Direct and indirect effects of SEWi,family human capital and social capital on organizational social capital in small family firms

International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal - Given the importance of social capital in organizations, this research answers the question of how socioemotional wealth importance (SEWi),...     

Human capital and sustainable competitive advantage: an analysis of the relationship between training and performance

This article analyses the importance of training as a creator of human capital, which enables a company to obtain competitive advantages that are sustainable in the long-term that result in greater profitability. The study is based on the general theoretical framework of resource and capacity theory. The study not only analyses the impact of the influence of training on performance; it also attempts to analyse the nature of such a relationship in greater depth. This being the case, an attempt has been made to measure explanatory capacity from two different perspectives: the universalistic approach and the contingent approach. At the outset, two hypotheses are formulated that attempt to quantify the relationship from a universalistic perspective to later, in two more hypotheses, incorporate the potential moderating effect of the strategy into the model, in order to verify whether or not this strategy improves the explanatory power of our model of analysis.

Convergence or divergence: human resource practices and policies for competitive advantage worldwide

A the overall level of union membership has fallen in a number of advanced industrialized economies from the 1980s, researchers have become increasingly interested in the potential role of management actions in bringing about such reductions in union organization. Management opposition to union organization may take a number of different forms, with union de–recognition being the individual manifestation most frequently discussed and examined in Britain at the present time. The present paper, however, examines another possible manifestation of management opposition to union organization, namely the practice of multi–establishment organizations operating individual establishments on both a union and a non–union basis. This examination involves the analysis of two sets of survey data which contain evidence on the related phenomena of recognition by extension arrangements and non–uniform recognition arrangements. The basic picture which emerges is that recognition by extension arrangements has historically been of some considerable importance in Britain, although their future strength and influence may well decline as the extent of non–uniform recognition arrangements is now quite considerable and quite likely to increase over time.     

Increasing human and social capital by applying job embeddedness theory

Most modern lives are complicated. When employees feel that their organization values the complexity of their entire lives and tries to do something about making it a little easier for them to balance all the conflicting demands, the employees tend to be more productive and stay with those organizations longer. Job embeddedness captures some of this complexity by measuring both the on-the-job and off-the-job components that most contribute to a person's staying. Research evidence as well as ample anecdotal evidence (discussed here and other places) supports the value of using the job embeddedness framework for developing a world-class retention strategy based on corporate strengths and employee preferences.To execute effectively their corporate strategy, different organizations require different knowledge, skills and abilities from their people. And because of occupational, geographic, demographic or other differences, these people will have needs that are different from other organizations. For that reason, the retention program of the week from international consultants won’t always work. Instead, organizations need to carefully assess the needs/desires of their unique employee base. Then, these organizations need to determine which of these needs/desires they can address in a cost effective fashion (confer more benefits than the cost of the program). Many times this requires an investment that will pay off over a longer term – not just a quarter or even year. Put differently, executives will need to carefully understand the fully loaded costs of turnover (loss of tacit knowledge, reduced customer service, slowed production, lost contracts, lack of internal candidates to lead the organization in the future, etc., in addition to the obvious costs like recruiting, selecting and training new people). Then, these executives need to recognize the expected benefits of various retention practices. Only then can leaders make informed decisions about strategic investments in human and social capital.

Selected bibliography

A number of articles have influenced our thinking about the importance of connecting employee retention strategies to business strategies:

• R. W. Beatty, M. A. Huselid, and C. E. Schneier. “New HR Metrics: Scoring on the Business Scorecard,” Organizational Dynamics, 2003, 32 (2), 107–121.

• Bradach. “Organizational Alignment: The 7-S Model,” Harvard Business Review, 1998.

• J. Pfeffer. “Producing Sustainable Competitive Advantage Through the Effective Management of People,” Academy of Management Executive, 1995 (9), 1–13.

• C. J. Collins, and K. D. Clark. “Strategic Human Resources Practices and Top Management Team Social Networks: An Examination of the Role of HR Practices in Creating Organizational Competitive Advantage,” Academy of Management Journal, 2003, 46, 740–752.

The theoretical development and empirical support for the Unfolding Model of turnover are captured in the following articles:

• T. Lee, and T. Mitchell. “An Alternative Approach: The Unfolding Model of Voluntary Employee Turnover,” Academy of Management Review, 1994, 19, 57–89.

• B. Holtom, T. Mitchell, T. Lee, and E.Inderrieden. “Shocks as Causes of Turnover: What They Are and How Organizations Can Manage Them,” Human Resource Management, 2005, 44(3), 337–352.

The development of job embeddedness theory is captured in the following articles:

• T. Mitchell, B. Holtom, T. Lee, C. Sablynski, and M. Erez. “Why People Stay: Using Job Embeddedness to Predict Voluntary Turnover,” Academy of Management Journal, 2001, 44, 1102–1121.

• T. Mitchell, B. Holtom, and T. Lee. “How To Keep Your Best employees: The Development Of An Effective Retention Policy,” Academy of Management Executive, 2001, 15(4), 96–108.

• B. Holtom, and E. Inderrieden. “Integrating the Unfolding Model and Job Embeddedness To Better Understand Voluntary Turnover,” Journal of Managerial Issues, in press.

• D.G. Allen. “Do Organizational Socialization Tactics Influence Newcomer Embeddedness and Turnover?” Journal of Management, 2006, 32, 237–257.

Executive SummaryEmployee turnover is costly to organizations. Some of the costs are obvious (e.g., recruiting, selecting, and training expenses) and others are not so obvious (e.g., diminished customer service ability, lack of continuity on key projects, and loss of future leadership talent). Understanding the value inherent in attracting and keeping excellent employees is the first step toward investing systematically to build the human and social capital in an organization. The second step is to identify retention practices that align with the organization's strategy and culture. Through extensive research, we have developed a framework for creating this alignment. We call this theory job embeddedness. Across multiple industries, we have found that job embeddedness is a stronger predictor of important organizational outcomes, such as employee attendance, retention and performance than the best, well-known and accepted psychological explanations (e.g., job satisfaction and organizational commitment). The third step is to implement the ideas. Throughout this article we discuss examples from the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For and many others to demonstrate how job embeddedness theory can be used to build human and social capital by increasing employee retention.     

比较优势也是竞争力--营造企业比较优势之策

企业比较优势,是一种个性化的优势,它是指企业以客观上具有很强市场适应性的独特商业模式介入一定时空的市场竞争,掌握市场竞争的主动机,从而形成较强的业务和利润增长态势.企业比较优势有三个基本特征:客观性、差异性、经济性(低成本).     

Managing human resource for competitive advantage: a study of companies in Singapore

We see two major streams of research in the strategic human resource management literature: (1) the link between strategy and human resource (HR) practices and (2) the link between HR practices and firm performance. There is a plethora of theoretical perspectives on the first link. Unfortunately, there is not much empirical work. The second link has seen a spate of empirical studies. However, most of them embrace the universal perspective and the role of strategy as a contingency has not been adequately addressed. This could potentially result in the underestimation of the impact of HR practices on organizational performance. This study addressed the above two weaknesses in previous research in the strategic HR management field. Using a sample of about 200 of the largest companies representing all major industries in Singapore, we found that organizational strategy affects HR practices. Moreover, findings suggest that the strategy-HR interaction accounts for more variation in firm performance than the main effect of HR. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Residential mobility and social capital

This paper empirically investigates the role of social capital in households' residential mobility behavior by considering its spatial dimension. This study focuses on a household's social ties with people living nearby, which we refer to as its “local social capital.” Local social capital may deter residential mobility, because the resources stemming from them are location-specific and will be less valuable if a household moves. We conjecture that a household's possession of local social capital has a negative effect on its residential mobility, and this negative effect of local social capital may be stronger on long-distance mobility than on short-distance mobility. Our empirical investigation is based on data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We obtain evidence which is supportive of these conjectures.     

企业战略联盟的竞争优势及战略联盟管理

企业战略联盟是企业在合作竞争机制下产生的新的企业组织形式,战略缺口理论和中间组织理论是企业组建战略联盟的理论基础。本文认为应从联盟成员的选择、专门管理机构的设立以及跨文化管理等几个方面加强企业战略联盟管理,以提高企业战略联盟的成功率。     

Environmental performance and competitive advantage in Canada's paper industry

A new environmental performance model is developed, explained and subsequently applied to a study of the Canadian recycled paper industry. The strategic position of the industry is explored as it takes the progressive steps needed to improve its environmental performance and competitive advantage in response to this rising regulatory agenda. Three policy options facing the Canadian pulp and paper industry are examined: the status quo, process technology innovation and product development. The strategic position of the industry is also examined using measurement of stance, attitude, government response, values, planning horizon and environmental integration. The supplier-consumer relationship, capital-technology and locational factors are also used to further discuss the links between competitive advantage and environmental performance. From this discussion, conclusions are drawn on competitive environmentalism: ethics and profit are compatible; newsprint mills must improve their locational, technology and market actions; the industry must proactively seek out environmental market and stakeholder opportunities and; further management research is needed to demonstrate the links between environmental performance, innovation and competitiveness.     

Fiscal policy,entry and capital accumulation: Hump-shaped responses

In this paper we consider the entry and exit of firms in a Ramsey model with capital and an endogenous labour supply. At the firm level, there is a fixed cost combined with increasing marginal cost, which gives a standard U-shaped cost curve with optimal firm size. The costs of entry (exit) are quadratic in the flow of new firms. The number of firms becomes a second state variable and the entry dynamics gives rise to a richer set of dynamics than in the standard case: in particular, there is likely to be a hump shaped response of output to a fiscal shock with maximum effect after impact and before steady-state is reached. Output and capital per firm are also likely to be hump shaped.     

Public enterprise,public works,social fixed capital

The result of our digression is, incidentally, that the production of the means of communication, of the physical conditions of circulation, is put into the category of the production of fixed capital, and hence does not constitute a special case. Meanwhile, and incidentally, there opened up for us the prospect, which cannot be sharply defined yet at this point, of a specific relation of capital to the communal, general conditions of social production, as distinct from the conditions of a particular capital and its particular production process (Marx, edn 1973, 533).     

HRM practices for human and social capital development: effects on innovation capabilities

This paper analyzes the effect of systems of human resource management (HRM) practices on a company's innovation capabilities. To date, few studies have analyzed the way a firm may be more innovative by using specific sets of high-performance HRM practices from an intellectual capital-based view of the firm. From an extensive literature review, a model was established and tested through structural equation modelling, using the statistical technique of partial least squares. The study was applied to a sample of technological firms in Spain and the results show that high-profile personal HRM practices positively influence human capital while collaborative HRM practices influence social capital, which, in turn, affect innovation capabilities by means of, respectively, total and partial mediating effects. Managerial and HRM implications of these results are drawn by the authors, highlighting the idea of paying increased attention to managing firms with a focus on strategic intangible assets in order to gain competitive advantages based on innovation.     

The effects of internal locus of control on entrepreneurship: the mediating mechanisms of social capital and human capital

This paper proposes the research framework that locus of control enhances entrepreneurship through the mediating mechanisms of increased social capital in interpersonal networks and improved human capital in personal development. We adopted structural equation modeling to examine the research hypothesis. The research participants comprised managers from 14 enterprises in China; a total of 1002 valid questionnaires were collected. The results revealed that social and human capital mediate the effect that internal locus of control exerts on entrepreneurship. This study provides the following research contributions: first, the findings address the gaps in previous studies regarding the effect that a single dimension (i.e. personality traits) produces on entrepreneurship. Second, by employing the social exchange and human capital theories, we integrated interpersonal and individual perspectives into the research framework to explore factors affecting entrepreneurship, identifying that social and human capital are key-mediating mechanisms through which locus of control influences entrepreneurship.     

Growth and social capital: an evolutionary model

In this paper, we analyze the role of cooperation between firms through a model of growth and social capital. In a growth model à la Solow we incorporate the set of resources that a relational network has at its disposals, as a distinct production factor, and thus examine its dissemination through evolutionary type processes in firm interactions. Dynamic analysis of the model demonstrates that cooperation is able to increase the productivity of factors, fostering a higher rate of growth in the long term. The most significant result is that scarcity of social capital can produce a general collapse of the economic system in areas in which long term growth is usually sustained by the learning by doing and spillover of knowledge phenomena. This conclusion leads to reconsider the role of local development economic policies that should concentrate on activities that promote repeated interaction between firms proven to be cooperative or that encourage the formation of technological consortia.     

Endogenous growth, the Solow model and human capital

Both endogenous growth theory and the (augmented) Solow model propose a role for human capital in the growth process though each is based on different conceptual arguments. Since both approaches can justify the inclusion of human capitallevels andgrowth rates in an output growth regression the two theories cannot readily be distinguished empirically. This paper argues that the variable most commonly used in empirical studies to proxy human capital (levels or growth) — school enrolment rates (SERs) — may capture bothstock andaccumulation effects, butchanges in SERs can provide useful additional dynamic information on the contribution of human capital to growth. Empirical evidence from samples of developed and less developed countries during 1960–85 suggests important growth effects associated both with initial levels of, and changes in, SERs. The nature of these effects appears to differ between the two country groups.I am grateful to an anonymous referee and to Subrata Ghatak for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper, and to Massimo Suardi for research assistance