Does Good Personnel Management Practices give Agribusiness Firms a Competitive Advantage?

Agribusiness firms are often faced with the challenge of strategically managing employees to achieve a favorable position in the market (i.e. sustained competitive advantage). The resource based view (RBV) has been given considerable attention in the strategic management literature as a useful framework to analyze the significance of human resources in achieving sustained competitive advantage. However, there are few labor management studies in agribusiness that have used the RBV to provide evidence of a substantial relationship between any particular personnel management practice and competitive advantage. This paper provides an in-depth review of the RBV as a potential framework to analyze labor management practices in agribusiness. A case study is used to illustrate the application of this framework in the dairy industry and suggestions are made on how the framework can be extended and operationalized to guide future research and management practice in agribusines