Human capital is an important construct in a variety of fields spanning from micro scholarship in psychology to macro scholarship in economics. Within the various disciplinary perspectives, research focuses on slightly different aspects and levels of human capital within organizations, which may give opportunities for integration. The current paper aims to increase knowledge about human capital within organizations by integrating two streams of research which focus directly on human capital, but have approached human capital in different ways: strategic human capital (SHC), and strategic HRM. We describe both SHC and strategic HRM research streams and propose areas of integration, and directions for future research on human capital in organizations. Human capital is a critical construct in a variety of disciplinary fields spanning from very macro scholarship in economics, where the concept was originally developed (Becker, 1964) to micro level scholarship in psychology who have focused on individual differences in knowledge, skills, abilities, and other talents. Both the strategy and HRM literatures recognize the importance of human capital for enhancing firm performance (Barney, 1991; Becker & Huselid, 2006; Crook, Todd, Combs, Woehr, & Ketchen, 2011). Given the various disciplinary perspectives, it is not surprising that different streams of research focus on slightly different aspects and levels of human capital within organizations. Approximately 10 years ago a group of scholars across several disciplines helped create a research group in the Strategic Management Society entitled strategic human capital (SHC). This group focuses on 'human capital' within organizations but tends to adopt a strategic or economic lens to understand how human capital
Human capital theory has recently expanded to include multilevel analysis by conceptualizing the unit-level human capital resource. At the same time, the value of complementary resources has been theorized to provide competitive advantages for firms. Thus, human capital at one level in the firm may impact the performance of human capital at another level in the firm if the resources are complementary. Through a multilevel analysis performed using hierarchical linear modeling of Major League Baseball data, we show that the relationship between individual human capital and individual performance is impacted by complementary functional and managerial unit-level human capital resources. As such, this paper contributes to the understanding of how complementary multilevel human capital resources relate to performance outcomes. Implications of our findings include support for the notion that more is not always better when it comes to high-quality human capital and that unit-level human capital plays an important role in performance of individual-level human capital.
This research examines the comparative effects of production manager and worker turnover in service and manufacturing settings. We suggest that, due to the centrality of human action in services and the ability of manufacturers to insulate the technical core, service and manufacturing companies are differentially dependent on and impacted by the loss of production manager and worker knowledge. The results from a survey of 150 service and manufacturing firms provide partial support for this notion and show that turnover impacts these organizations differently. More specifically, we find that: (1) the negative impact of production worker turnover on firm performance is greater in service settings than in manufacturing settings; and (2) the negative impact of production worker turnover on firm performance is greater than the impact of production manager turnover in service firms. In addition, our findings show that organizational capital moderates the turnover-performance relationship for production workers in service firms.
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