Competitive Advantage – The Human Capital Approach

This Special Issue is focused on the role of human capital (i.e., the skills, knowledge, competencies and experience of workers that make them productive) in the creation and maintenance of a firm’s competitive advantage in the market.  As the economy has transitioned from a stable manufacturing system to a hypercompetitive knowledge and service based system, organizational human capital has been recognized as the key source of value creation and the basis for establishing and maintaining a competitive advantage.  The objective of this special issue is to explore the variety of issues relating to the effective development, management and utilization of organizational human capital as it relates to creating market value (competitive advantage).  While all submissions related to this topic will be considered for publication, the following ideas, as they relate to competitive advantage, are suggestive of relevant issues:

• Organizational human capital and its relation to innovation
• Human capital as the basis for sustainable competitive advantage
• Informal experience as the basis for developing organizational human capital
• How to leverage existing human capital to create competitive advantage
• Methods of integrating and focusing organizational human capital for advantage
• Organizational culture and its impact on human capital formation and utilization
• How can a firm meaningfully measure and evaluate (e.g., value added, ROI) its human capital at any time
• The role of technology in developing and using organizational human capital
• Workforce flexibility and the utilization of human capital for competitive advantage
• Employee engagement and human capital formation and utilization
• Factors impeding the growth and use of organizational human capital
• Process of assessing the risk and return for investments in organizational human capital
• Different approaches for investing and retaining organizational human capital with different competitive strategies
• Defining the critical type and amount of human capital necessary for strategy implementation
• The organizational human resource system and its relation to the effective deployment, development and use of human capital

Prof. Dr. James A. Craft
Guest Editor