Skilled migrants' career capital as a source of competitive advantage: implications for strategic HRM

Abstract

Skilled migrants (SMs) are an important source of labour force growth in today's knowledge economy in many parts of the world. Yet, management scholars have paid only scarce attention to understanding the potential strategic value of SMs' career capital and ways of attracting and integrating them into local organizations. This paper combines intelligent career theory and the resource-based view theory applied to diversity into a new and integrated framework defining ways that local employers may leverage on SM career capital. The framework addresses organizational competencies related to properly assessing organizational needs and readiness (organizational knowing-why) for SM workforce and then describing unique ways of properly attracting and integrating (knowing-how and knowing-whom related to SMs) this type of workforce into local organizations. Propositions for future research and, in particular, for further studying the role of HR in each of the three stages of the SM–employer relationship (i.e. understanding, attracting and integrating) are discussed. The paper also contributes to diversity literature by focusing on the less examined type of diversity, namely career capital diversity. Implications for future research and practice in this area are described.