An empirical analysis of the required management skills in the core employees' identification

Abstract

The current study empirically analyses the influence of top management team human capital attributes on one of the most relevant stages in the human resource management strategy formulation: the core employees' identification. Drawing on recent calls from the strategic human resource management literature, this study proposes a "process" perspective instead of the traditional "content" analysis, with the intention of going a step further on the internal dynamic of these strategic processes. Applying the structural equation modeling via Partial Least Square (PLS) on a sample of 120 Spanish firms, results reveal that critical human resources identification processes demand mixed cognitive skills, rational and creative ones, in order to complete efficiently different steps of the process. Consequently, to reach a balanced combination of previous skills, collectivistic dynamics are needed, fostering cooperative and collaborative decision making processes. In this context, HR managers will participate improving the process with his/her expert power and developing technical HR activities; subsequently, the HR information will be integrated the strategic decision making process with the rest of the team. In addition, interesting professional implications arise from the study in relation to the presence of the cognitive diversity in top management teams.

Keywords

• Human capital
• top management teams
• cognitive skills
• values
• core employees' identification