Rethinking Sustained Competitive Advantage from Human Capital Again

Abstract

In this paper I propose a resource-based model of sustainable competitive advantage from human capital resources. I integrate labor-market theories of job search and matching and theories of efficiency wages with earlier resource-based contributions. I develop propositions about the conditions where firms can obtain competitive advantage from mobile human capital resources where earning positive rent does not depend on appropriating quasi-rents from employees but on (a) identifying and realizing valuable matches in labor markets with informational frictions and (b) exploiting complementarities between human capital and strategically relevant resources under the firm’s control.

Keywords: Strategic human capital, resource-based view, sorting and screening, search and mobility

JEL Classification: M10, M12, M51, J6, D24