Administrador De Empresas

ON BECOMING A STRATEGIC PARTNER: THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCES IN GAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
Jay B. Barney and Patrick M. Wright

Although managers cite human resources as a firm’s most important asset, many organizational decisions do not reflect this belief. This article uses the value, rareness, imitability, and organization (VRIO) framework to examine the role that the human resource (HR)function plays in developing a sustainable competitive advantage. Why some popularly cited sources of sustainable competitive advantage are not, and what aspects of a firm’s human resources can provide a source of sustainable competitive advantage are discussed. The role of the HR executive as a strategic partner in developing and maintaining competitive advantage within the firm is alsoexamined. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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Introduction Human resource researchers and managers have long maintained that the human resource function plays an important role in firm performance. In fact, most corporate annual reports boldly state that the firm’s people are its most important asset. Despite these widely held beliefs and all-too-frequent statements, however, many organizationaldecisions suggest a relatively low priority on both the human resources of the firm and the Human Resource (HR) department. For example, when organizations require cost cutting, they look first to investments in the firm’s people, such as training, wages, and headcounts. In addition, even when top managers value the firm’s people, they may not value the HR department. For example, when asked how thefounder and CEO of one of the most

successful high technology companies in the world viewed the importance of human resources, the Director of Strategic Leadership Development replied,
Which do you mean? If you mean the Human Resource function, or what we call “big HR,” then he doesn’t have much value for them at all. If you mean the people of the company, or what we call “little hr,” then heplaces an extremely high value on them.

If top managers publicly espouse their commitment to the firm’s human resources, and the firm’s HR function has substantial responsibility for managing this valuable firm resource, then why do many organizational decisions not evidence this stated commitment to people or a respect for the HR function? We believe that the fault lies, in part, with the fact thatfew HR executives can explain, in eco-

Despite these widely held beliefs and all-too-frequent statements, however, many organizational decisions suggest a relative low priority on both the human resources of the firm and the Human Resource (HR) department.

Human Resource Management, Spring 1998, Vol. 37, No. 1, Pp. 31–46 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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•HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT, Spring 1998

nomic terms, how a firm’s people can provide sustainable competitive advantage and the role that the HR function plays in this process. Furthermore, due to this lack of understanding, many HR executives fail to direct the HR activities toward developing characteristics of the firm’s human resources that can be a source of sustainable competitiveadvantage. In this article we examine the economics underlying the role of human resources in a firm’s competitive advantage. We discuss the Resource-Based View of the Firm (Barney, 1991; Wernerfelt, 1984) and examine the value, rareness, imitability, and organization (VRIO) framework for analyzing sources of competitive advantage. The analysis provides executives in the HR function with the toolsnecessary to analyze how they can manage the function to develop a firm’s people as a source of sustainable competitive advantage.

The Resource-Based View of Competitive Advantage Academics and managers have both sought to understand the factors that determine the profitability of firms for many years. The resource-based view of organizations provides an economic foundation for examining the role...