Business Commons^™

Time For Realignment: The Hr Ecosystem, Scott Snell, Shad Morris

Faculty Publications

The concepts of fit and alignment have been foundational to the field of strategic human resource management. And while the theoretical premises that underlie these concepts remain useful and intuitively compelling, the lack of empirical evidence to support them proves problematic. Part of the reason, we suspect, is that our research on fit and alignment does not fully reflect realities of contemporary organizations or the practical challenges faced by managers. We argue that HR researchers have an opportunity to reframe concepts of fit and alignment to better reflect the complexities and dynamics of contemporary models of strategy and organization. We …

Dancing With The Stars: The Practical Value Of Theory In Managing Star Employees, Shad Morris, Sharon A. Alvarez, Jay B. Barney

Faculty Publications

Star employees create disproportionate value for organizations. However, managing stars is decidedly difficult. Scholars have not yet appropriately addressed this practical problem. Much of the problem is interpreting our theoretical models that convey human capital from a static perspective. By combining incomplete contract theory with human capital research and theories of strategy, we show how existing theory can provide a framework for solving problems related to managing stars while also offering a platform for further research within the strategic human capital field. To do this, we recap extant theory and examine how stars create value for an organization by co-developing …

Compliance Police Or Business Partner? Institutional Complexity And Occupational Tensions In Human Resource Managment, Kurt Sandholtz, Tyler N. Burrows

Faculty Publications

Faced with institutional demands, organizations often create departments whose work is divorced from technical imperatives. This paper examines workers in one such department: Human Resources. Analysis of HR's recent history and evidence from an ethnographic study of HR work highlight the institutional origins of conflict between HR's established "compliance police" role and the "business partner" expectations of line managers. The paper outlines a theory of how organizational responses to institutional complexity contribute to persistent tension in HR and other heteronomous occupations.

Firm-Specific Human Capital Investments As A Signal Of General Value: Revisiting Assumptions About Human Capital And How It Is Managed, Shad S. Morris, Sharon A. Alvarez, Jay B. Barney, Janice C. Molloy

Faculty Publications

Research Summary:

Prior scholarship has assumed that firm-specific and general human capital can be analyzed separately. This paper argues that, in some settings, this is not the case because prior firm-specific human capital investments can be a market signal of an individual’s willingness and ability to make such investments in the future. As such, the willingness and ability to make firm-specific investments is a type of general human capital that links firm-specific and general human capital in important ways. The paper develops theory about these investments, market signals, and value appropriation. Then the paper examines implications for human resource management …