Competitive Actions and Firms' Accumulation of Specialized Human Capital.

In contrast with prior HRM research that has largely focused on the role of intra-organizational congruence, we seek to examine how the competitive environment affects firms' decisions to accumulate particular types of human capital. By drawing upon the strategic HRM, competitive dynamics and resource based view literatures we develop an integrated theoretical framework for understanding how human capital accumulation is influenced by rivals' competitive actions, and how firms' accumulated human capital in turn influences decisions to undertake competitive actions of their own. We theorize that competitive dynamics and firms' accumulation of human capital with expertise in the relevant competitive domain are likely to be closely linked. Furthermore, we hypothesize that these relationships are likely to be moderated by important internal and environmental variables. We test our hypotheses with a detailed longitudinal dataset about firms' litigation actions and their accumulation of specialized legal experts (attorneys). Our findings have implications for how the competitive environment drives firms' HR strategies, and how specialized human capital affects competitive dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]