Competitive Advantage

Human Resource Management
(competitive advantage)

Abstract

In today’s fast-paced economy competition is an issue of services and products. Much attention has been directed to a better service and the best product and how this can be achieved through utilizing the human resources. This research paper identifies the competitive advantage concepts and models, competitive strategies and the main human resource practices that have a significant impact on the employee’s performance. Understanding sources of competitive advantage has become a major area of research in the field of strategic management. Finally a summary of practical criteria of best practice for competitive advantage is presented and a general discussion and recommendations have been drawn.

Introduction

The firm is regarded as a cohesive organism, which learns to adopt or find better ways of doing things essentially in response to its environment. The question then is what really the firm should do to maintain or to optimize its situation in its environment? Should it focus on its financial situation, its technology, or its human resources? To answer this question we should at first see what other researchers have concluded. Coff 1994 argues that human assets are a key source of sustainable advantage because of causal ambiguity and systematic information making them inimitable. Guest 1990 says that if management trust their workers and give them challenging assignments, workers in return will respond with high motivation, high commitment and high performance. Gratton 1997 identified six factors for success: the commitment of top management; the motivation and aspirations of recruits; the core capabilities of the management team; the team’s aspiration; its ability to build and maintain alliances; and the integration of the business into a global network. What does that mean to us? Its means that sources of competitive advantage have shifted from financial resources to technology resources and... [continues]

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