discuss why some popularly cited sources of sustainable competitive advantage are not, and what aspects of a firm\u27s human resources can provide a source of sustainable competitive advantage. We also examine the role of the HR executive as a strategic partner in developing and maintaining competitive advantage within the firm

A Resource-Based View Of International Human Resources: Toward A Framework of Integrative and Creative Capabilities

Drawing on organizational learning and MNC perspectives, we extend the resource-based view to address how international human resource management provides sustainable competitive advantage. We develop a framework that emphasizes and extends traditional assumptions of the resource-based view by identifying the learning capabilities necessary for a complex and changing global environment. These capabilities address how MNCs might both create new HR practices in response to local environments and integrate existing HR practices from other parts of the firm (affiliates, regional headquarters, and global headquarters). In an effort to understand the nature of such capabilities, we discuss aspects of human capital, social capital, and organizational capital that might be linked to their development. Page

Dynamic Organizations: Achieving Marketplace Agility Through Workforce Scalability

Dynamic organizations (DOs) operate in business environments characterized by frequent and discontinuous change, They compete on the basis of marketplace agility; that is on their ability to generate a steady stream of both large and small innovations in products, services, solutions, business models, and even internal processes that enable them to leapfrog and outmaneuver current and would-be competitors and thus eke out a series of temporary competitive advantages that might, with luck, add up to sustained success over time. Marketplace agility requires the ongoing reallocation of resources, including human resources. We use the term workforce scalability to capture the capacity of an organization to keep its human resources aligned with business needs by transitioning quickly and easily from one human resource configuration to another and another, ad infinitum. We argue that marketplace agility is enhanced by workforce agility because it is likely to meet the four necessary and sufficient conditions postulated by the resource based view (RBV) of the firm – valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable – if it can be attained. Our analysis therefore concludes by focusing on the two dimensions of workforce scalability – alignment and fluidity – and postulating a number of principles that might be used to guide the design of an HR strategy that enhances both. Throughout the paper, key concepts are illustrated using the experiences of Google, the well-known Internet search firm. Because the analysis is speculative and intended primarily to pique the interest of researchers and practitioners, the paper ends with a number of important questions that remain to be clarified

Understanding the Footprint of the RBV in International Business Studies: the Last Twenty Years of Research

International business (IB) research has evolved substantially over the past four decades incorporating new concerns and theoretical contributions. During the past two decades, the Resource-Based View (RBV) has gained the preference of many IB scholars and has gradually become one of the dominant theoretical perspectives for studying IB decisions and operations. The 1991 article “Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage” by Jay Barney is recognized as a fundamental contribution to the Resource-Based View (RBV). In this paper we assess the influence of the RBV, proxied by Jay Barney’s (1991) article, on IB research over the twenty years period, from 1991 to 2010. In this bibliometric study of the articles published in the leading journal for IB research – Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS) – we conduct citation and co-citation analyses, the networks of co-authorship, and delve into the analysis of the key research topics. Beyond understanding the extant research we also contribute to i identifying future research avenues.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

IT DYNAMIC CAPABILITY DEVELOPMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF DATA GENESIS CAPABILITY

Dynamic Capabilities are often considered as the factor justifying the different degrees of success of organizations in turbulent environment. However Dynamic Capability development remains a difficult issue to research, with a paucity of work directly addressing this question, despite its importance. The explanation of the development of Dynamic Capabilities would give organizations the instruments to rationally improve their chance of success and to more likely sustain their competitive advantage. We contribute to the emerging literature on Information Technology (IT) Dynamic Capability development by proposing a research framework grounded in the three sources of Dynamic Capabilities: organizational processes, firm history and firm's assets. Our model takes into consideration also the moderating role played by environmental turbulence on Dynamic Capability development and on process performance. In this contribution we lay the theoretical and methodological groundwork and we foresee the test of the model using Data Genesis (DG) capability as the context. DG is the Dynamic Capability of (1) choosing IT to generate and capture data in digital form, (2) integrating the technology in the appropriate business processes, and (3) managing the digital data so produced.IT capability; Dynamic Capability; capability development; Data Genesis

Dynamic capability and superior firm performance in the UK Media Industry

The past decade has seen a transformation in the way television broadcasters have managed their businesses. This paper examines the ‘dynamic capability’ of two UK television broadcasters, BskyB and ITV, and their ability to adapt and transform themselves into multi-product, multi-platform media companies. Using Comparative Financial Analysis and Content Analysis of company Annual Reports, it compares and contrasts operating ratios in a time series, to gauge each company’s historical performance over time, whilst also providing inter-company comparisons. It also illustrates how the strategic management of media firms can be significantly different for two companies operating in the same sector. This research demonstrates an original contribution to knowledge in two areas. Firstly, it provides evidence of the dynamic capability performance effects of significant players in UK television broadcasting. Secondly, it extends the limited debate in literature on how to measure dynamic capability performanc

Amending the Resource-based view of Strategic Management from an Entrepreneurial Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to amend the resource-based view of strategic management from an entrepreneurial point of view. We firstly attempt to make a brief survey of the conceptual framework of the RBV by contrasting it with the competitive forces approach (CFA) presented by Porter (1980). Secondly, we clarify the objectives of corporate strategy through a critical assessment of the RBV from both a static and a dynamic point of view. Finally, we suggest a new perspective of the RBV by amending it from an entrepreneurial viewpoint, and then take some examples to illustrate the new perspective for further empirical studies.resource-based view, entrepreneurship, disequilibrium

Human Resources and the Resource Based View of the Firm

The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has influenced the field of strategic human resource management (SHRM) in a number of ways. This paper explores the impact of the RBV on the theoretical and empirical development of SHRM. It explores how the fields of strategy and SHRM are beginning to converge around a number of issues, and proposes a number of implications of this convergence