Getting access to strategic human capital resources: a multiple strategic factor market approach

We use the construct of HCRs to analyze the different ways in which organizations get access to human capital. After mapping the different dimensions of the acquisition decisions that firms make when building their HCRs, we analyze the characteristics of alternative sourcing strategies and of the markets associated with them. We posit that firms can strategize about how to build HCRs and that there is a variety of (potentially equifinal) ways in which they can: a) acquire the individual and collective components of HCRs; and b) enable the process of “emergence” of HCRs at the unit level. These ways span from individual hiring to cluster hiring, from vertical inter-organizational relationships (buyer-supplier) to alliances, from M&As (“acqui-hiring”) to platforms for crowdsourced problem solving. While existing frameworks of how organizations acquire unit-level HCRs mainly focus on individual-level hiring, a broader theoretical perspective is needed, one that integrates the strategic human capital and human resource management literatures with existing research on supplier-buyer relationships, corporate acquisition, and open innovation. This integrated approach calls for redefining the role of the HR function in the acquisition and development of HCRs.