EMERGENCE OF THE HUMAN CAPITAL RESOURCE:A MULTILEVEL MODEL
ROBERT E.PLOYHART THOMAS P.MOLITERNO University of South Carolina
This article offers a new approach to the conceptualization of the human capital resource by developing a multilevel model connecting micro,intermediate,and macro levels of scholarship.We define human capital as a unit-level resource that is created from the emergence of individuals’knowledge,skills,abilities,or other characteris-tics.The model provides new insights into how strategically valuable human capital resources have their origins in the psychological attributes of individuals and are transformed through unit-level process.
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Scholarly thought regarding the importance of the human capital resource has a long tra-dition.Beginning with Adam Smith’s identifi-cation of “the acquired and uful abilities”of individuals as a source of “revenue or profit”(1963/1776:213–214),there is a widely acknowl-edged n that individuals posss a stock of skills,knowledge,and experiences that can be leveraged for organizational and/or per-sonal benefit.Building on this fundamental insight,scholars working in disciplinary tra-ditions ranging from psychology (Spearman,1927)to economics (Becker,1964)have devel-oped the human capital construct.In the realm of management rearch,microlevel scholars work
ing in the human resources (HR),organi-zational behavior (OB),and industrial/organi-zational (I/O)psychology domains,who are generally interested in individual-level phe-nomena,have largely studied how employee knowledge,skills,abilities,and other charac-teristics (KSAOs)are linked to individual-level outcomes (e.g.,Schmidt &Hunter,1998).At the other end of the spectrum,macrolevel organi-zational theorists and strategy scholars,who are generally interested in firm-level phenom-ena,have studied how the aggregate organi-zational-level experience,education,and
eagerskills of employees are resources (Penro,1959;Rumelt,1984;Teece,1982;Wernerfelt,1984)that can be leveraged to achieve sustain-able competitive advantage (Barney,1991;Pe-teraf,1993).
Yet despite the prominence of the human capital construct in both microlevel and mac-rolevel scholarship,and despite great theoret-ical and methodological sophistication within both disciplines and levels,there is little un-derstanding about how human capital mani-fests across organizational levels.If one de-fines “multilevel”as theory that speaks to the connection that integrates two or more levels (Kozlowski &Klein,2000),then there is no fully articulated multilevel theory describing how the human capital resource is created and transformed across organizational levels .While the recent strategic HR management (SHRM)literature (e.g.,Liao &Chuang,2004;Nishii,Lepak,&Schneider,2008;Takeuchi,Lepak,Heli,&Takeuchi,2007;Wright &Bos-we
ll,2002)in some ways fills the void between the micro and macro approaches to human capital by adopting multilevel principles,it focus primarily on the organizational prac-tices that leverage individual human re-sources and does not focus as much theoreti-cal attention on how human capital resources are created (for critiques e Gerhart,2005;Lepak,Liao,Chung,&Harden,2006;Wright &Haggerty,2005).helpful
This paper address this theoretical void and propos a multilevel model of human capital creation.To this end we define human capital as
We thank associate editor David Lepak and three anon-ymous reviewers for comments and feedback that not only improved the manuscript but truly shaped,refined,and focud our arguments.We are indebted to them for their input.We also thank Anthony Nyberg for commenting on previous versions of this manuscript and Steve Kozlowski for many helpful conversations relating to this paper.
Academy of Management Review 2011,Vol.36,No.1,127–150.
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a unit-level 1resource that is created from the emergence of individuals’knowledge,skills,abilities,and other characteristics (KSAOs).Cen-tral to this definition and the multilevel model we develop is the process of emergence.Kozlow-ski and Klein describe “a phenomenon [as]emergent when it originates in the cognition,affect,behaviors,or other characteristics of in-dividuals,is amplified by their interactions,and manifests as a higher-level,collective phenom-enon”(2000:55).In this way the model we pro-po articulates the full multilevel process of human capital resource emergence:the “collec-tive”unit-level human capital resource “origi-nates”in individual-level employee KSAOs.Most important,however,is the mechanism whereby the individual-level KSAOs are trans-formed and “amplified”to become a valuable unit-level resource.To explicate this process we draw on the groups literature and teams litera-ture (e.g.,Kozlowski &Ilgen,2006)to describe a new mechanism—the “emergence enabling pro-cess”—that is the driver of this transformative process.In describing the mechanism whereby individual-level KSAOs become unit-level hu-man capital resources,the emergence enabling process is the missing piece in the puzzle con-necting micro and macro human capital schol-arship.
The multilevel model of human capital emer-gence has many broad implications that both develop and challenge prevailing thinking re-garding human capital.First,the model ad-dress limitations in the existing body of hu-man capital literature both by articulating how individual-level KSAOs become a strategically valuable resource (typically neglected in mi-crolevel rearch)and by explaining how unit-level human capital resources are created (typ-ically neglected in macrolevel rearch).Second,in demonstrating how organizations create the valuable human capital resource by bundling individual-level KSAOs,we shed light on the microfoundations (Abell,Felin,&Foss,
2008;Felin &Hesterly,2007;Lepak et al.,2006;Teece,2007)of an important organizational dy-namic capability (Einhardt &Martin,2000;Helfat et al.,2007,Teece,Pisano,&Shuen,1997).Third,becau we explain how human capital originates from the aggregation of individual-level employee KSAOs,we broaden the concep-tualization of the unit-level human capital re-source.Thus,our overarching contribution is a multilevel model of human capital emergence that not only integrates the macro and micro perspectives to yield a more theoretically com-plete picture of human capital’s foundations,creation,and content but also challenges con-ventional thinking on human capital and rais many questions requiring theoretical attention.
MULTILEVEL THEORY AND HUMAN
CAPITAL RESEARCH Overview of Multilevel Theory
Multilevel theory is concerned with under-standing how constructs and process are re-lated across levels of analysis (e.g.,individual and firm).As Kozlowski and Klein note,“Multi-level theory building prents a substantial challenge to organizational scholars trained,for the most part,to ‘think micro’or to ‘think macro’but not to ‘think micro and macro’—not,that is,to ‘think multilevel’”(2000:11).In making the linkage between organizational levels,Kozlow-ski and Klein (2000)identify three major guiding principles that are central to both our evaluation of the existing human capital literature and the model we propo in this paper.First,multilevel scholarship makes a distinction between the level of theory and the level of measurement .The level of theory reprents the level (e.g.,individual,firm,business unit,etc.)at which a construct or process is expected to operate or exist,whereas the level of measurement repre-nts the level at which the construct or process is measured.
Second,multilevel rearch is concerned with emergence —the process explaining how and why phenomena at lower levels coalesce to cre-ate a higher-level construct that is distinct from its lower-level origins.The end result of this process leads to different forms of emergence,ranging from composition (e.g.,higher-level phenomena created through the homogeneity of lower-level phenome
na)to compilation (e.g.,
1
We u the term unit level to refer generically to the organizational level of interest.Thus,“unit level”might refer to the firm,business unit,division,group,or team level of analysis.Since the model of human capital resource emer-gence can apply to different organizational levels of aggre-gation,we opt for the more inclusive unit level term to identify the level in which rearchers have theoretical in-terest.
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higher-level phenomena created through heter-ogeneity of lower-level phenomena).Emergence does not imply higher-level phenomena are more or less complex than lower-level phenom-ena.Further,a sole focus on the end states of composition or compilation fails to recognize the theoretical explication of mechanisms driving emergence.Instead,the goal of multilevel re-arch is to explain the underlying theoretical process that creates emergent phenomena.In this way,the goal of this paper is to explain the theoretical process of human capital resource emergence.
Finally,scholars have argued that ignoring the multilevel issues may lead to a number of fallacious interpretations(Kozlowski&Klein, 2000;Rousau,1985).The fallacies include(1) misattributing the level of theory for a construct (e.g.,asssing employee competencies at the firm level;Gerhart,2005),(2)ignoring the effects of ,not realizing that the value of KSAOs is affected by the firm’s strategy;Barney, 1991),and/or(3)assuming that the findings from one level apply to other ,believing that hiring better employees always contributes to firm effectiveness;Ployhart,2004).
Single-Level Human Capital Rearch
Armed with even this admittedly brief over-view of multilevel theory,one can obrve that the majority of human capital rearch has taken a single-level approach(Hitt,Beamish, Jackson,&Mathieu,2008;Wright&Boswell, 2002).Not surprisingly,differences in the micro literature and macro literature on human capi-tal correspond to differences in the undergirding scholarly disciplines.The micro perspective is generally found in the HR literature,OB litera-ture,and I/O literature,and it draws mainly from ,Spearman,1927)or ,human capital theory;Becker,1964). Microlevel scholars define human capital largely in terms of individual differences in ,general intelligence,personality). The individual KSAOs are,in turn,linke
d to individual-level ,performance, turnover;Wright&Boswell,2002).Empirically, micro scholarship tends to measure broad and context-generic individual ,cogni-tive ability,personality)directly by administer-ing tests of the constructs.
In contrast,the macro perspective is articu-lated in the strategy literature and organization-al theory literature,which focus primarily on human capital as a unit-level resource that can contribute to sustained competitive advantage (Coff,1997,1999;Mahoney&Pandian,1992; Wright,McMahan,&McWilliams,1994).Macro scholarship emphasizes the context-or firm-specific nature of the human capital resource (e.g.,Coff,2002;Felin&Hesterly,2007;Hitt,Bier-man,Shimizu,&Kochhar,2001).Work in this tradition tends to study human capital at the unit level and to equate it with the aggregate knowledge,skill,or experience in the organiza-tion.In macro rearch the conceptualizations of human capital are frequently measured with managerial ,Hatch&Dyer,2004; Wiklund&Shepherd,2003),proxy measures (e.g.,Hitt et al.,2001),or counts of theoretically desirable human ,Kor&Leble-bici,2005).
Thus,both the micro and macro human capi-tal literature are largely single level(individual or unit),and within each literature the level of theory and level of measurement have generally been conceptualized at the same level of orga-nizational analysis.This single-level perspec-tive so domina
tes both approaches that they offer little guidance for each other(Wright& Boswell,2002).Our purpo is not to criticize this prior rearch—indeed,it has generated many important insights.Rather,we only note that management scholars are left with a piecemeal and incomplete understanding of the human capital resource’s foundations,creation,and content across organizational levels.Both the microlevel literature and macrolevel literature have contended with the shortcomings inherent in their single-level approaches by adopting a host of assumptions.Unfortunately,the cross-level assumptions may not be warranted and could very well be multilevel fallacies(Klein, Danreau,&Hall,1994;Rousau,1985;Simon, 1973).We suggest four areas where this defi-ciency is manifest(Table1).
First,the microlevel literature says little about how individual KSAOs lead to firm performance. Here,rearchers assume that a relationship be-tween individual KSAOs and unit-level perfor-mance exists,but there is little theory to directly support this association(Harris,1994;Schneider, Smith,&Sipe,2000).Moreover,the microlevel literature says very little about the mechanisms
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driving the relationship between individual KSAOs and unit-level performance.
Second,and relatedly,the micro literature adopts a “universalistic”perspective:KSAOs such as cognitive ability and personality are expected to relate positively to individual per-formance across most occupations and contexts (Schmidt &Hunter,1998).The conquence is a “more is better”approach,assuming that if a KSAO is related to an individual’s performance on the job,then greater aggregations of that KSAO will add value to the firm (Schmidt &Hunter,1998).Paradoxically,the macrolevel lit-erature suggests this is unlikely to be true and adopts a contingency approach to the value of human capital resources (Barney,2001).That is,human capital is only thought to be a valuable resource that contributes to unit-level perfor-mance and associated competitive advantage (Barney,1991)when it is relatively unit specific (Barney &Wright,1998).
Third,the macro literature generally recog-nizes only a very narrow range of individual-level attributes as a relevant source of human
pierrotcapital—namely,unit-specific skill,experience,and knowledge.Yet such a perspective ignores the rigorous rearch on individual differences conducted at the micro level (e.g.,cognitive and noncognitive KSAOs).
Finally,notwithstanding the first steps at un-derstanding the “microfoundations”of strategy (Felin &Hesterly,2007;Teece,2007),the mac-rolevel literature assumes it is possible to mea-sure human capital at the unit level with prox-ies,rather than asss attributes of individual employees directly.Conquently,this litera-ture says little about where the human capital resource originates,how it is created,and how it is transformed.
The Strategic Value of Creating Human Capital Resources
It is important to pau and ask a fundamen-tal question:Why,from an organizational per-spective,is it important to develop a multilevel model describing how unit-level human capital is created?The answer to this question rests in
TABLE 1
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Prototypical Characteristics and Key Assumptions of Micro and Macro Human Capital Rearch
Level of Theory Disciplinary Tradition Key Assumptions
Potential Multilevel Fallacies a
Micro (HR,OB,I/O
psychology)
Differential psychology
●Assumption 1:Individual differences affect the firm.More is better,so firms with more talented employees will outperform firms with less talented employees (there are no diminishing returns on talent).●Cross-level fallacy by assuming individual-level findings generalize to the firm level
●Assumption 2:Some KSAOs are always valuable.Overall cognitive ability and conscientiousness are valuable and important for all jobs.●Contextual fallacy by ignoring macro findings showing that the value of human capital
resources is context specific;cross-level fallacy by assuming individual-level findings generalize to the firm level
衡阳会计培训
Macro
(strategy)
Economics
●Assumption 3:Human capital is compod of knowledge,skill,experience,and/or education.●Cross-level fallacy by ignoring the many cognitive and noncognitive variations of individual differences found in the micro literature
●Assumption 4:Human capital exists at the firm (or unit)level and can be measured at that level (i.e.,there is little attempt to theorize or test whether and how aggregating individual KSAOs to create firm-level human capital is warranted).
●Misspecification fallacy by neglecting to
效益评估consider how individual-level KSAOs emerge to form a new unit-level human capital construct;cross-level fallacy by assuming firm-level measures of human capital adequately reprent the KSAOs of employees and by assuming all employees within the firm manifest identical human capital scores
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Our labeling of the fallacies is from Rousau (1985).
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the resource-bad view(RBV)of the firm(Grant, 1991;Penro,1959;Rumelt,1984;Teece,1982; Wernerfelt,1984),which argues that the firm’s resources can be a source of competitive advan-tage(Barney,1991;Mahoney&Pandian,1992) and economic value creation through the gener-ation of sustainable rents(Barney,1986;Lipp-man&Rumelt,2003;Mahoney,2001;Peteraf, 1993).This perspective has been applied to hu-man capital in particular(Barney&Wright, 1998;Boudreau&Ramstad,2005;Wright,Dun-ford,&Snell,2001;Wright et al.,1994).Taken together,this body of rearch suggests that human capital is a particular class of resource that can be a significant driver of unit-level performance.Moreover,the firm’s relative competency in managing its resources should likewi be a driver of competitive advantage (Mahoney,1995;Makadok,2001;Sirmon,Hitt,& Ireland,2007).
Shifting our theoretical focus from human capital as a resource that the organization pos-ss to the process through which human cap-ital resource emerges from individual KSAOs, we draw on theoretical insights from two streams in the recent macrolevel scholarly liter-ature.First,a number of scholars have noted that a full understanding of macrolevel con-structs requires an understanding of their“mi-crofoundations”or“subsystems”(Abell et al., 2008;Felin&Hesterly,2007;Teece,2007;and e Wright et al.,2001,for related points).Work in this area shows that firm-level theoretical constructs an
d phenomena are created and shaped by lower-level psychological and be-havioral mechanisms.Inasmuch as the RBV is a central theoretical perspective on firm-level competitive advantage,the definition of hu-man capital that we have offered—which identifies the origins of unit-level human cap-ital resource in individual-level KSAOs—aligns with,and is partly motivated by,schol-arship on microfoundations.
Second,rearchers developing the dynamic capabilities view(DCV)of the firm(Einhardt &Martin,2000;Helfat et al.,2007;Teece,2007; Teece et al.,1997)have defined dynamic capa-bilities as“the capacity of[the]organization to purpofully create,extend,or modify its re-source ba”(Helfat et al.,2007:4),and schol-ars have successfully leveraged the DCV with respect to human resources(Wright et al.,2001; Wright&Snell,1998).A central proposition of the DCV perspective is that the organization’s resource ba and the process through which it is created change in respon to en-vironmental changes(Einhardt&Martin, 2000;Maritan&Peteraf,2007;Teece,2007).This conceptual insight directly implies that the nature of the organization’s task—how and why the organization manages resources the way it does—is motivated by the environmen-tal context in which the organization operates (Barney,2001).Succinctly put,organizations “create great value by asmbling particular constellations of asts inside [ds and rvice
s that consumers want”(Helfat et al.,2007:23). This idea is at the core of the model we de-velop next:the emergence of human capital is a process of“asmbling”a valuable unit-level resource.Thus,we esntially parame-terize the microfoundations of an important dynamic capability.
A MULTILEVEL MODEL OF HUMAN CAPITAL
RESOURCE EMERGENCE
We have defined human capital as a unit-level resource that is created from the emer-gence of individuals’KSAOs,and we depict the multilevel model of human capital resource emergence in Figure1.It is important to recog-nize at the outt that the model and definition deviate substantially from existing human cap-ital theory and rearch.Unlike prior microlevel and macrolevel rearch assuming relation-ships at one level generalize to other levels,our model and definition explicate the nature of the cross-level relationships to explain how human capital resources are created and emerge from lower-level KSAO origins.Indeed, the definition of human capital resources explic-itly recognizes its cross-level and emergent nature.
Recalling that Kozlowski and Klein describe “a phenomenon[as]emergent when it origi-nates in the cognition,affect,behaviors,or other characteristics of individuals,is amplified by their interactions,and
finish什么意思manifests as a higher-level,collective phenomenon”(2000:55),we or-ganize our discussion of the multilevel model of human capital emergence into three parts.First, we draw from the work of differential psychol-ogy to define the origins of human , the KSAO box at the bottom of Figure1).The
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