Business Commons^™

An Architectural Framework For Global Talent Management, Shad S. Morris, Scott Snell, Ingmar Björkman

Faculty Publications

A unique characteristic of the multinational corporation is that it consists of culturally diverse employees that embody both firm-specific and location-specific human capital. This paper takes an architectural approach to describe how different types of human capital develop from the individual level, to the unit level, and then to the firm level in order to build a talent portfolio for the multinational corporation. Depending on the company’s strategy (multidomestic, meganational, transnational), different configurations of the talent portfolio tend to be emphasized and integrated to achieve competitive advantage. Implications for theory and practice are discussed and a research agenda is introduced.

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 …