Sustained Competitive Advantage Using Human Resources Theoretical Critique essay format. Within a challenging economic environment role strategic human resource management insignificant. Do approaches strategic

There has been tremendous growth in the strategic management field, and this has made it more popular amongst the practitioners and academics in the previous twenty years. For research structuring, industrial organization strategist rely on the SWOT framework. This has been the case since strategy became a recognized area in the management field Oliver, 1997.

Recently there has been other contributions made to the literature strategy, and this has emphasized the external part of the SWOT framework. The external part focuses mostly on the environmental impacts of the firm's performance. Models that focus on the environmental impacts of the firm's performance have little use to the practitioners though they are well received. These models communicate little regarding the manager's influence.

In strategic management, there has been a new entrant, and this is the resource-based view of the company. This view looks at the company from a competitive advantage view point. It differs from the environmental focused strategic management, as it emphasizes on the relationships between internal resources of the company, its performance, and its strategy. There is no theoretical discussion to show which resources can serve as sustained competitive advantage, and in which situations the resources might generate sustained competitive advantage Powell, 1992.

The paper will show that human resources can contribute greatly to the company's sustained competitive advantage.

Resource based theory

This theory is rooted in the organizational economics literature. Theories of competition and profit associated with Schumpter, Penrose, and Ricardo focus on the company's internal resources as been the main determinants of competitive success. Resources are defined as things which are thought to be a company's weaknesses or strengths. The tangible assets that are semipermanently tied together with the company Rindova & Fombrun, 1999.

This definition can be expanded to include assets, organizational processes, capabilities, information, company attributes, and knowledge all of which are controlled by the company, enabling it to conceive and implement strategies which improve the company's effectiveness and efficiency. A company's resources...

In the resource-based view, competitive advantage only takes place in firm resource immobility, and firm resource heterogeneity situations. When the other competing companies are not able to duplicate the competitive advantage benefits, it is referred to as sustained competitive advantage from the resource-based view. Therefore, until all efforts from the company's competitors to duplicate its advantage have stopped, competitive advantage cannot be considered sustained.
For a resource to be quantified as a sustained competitive advantage source by the company, it must add value to the company, must be inimitable, rare, and there should be resource substitutes Narasimha, 2000.

This is the resource-based view of a resource.

The role of human resource in sustained competitive advantage

When there is a heterogeneous supply and demand for labor, human capital becomes distributed. Companies have different histories and work processes characterized by social complexity and causal ambiguity Cockburn, Henderson, & Stern, 2000.

Human resource can then be transferred across technologies. This means that human resource has the potential of adding to the company's sustained competitive advantage. This factor is always ignored. Having a high number of human capital should allow a company to gain productivity advantages as compared to its competitors. Individuals performing a specific task can come up with some efficient strategies for perfoming the task, and this would increase their productivity. A company that has a high number of human capital resources will generally be more productive than its competitors. This will be through the efficiency they use in doing their tasks.

Company strategies develop via an evolutionary process of decisions that are aimed at achieving its objectives, which move the firm in the desired direction incrementally. The company's top management will set its overall strategic direction, but through the subunits responses to their environment, the specific tactics and strategies arise Ferligoj, Prasnikar, & Jordan, 1997.

Due to environmental changes, companies will have to monitor…