Three essays on the human capital augmentation strategies of building and acquiring
This dissertation examines firms’ human capital (HC) augmentation strategies and under what conditions firms can generate competitive advantages from these strategies. I investigate the two main ways firms augment their HC: building and acquiring. I seek to advance this important, but understudied, area of research in the strategic HC literature by explaining how and when, as well as with what performance effects, firms engage in each of these strategies. The first question addresses how firms generate economic returns from building and acquiring strategies. The second question investigates the antecedents to firms’ choices to invest in building rather than acquiring strategies. Finally, the third question examines the effects of the business cycle on firms’ capabilities to generate economic returns from building and acquiring strategies. I find that firms can create value from their HC augmentation strategies if they can also use their capabilities to overcome the four classic problems across the business cycle, and can invest in long-term building strategies. To conduct my analyses, I use a longitudinal dataset that I constructed by combining several secondary data sources on the largest U.S. law firms over the last decade.
strategic human capital, human capital building, acquiring human capital, human capital augmentation, human capital strategies
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign