The role of human capital management in organizational competitiveness

Drawing upon human capital theory, we empirically tested the relationships among human capital management, employees’ value and uniqueness, and organizational competitiveness. To do this, we adopted a quantitative approach via multiple regression analysis with 183 participants from Taiwan and Mainland China. Results showed that human capital development and deployment were positively associated with both value and uniqueness of employees in Taiwan and also in Mainland China. This indicated that development and deployment practices, such as training and job design, were conducive to increasing employees’ value and uniqueness. In addition, the positive relationship between human capital and employees’ value that was observed in a Mainland Chinese context was not observed in Taiwan, which indicates that contextual differences affected methods of attracting talented employees. We found it surprising that in neither Taiwan nor Mainland China were organizations capable of retaining unique employees. Practical and theoretical implications of our findings are discussed.