Shad S. Morris

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 3

Scarce Human Capital in Managerial Labor Markets

Strategic human capital scholars are increasingly recognizing the importance of human capital scarcity for explaining individual and firm outcomes. This article focuses on scarce human capital in the top manager labor market—and in particular, patterns in which top managers and firms form employment relationships. This examination redirects strategic human capital scholarship in three important ways. First, the findings point to the importance of specifying an omission from prior human capital scholarship: the relationship between human capital and the firm’s resource base (e.g., potential complementarities). Second, the article illustrates the need to simultaneously consider both human capital scarcity and complementarities, and reinforces that scarce human capital can indeed be general human capital. Finally, the theory explains how complementarities fundamentally alter value creation and appropriation dynamics. Specifically, complementarities facilitate the matching of the best managers and firms with the most productive resources, increase the size of the pie (financial proceeds) from the employment relationship, and can enhance the manager’s bargaining power in the division of these proceeds.

Building dynamic capabilities around organizational learning challenges

Purpose – The knowledge that is embedded within people, relationships, and organizational routines present key, but varied, sources of capabilities needed to compete. The value of this knowledge depends on the investment costs and benefits that come as employees draw on and utilize these different forms of knowledge to respond to global challenges. But something as intangible as knowledge can be a major source of misunderstanding and mismanagement. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that explores the underlying path of how knowledge assets might be configured to overcome misunderstanding and mismanagement. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop a framework to help scholars and organizations understand how to manage their different knowledge assets to ensure continual organizational effectiveness. To do this, the authors juxtapose three classes of knowledge assets – human capital, social capital, and organizational capital – against three types of learning – knowledge generation...