Gaining competitive advantage through human resource practices

Critical to a corporation's growth and prosperity is gaining and retaining competitive advantage. Although corporations may pursue many paths to this end, one that is frequently not recognized is capitalizing on superior human resource management. Currently, many companies recognize the growing importance of their human resources, but few are conceptualizing them in strategic terms-in ways to gain a competitive advantage. As a result, many companies forego the opportunity to seize competitive advantage through human resource practice initiatives. However, there are a few companies that do not forego the opportunity. We use them as examples to show how to systematically develop such advantages via a "target/thrust matrix. " The end results of this matrix have significant implications for both corporate strategy and personnel and human resource management. In an earlier article, MacMillan presented the concept of strategic ini-tiative and defined it as the ability of a company or a strategic business unit to capture control of strategic behavior in the industries in which it competes (1983, p. 43). To the extent a company can gain the initiative