Human, Social, and Now Positive Psychological Capital Management:: Investing in People for Competitive Advantage

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TRADITIONAL SOURCES OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

For an organizational resource to become a core competence and advantage, it needed to be one that competitors could not readily duplicate (e.g., plant, equipment, and technology). Then, when these costly physical resources no longer served as barriers to entry, non-financial factors entered into the competitive advantage equation. In particular, strategic deficiencies such as lack of vision, short-term approaches to planning and decision making, inadequate resource utilization, complacent or

WHY ARE HUMAN RESOURCES A SOURCE OF COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE?

Compared to the traditional physical, structural, and financial resources, human resources are more inimitable by competitors. Why is this the case? Apparently, the answer to this question is far from obvious. As Pfeffer pointed out, about seven-eighths of today’s organizations “just don’t get it”—what he has called “the knowing-doing gap.” We propose that the “doing” of human resources for competitive advantage can begin to close the gap through the recognition and effective management of

CONCLUSION

No one questions that human resources are critical to sustainable competitive advantage in today’s global economy. However, with few notable exceptions (about one-eighth of today’s organizations to be exact), human resources have been only given lip service, and have not been treated as a capital investment to be developed and managed. To a substantial extent, we feel this situation can be at least partly attributed to the perceived difficulty in assessing the direct impact of human-oriented

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Our work has been inspired and informed by the positive psychology movement. Two special issues of the American Psychologist have been devoted to positive psychology: Vol. 55, no. 1, 2000, and Vol. 56, no. 3, 2001. Other key references include K. Cameron, J. Dutton and R. Quinn’s edited book Positive Organizational Scholarship (Berrett-Koehler, 2003) and C. Rick Snyder and S. Lopez’s Handbook of Positive Psychology (Oxford University Press, 2002). Luthans first proposed positive organizational

Fred Luthans, editor of Organizational Dynamics, is a Distinguished Chaired Professor of Management at the University of Nebraska. He is the author of numerous books and articles. This past year, he received an honorary doctorate at DePaul University, and in 2001, the University of Iowa Distinguished Alumni Award for Career Achievement. A former president of the National Academy of Management, he received this association’s Distinguished Educator Award in 1997, and in 2001, he was selected as a

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Fred Luthans, editor of Organizational Dynamics, is a Distinguished Chaired Professor of Management at the University of Nebraska. He is the author of numerous books and articles. This past year, he received an honorary doctorate at DePaul University, and in 2001, the University of Iowa Distinguished Alumni Award for Career Achievement. A former president of the National Academy of Management, he received this association’s Distinguished Educator Award in 1997, and in 2001, he was selected as a charter member of the Academy’s Hall of Fame. Besides his university position, Fred is also a senior scientist with Gallup, Inc. ([email protected]).

Carolyn M. Youssef currently teaches organizational behavior, human resources and international management in the management department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Carolyn received her B.A. and her M.B.A. from the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She has published several articles and book chapters. Prior to joining the UNL Ph.D. program, Carolyn was fully in charge of training and human resource development at the Egyptian subsidiary of Thomas Cook, a tourism and financial services multinational with operations in more than 15 countries.

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