Strategic human resource management within a resource-capability view of the firm

This paper takes a critical look at the field of strategic human resource management and in particular the debate about the strategic value of the human resource. We identify the contribution as well as the problematic nature of the situational-contingency perspective. Drawing from the strategic management literature and the concept of resource heterogeneity, we then posit a resource-capability view of the firm and argue that the mutually reinforcing interaction between the stock of knowledge, skills and expertise (resources) and the organizational routines and human resource policies and practices (capabilities) generates human resource competencies whose strategic value is realizable to the extent that they are linked with core competencies. We thus offer a reconceptualization of human resource competencies which goes beyond existing trait, behavioural and systems approaches. Finally, we identify the circumstances surrounding the generation and distribution of rents arising from the utilization of human resource competencies by drawing from transaction cost theory and industrial relations.