Exploring the relationship between strategy, advantage, and staffing, this guide shows that a firm’s talent philosophy and business creed determine its employment needs and explains that a company’s choice and execution of hires directly relates to its overall business sense and competitive edge. Examining nine strategic staffing decisions all firms must make, this essential reference illustrates the importance of people in the quality of a company’s technology and products. Jean M. Phillips and Stanley M. Gully have their doctorates in human resources and are professors of human resource management at Rutgers University. They are the coauthors of Strategic Staffing . They both live in Annandale, New Jersey. Staffing to Support Business Strategy By Jean M. Phillips, Stanley M. Gully Society For Human Resource Management Copyright © 2009 Phillips, Gully, and Associates All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-58644-161-6 Contents Introduction, Resource-Based View of the Firm, Business Strategy, Talent Philosophy, Deriving Staffing Strategy, Strategic Staffing Decisions, Competitive Talent Advantage, Goals of Strategic Staffing, Summary, Endnotes, Index, Acknowledgments, About the Authors, Additional SHRM-Published Books, CHAPTER 1 Resource-Based View of the Firm Most organizations recognize that a large budget and state-of-the-art facilities do not guarantee success. Success really depends on employees' motivations, competencies, and skills. The resource-based view of the firm describes how employees' motivations, competencies, and skills can help to create a sustained competitive advantage. What Is the Resource-Based View of the Firm? The resource-based view of the firm proposes that a company's resources and competencies can produce a sustained competitive advantage by creating value for customers by lowering costs, providing something of unique value, or some combination of the two. To create value, the hiring programs, policies, and practices of an organization must either lower the costs of the organization's products or services, enhance the differentiation of the organization's products or services in the eyes of customers, or both. To the extent that staffing influences who has the opportunity and desire to pursue an employment relationship with the organization, staffing serves as a gatekeeper in influencing the level and composition of an organization's talent. This can add value to the organization through employees' competency levels, experience, judgment, social relationships, and so on. Human resources can be a source of competitive advantage because they meet the criteria for being a source of sustainable competitive advantage: they add value to the firm, are rare, cannot be imitated, and cannot easily be substituted with other things. Other companies cannot necessarily replicate another firm's capabilities just by imitating the competitor's HR practices. The resource-based view of the firm focuses attention on the quality of the skills of a company's workforce at various levels, as well as on the quality of the motivational climate created by management. HR management is valued not only for its role in implementing a given competitive scenario but also for its role in generating strategic capability. Staffing has the potential to create organizations that are more intelligent and flexible than their competitors, and that exhibit superior levels of cooperation and performance. Requirements of a Competitive Advantage Peoples' efforts, talents, knowledge, and skills matter to organizations. If you don't believe this is true, then fire all of your organization's employees and replace them with cheaper workers. Few successful organizations would accept this challenge because they understand that their people are the key to their performance and survival. A competitive advantage is something that a company can do differently from its competitors that allows it to perform better, survive, and succeed in its industry. Sometimes an organization's competitive advantage is defined by its technology. Other times, innovative product lines, low-cost products, or excellent customer service drive competitive advantage. In every case, the company's employees create, enhance, or implement the company's competitive advantage. How do people make a difference? At companies such as Microsoft and Google, key technology is devised, implemented, and updated by the people who create and use it. Employees at Apple Computer, Pfizer, and 3M create and sell new and innovative product lines. Employees identify and implement the systematic manufacturing system improvements that create low-cost, high-quality automobiles at Hyundai. Finally, customer service at Starbucks is all about employee-customer interactions and experiences. In every case, employees influence and implement key drivers of business success. From where do these employees come? It all begins with the staffing pro