Human Capital Mobility: The Creator and Destroyer of Competitive Advantage

Abstract

The relationship between human capital and firm performance has been explored extensively and continues to be a topic of great interest in the management literature (Becker, 1964; Coff, 1999; Lepak and Snell, 1999). Human capital as a firm-level resource is unique in both its ability to confer competitive advantage and its mobility (Barney, 1991; Huselid, 1995). Accordingly, there is great interest in the boundary conditions and antecedents of achieving - and losing - competitive advantage via human capital. This symposium aims to explore some of the mechanisms by which the mobility of human capital can impact firms' performance for better and for worse. The four papers included in this symposium range from the theoretical to the empirical, touching upon issues such as the potential positive negative impacts of the accumulation of certain types of human capital in a firm, the underlying mechanisms and potential impacts of different types of mobility events, and the efficacy of firms' attempts to control these impacts. Following the presentations of this research, Benjamin Campbell, a leading scholar in this area, will serve as a discussant to provide feedback, suggestions, and guide a question and answer session.